Chapter 10 Ten

Chapter 10 Ten
Chapter Ten

June's POV

Gordan's real name was Gordon Hale but nobody in BloodMoon used it. He had been Adrian's enforcer since before Adrian took the Alpha position, which meant he had been sharpened specifically for one man's purposes over a long time. That was the most dangerous kind of weapon. Not the ones made for general use but the ones fitted to a single hand.

I told Cassian this at the kitchen table with bread going cold between us.

I told him other things too. The methodical way Gordan worked. How he never raised his voice. How he was courteous in a way that made your skin crawl because the courtesy was entirely disconnected from any actual feeling underneath it. How he had once sat across from me in a room for two hours without touching me, just talking, just explaining calmly what would happen if I made things difficult, until I had agreed to everything simply to make him stop being so terribly reasonable.

Cassian listened without interrupting. He had a stillness when he listened that most people didn't have. Not the stillness of someone waiting for their turn to speak but the stillness of someone actually receiving what you said and placing it somewhere real.

When I finished he was quiet for a moment.

"He won't come to the gate himself," he said finally. "He'll send someone younger first. A face you don't recognise. Test how we respond."

"Probably."

"And if we respond with force he documents it. Takes it back to Adrian as evidence that Shadow pack is holding a BloodMoon wolf against her will." He tilted his head slightly. "Which means I can't meet whatever they send with teeth first."

"Adrian knows how to build a case," I confirmed. "He spent months building one against me before he chose Paige. Made sure everyone in the pack had a version of events that made sense before I even knew what was happening."

Cassian's eyes moved over my face. "He prepared the story before he ended the bond."

"So that when I reacted badly it only confirmed what everyone already believed about me." I picked up a piece of bread and put it down again. "That I was unstable. That I had never been a good match for him. That the bond breaking was a mercy."

"And your family?"

"My parents died when I was twelve. It was just Paige and me." I kept my voice even. I had told this particular part enough times in my own head that the edges of it were worn smooth. "She was the first person Adrian told. Before me."

Cassian said nothing but something moved behind his eyes.

"She came to me afterward," I continued. "She said she was sorry. That it had just happened. That she hadn't planned it." I looked at the grain of the table. "I believed her for about three weeks. Then I started noticing the timeline didn't hold together."

"How long had it actually been going on?"

"Best I can piece together, about eight months before he rejected me."

The kitchen was very quiet.

Sera had left at some point during my telling, slipping out without a sound the way people did when they understood a conversation needed its space.

Cassian stood up slowly and moved to the window. He looked out at the tree line for a long moment with his hands loose at his sides.

"I want you to stay inside today," he said. "Not because I think you can't handle yourself. But because I don't want Gordan to see your face until I've decided how I'm going to handle his presence. Right now you're the unknown variable and that's useful."

"You want him uncertain about where I am and what state I'm in."

"I want him to walk into a conversation with no information and have to work for every piece of it." He turned from the window. "Can you do that? Stay in?"

"Yes." I paused. "As long as you tell me what happens. I don't want to be managed. I want to know."

Something in his expression shifted, softened almost imperceptibly. "I'll tell you everything."

I believed him. That was the part that still caught me off guard every time. How quickly and completely I believed him.

Ryker appeared in the doorway shortly after, and behind him a younger pack member I hadn't seen before, a girl with a long braid and nervous hands who was introduced as Mira. She had apparently been assigned to stay in the house with me, which I suspected was Cassian's doing framed in a way that wouldn't feel like guarding.

Mira showed me a small library off the main hall with the enthusiasm of someone who loved the room and wanted credit for it. Books floor to ceiling, a window seat, a lamp that threw warm yellow light across everything. I stood in the doorway and felt something loosen in my chest.

"Cassian stocked it when he built the house," Mira said. "He reads a lot at night. Mostly history and strategy but there's fiction too if you look on the lower left shelves."

I filed that away without examining why.

By mid-morning I was in the window seat with a book open in my lap that I was not fully reading, watching the tree line through the glass. The mist was completely gone now and the pines stood sharp and dark against a pale sky.

At half past ten Ryker's voice came through the house, low and carrying.

"Alpha. They've sent someone to the gate."

I closed the book.

I did not go downstairs. I had promised.

But I pressed my back to the wall beside the library window, where I could see the long path toward the eastern boundary, and I watched Cassian walk out to meet whatever Adrian had sent.

His shoulders were straight. His pace was unhurried.

He looked like something the land itself had produced, something that had been here long before BloodMoon politics and would remain long after.

For the first time in two years I felt something shift in the deepest part of me that had nothing to do with the bond or Elara or fear.

It felt dangerously close to hope.