Kain
The great hall had never felt smaller.
It could hold three hundred wolves without effort — high ceilings, exposed timber beams, long stone floors that had been worn smooth by a hundred years of pack events. I'd stood in this room for coronations, funerals, treaty signings, celebrations. I knew every corner of it.
Today it felt like a cage.
I stood at the front, Andressa to my right, the Silver Fang elders flanking the sides of the room like sentinels, and I spoke the words they needed to hear. Controlled. Deliberate. Exactly as rehearsed in the forty minutes I'd spent pacing my study that morning telling myself this was strategy, not surrender.
The wedding would proceed as planned.
The alliance remained intact.
The Blood Moon Pack honored its commitments.
My voice was steady. My face was composed. Two hundred and thirty wolves watched me and heard their Alpha reaffirm something that had been the foundation of their security for years, and the room exhaled with relief.
I watched them exhale.
I was lying to all of them.
And the worst part was that somewhere above me, in a garden or a library or at Lena's kitchen counter, Nova was probably looking out a window and feeling something close to hope, and she had no idea what was happening in this room.
I had not told her.
That was the decision I'd made this morning — or not made so much as failed to unmake. I had stood in the doorway of her room watching her sleep, golden in the morning light, looking more peaceful than she probably should have been given everything, and I had thought: I will tell her. After. I will explain it. She'll understand.
I was not sure she would understand.
I was not entirely sure I understood it myself.
Marcus met me at the door of the great hall when it was over, falling into step beside me as I walked, both of us heading away from the dispersing crowd with the particular purposefulness of men who don't want to be congratulated for something they're not proud of.
"Clean," Marcus said quietly.
"Don't."
"I'm not being sarcastic." He glanced at me. "I'm saying it was clean. You said what needed to be said, the Silver Fang elders looked satisfied, and we bought time." A pause. "That's what today was."
"I know what today was."
"Do you?" He looked at me sideways. "Because you look like a man who just convicted himself of something."
I didn't answer.
He exhaled. "She's going to find out, Kain."
"I know. I'm going to tell her."
"When?"
"Tonight."
"Before or after she hears it from someone else?"
I stopped walking.
He stopped too, turning to face me.
"Sera was in there," he said. His voice wasn't cruel about it. Just even. Honest. "And Sera talks to Nova now. I don't know when that started, but they talk."
I closed my eyes briefly.
"I'm going to her now," I said.
"Good." He stepped back. "And Kain." He waited until I looked at him. "She's stronger than you're treating her. Give her the truth. All of it. She can take it."
I looked at him for a moment.
Then I turned and went to find her.
+++
She was in the garden.
Of course she was. She'd discovered it four days ago and she'd been going back every day, usually in the afternoon when the light hit the roses right, sometimes with a book she didn't read, sometimes just sitting on the iron bench with her feet pulled under her, staring at the sky like it owed her something.
I'd come out here twice just to watch her from the glass walkway, which was either romantic or slightly unhinged, and I was choosing to call it romantic.
She heard me on the path and turned.
One look.
That was all it took. She took one look at my face and something in hers shifted — not to fear, but to a careful, waiting alertness. The look of someone who has learned to read rooms and people and atmospheres as a survival skill and has read this one correctly.
She stood up from the bench.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Can we sit?"
She sat back down. I sat beside her, close, our knees almost touching. The garden was quiet around us, the afternoon warm, the roses very pink against the old stone wall. A perfect setting for a conversation that was anything but.
"There was a pack assembly this morning," I said.
Her eyes held mine. "I know. I heard it was happening."
"I told the pack the wedding was proceeding as planned."
The silence that followed was a specific kind — not empty, but packed. I watched her take it in. Watched the careful neutral of her expression stay careful and neutral.
"I see," she said. Quietly.
"It was strategy," I said. "The Silver Fang needed to believe we were cooperating while I work on another solution. If they think I'm wavering, they escalate. People in this pack could be harmed."
"I understand," she said.
"Nova—"
"I understand the logic," she said. Not cold, not heated. Clear. "I do. I'm not stupid, Kain." She looked at the roses. "What I don't understand is why you didn't tell me beforehand."
There it was.
I had no answer for that that wasn't, at its core, cowardice. I had not told her because I didn't want to see her face when she heard it. Because I was not ready to navigate her pain and the assembly on the same morning. Because I was protecting myself as much as her.
"I should have," I said. "That was wrong. I'm sorry."
She looked at me then.
Her eyes were that extraordinary color, and they were not angry — which somehow made it worse than anger would have been. They were searching. Measuring.
"I've had people keep things from me my whole life," she said carefully. "Usually to protect themselves. Sometimes to protect me. And I have never, not once, found out about something that was kept from me and felt like the keeping was worth it." She held my gaze. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"Yes," I said.
"I need you to tell me things. Even when they're hard. Even when you're afraid I'll react badly. Because the alternative—" She stopped, pressing her lips together. "The alternative is me being kept in the dark about my own life, and I have spent twenty years there, and I am done."
The weight of that settled over me.
"You're right," I said. "It won't happen again."
She looked at me for a long moment, and I held still under it, let her look, let her decide.
"Okay," she said finally.
"Just okay?"
"I'm not going to perform anger I'm not fully feeling just to make a point." She looked back at the roses. "I'm frustrated. But I also— I believe you." A pause. "That's an unsettling thing to discover. That I believe you."
"Why unsettling?"
"Because it means I've gone and gotten attached." Her voice was dry, but the corner of her mouth moved. Barely. "And attached people get hurt."
I reached across and took her hand.
She let me.
"I'm going to find a way through this," I said. "Without the wedding. I need you to trust me long enough for me to do that."
She looked down at our joined hands. "You have a plan?"
"I have the beginning of one."
"That's not very reassuring."
"I know." I turned her hand over, my thumb tracing the lines of her palm. "But it's honest."
She let out a small breath — not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh.
"Fine," she said. "Honest I can work with."
We sat in the garden until the light changed and the air cooled and Lena sent someone out to tell us dinner was getting cold. We didn't talk about the council. We didn't talk about the assembly. We sat in the afternoon quiet and she leaned, gradually, incrementally, until her shoulder was against mine, and I didn't move a muscle in case it made her stop.
She didn't stop.
When we finally went in, her fingers were still laced through mine.
I held on, and then we kissed, passionately, not like that quick night that was mostly filled with lust and possession from my end.
Her saliva slowly dripped into my mouth as my hands drifted to touch her bounty breasts, causing her to gently moan in my mouth, "she's enjoying it".
After some minutes we stopped and she just leaned against each other as we watched the breeze sway through the garden.