Chapter 34: The Shadows Between
Fianna's pov
The night pressed heavy around me, thick with the smell of pine and damp earth. My breath misted in the air, shallow and uneven, as I crouched low against the twisted roots of an old oak. The forest was silent—but it was the kind of silence that meant something was listening. Watching. Waiting.
Kael had gone ahead only moments before, a phantom slipping through the trees, his dark coat barely visible beneath the moonlight. He had told me to stay hidden, his voice low, urgent, and edged with something that almost sounded like fear. Fear—for me.
I hated the way my chest warmed at that thought.
My wolf stirred uneasily inside me, hackles rising as the silence stretched too long. She wanted Kael close. She wanted safety. But she also wanted the truth—the truth I had been running from since Derek had spoken my name in that cursed tavern.
Fianna.
It rang in my ears even now, cutting deeper than the cold.
Leaves crackled to my left.
I stiffened, my hand instinctively tightening around the dagger at my thigh. But it wasn’t Kael who stepped into the pale light seeping through the canopy.
It was him.
Derek.
He moved like the forest bent to him, his stride steady, unhurried, each step claiming the ground as if it had been waiting for his weight all along. His eyes—those piercing, ice-blue eyes—found me instantly, locking on with unnerving precision.
The air thickened, pressing against my skin.
“Fianna.” My name left his mouth like a prayer, like a chain tightening.
I pressed back against the tree, dagger ready. “Don’t.” My voice was a whisper, harsh and sharp, but it trembled. I hated that he could hear it.
His lips curved—not quite a smile, not quite a threat. “Still fighting, even when you’re cornered. That fire… it’s what kept you alive all these years.”
“Stay back,” I warned.
He ignored me. Of course he did. Derek closed the space between us slowly, deliberately, like a predator savoring the chase. And the worst part? Some traitorous part of me—the wolf inside me—didn’t recoil. She leaned forward, curious, drawn.
My pulse thundered.
“You think you can run from what you are,” Derek murmured. “From me. But the forest doesn’t lie. Neither do names. You were never Elena. You were always mine.”
The dagger shook faintly in my grip. I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that I belonged to no one. But my throat burned with unsaid words. With the fear that maybe… maybe he did know something I didn’t.
A shadow darted between us.
Kael.
He materialized from the trees with a low growl, his wolf just beneath the surface, eyes glowing faintly gold in the dark. He moved faster than thought, placing himself between Derek and me, his body taut, trembling with the urge to strike.
“Step away from her,” Kael snarled.
Derek’s gaze flicked to him, unimpressed. “And here he is. The loyal wolf. So desperate to protect something that was never his to guard.”
A low rumble escaped Kael’s chest, his power thrumming through the ground beneath my boots. My wolf pressed harder against my skin, responding to him, to the bond that wasn’t spoken but lived between us.
For a heartbeat, the world narrowed to the space between the two of them—Kael bristling with fury, Derek radiating cold control, and me trapped in the middle, every breath cutting sharp in my lungs.
“I won’t say it again,” Kael warned, his voice deep, edged with a command that shook even me. “Move away from her.”
Derek tilted his head, eyes sliding back to mine. And in them I saw not anger, not even challenge—only certainty.
“You can hide behind him for now, Fianna,” he said softly, like a vow. “But when the time comes, your wolf will choose. And she will choose me.”
The words struck like a knife, sinking deep, deeper than I wanted to admit.
And then Derek stepped back into the shadows, his presence fading into the night as though he had never been there at all. But his voice lingered, coiled inside me like smoke.
Kael turned to me at once, his hand gripping my arm, grounding me, fierce and desperate. “Are you hurt? Did he—”
I shook my head, my lips parting, but no words came. My heart was still racing, torn between terror and something else I didn’t want to name.
Because the truth was, Derek hadn’t needed to touch me to leave his mark.
And as Kael’s hand tightened protectively around mine, my wolf
whispered something that made my stomach twist with dread:
He’s right.