Chapter 28 028

Chapter 28 028
Kael left on a Monday.

There was trouble up north — something that needed his own hands, Dominic said over breakfast. Two, maybe three days. Kael already had his coat on, bag slung over his shoulder, before I’d even finished my tea. He paused just long enough in the doorway to say, “I’ll be back before the week’s out.” I nodded, told him to travel safe, and that was that.

I figured it wouldn’t matter. Just a few days. I was way off.

First morning without him, I woke up and just lay there — waiting for his knock like it always came. I didn’t even realize I was waiting for it until it didn’t happen, and then just had to admit it felt weird. Got up, got dressed, ate breakfast alone, told myself it was fine.

It was fine, I decided. Just breakfast. Ordinary day: library in the morning, garden in the afternoon, dinner with Dominic in the evening, which was quiet like it usually was — not tense, just calm, two people eating, a few words, nothing more than it needed to be.

He actually asked about the library. Took me by surprise. I kept things simple — said I’d been reading up on pack history, getting familiar. True enough. He nodded, asked which section. I told him the old records. Something flickered in his face, just for a second, like he had a question but let it go for now.

So I let him let it go.

Second day, it hit me properly.

It wasn’t Kael himself that I missed — or not just him. His absence made something obvious. Mornings had always felt easy with him around. He’d show up, fill the room, make the start of the day feel less like a chore, more like something warm before the careful watching set in. Without that, the mornings just felt early. Me and the cold, and all the heavy stuff I’m carrying, nowhere to put it down.

I hadn’t realized how much I relied on that. And relying isn’t the problem, really. Everyone needs somewhere to drop their baggage once in a while.

The problem was that I’d let it get too narrow, too specific. One person, one routine. Now, missing for three days, it left a gap bigger than I’d thought it would. Too big for something that supposedly didn’t matter.

Sat in the garden with that thought. Didn’t like what it said about me.

Third morning, Dominic found me in the library.

He didn’t say if he was looking for me. Just came in and paused, checked out the books on the table, looked me over, and I looked back.

“Petra said you’ve been in here every morning,” he said.

“Most mornings,” I answered.

He actually came in, checked the shelves the same way I did the first time — sizing up the place. “I used to come here as a kid,” he told me. “My grandmother brought me. Said a pack that didn’t know its history kept making the same mistakes.”

“She sounds sharp,” I said.

“She was the smartest person in this pack for fifty years, everyone knew it, nobody said it, because she was a woman. That’s just how it was.” He stated it plainly — no bitterness. “She would’ve found all that pretty funny, the not-saying-it part.”

I thought of what Sera had once told me. She’d have liked you.

“What are you reading?” he asked.

I looked at the book in front of me. Bloodline records, eighty years old, the section Petra tipped me towards. Nothing I could show him yet.

“Old records,” I said. “Family histories. Trying to see how the pack fits together.”

He checked out the page from where he stood, not close enough to really read it. “Why that section?”

“Petra suggested it.”

He watched me, and I watched him.

Dominic isn’t dumb. Not even close. He sees things — always has, ever since I first met him — and now he was wearing that look, the look of someone who knows he’s getting an edited version and decides whether to dig or let it be.

He let it be.

“There’s a section upstairs,” he said. “Far right corner. My grandmother’s personal collection. She annotated everything — her own notes in the margins. If you’re trying to understand the pack, that’s probably better than the official records.”

I glanced at the upper level. Narrow stairs, shelves I hadn’t tackled yet.

“Thanks,” I said.

He nodded, eyed the shelves one last time, then left. I sat still after he went, thinking about a man who could’ve pushed but didn’t — who handed me something useful instead, who kept doing things like that lately, and I was trying hard not to read too much into it.

Went up the stairs. Found the far right corner. Pulled the first book down. There it was — small, neat handwriting in the margins, all the things the official story skipped over.

Sat down on the floor, book in my lap, sunlight outside, the pack moving through its day. Read for two hours straight. What I found in those margins stayed with me long after I put the book away and headed downstairs.

Kael came back Thursday evening. Later than planned, dusty and tired, you could see it in his eyes. Walked into the main room where I was sitting, dropped into the chair across from me, said, “Well, that was unpleasant.” I said, “That bad?” He said, “Worse.” I asked, “Want food?” He said, “God yes.”

I grabbed food from the kitchen, brought it, sat with him while he ate, listened to him talk about the border mess. It was easy, the way it always is with him. I was glad he was back, and noticed how glad I was and made a mental note.

Not because being glad is a problem.

But because of just how glad I felt.

That’s something worth paying attention to.

When he finished eating, he leaned back and looked at me for real for the first time all night. “How were the last few days?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said.

He looked at me. “Fine fine, or managing fine?”

Almost laughed. “Somewhere between.”

He nodded, didn’t push. “Dominic?”

“He came to the library. Told me about his grandmother’s collection.”

Something flickered in Kael’s face, small and fast. “Did he?”

“Yeah.”

“Hm,” he said, looking at the table. “He doesn’t talk about her with many people. She meant a lot to him.” He paused. “More than he admits.”

I thought about the stone on the desk. The garden. All the bits of this house that belonged to a woman nobody really speaks of now.

“She mattered to a lot of people, I think,” I said.

Kael met my eyes.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “She did.”

We sat there for a while. The house warm, darkness setting in outside, my wolf settled and steady inside me. I thought about gaps and what fills them, and what it means when something fills a hole you didn’t even know was there.

Thought about the library.

Dominic’s voice, far right corner. My grandmother’s collection.

Thought about Kael, across the table, eating and talking, making things feel easy.

Thought about what easy costs sometimes.

Went to bed without figuring any of it out.

Lay there in the dark, my wolf warm in my chest, the house quiet around me, and felt things moving somewhere just below the surface, slow, unstoppable, heading toward something I couldn’t see yet.