Chapter 8 The Weight of Silence
Levi:
The city never really sleeps.
From this height, Seattle looks like a circuit board, streets glowing, buildings humming, everything alive except me. I stand before the glass, watching my reflection blur into the skyline.
Four years of discipline. Four years of pretending I had erased her from memory. And one glance shattered it all.
Aurora Anderson.
She was there at the conference today, standing near the press line, camera light catching the edge of her hair. For a moment, the world narrowed to the sound of her heartbeat. I felt it, steady, familiar, impossibly close. The mark on my chest burned as if it had just been made.
Four years of control gone in a single second.
Koda stirs beneath my skin, restless, prowling. Ours, he whispers, voice thick and insistent.
“She is not ours,” I mutter. “She never was.”
The lie tastes bitter.
A soft knock breaks the quiet. Lucas steps in, his expression wary. He has been my Beta since before I took the company reins, a soldier wrapped in a businessman’s calm.
“You left early from the event,” he says, closing the door behind him. “The board noticed.”
“I saw someone I wasn’t prepared to see.”
Lucas tilts his head slightly. “Her?”
I don’t answer. He takes the silence as confirmation.
“She’s been working in investigative media. Freelance, mostly. I checked when she started writing about Michelsen last month.”
My pulse tightens. “You’ve been keeping tabs?”
“You didn’t ask me to stop.”
He’s right. I never did. I just stopped reading the reports. Pretending not to know was easier than admitting I cared.
Lucas studies me carefully. “You realize if she’s covering corruption, she’ll eventually stumble across Kingston’s funding trails. Michelsen’s ties lead straight back here.”
“That’s not her fight,” I say.
“She doesn’t know that.”
Koda growls again, claws scraping against the edges of my mind. The urge to see her, to smell her grows sharper by the minute.
“Get me her current address,” I say quietly.
Lucas blinks, surprised. “You want me to... ?”
“Call it a precaution,” I cut in. “The Council doesn’t like journalists. If she’s sniffing near pack money, they’ll notice.”
He hesitates. “You plan to protect her or warn her?”
“I haven’t decided.”
Lucas nods, though the disapproval in his scent is unmistakable. “You know how this looks.”
“I know exactly how it looks.”
He leaves without another word. The office feels colder when the door closes. I turn back to the window, but all I see is her face again, the way she scanned the room like she owned the story, not realizing she still owned me.
By midnight, I’m still awake. Her address sits on the screen in front of me, clean and clinical, apartment building, third floor, near the Sound. I tell myself this is reconnaissance, nothing more. A leader ensures all loose ends are contained.
That’s the excuse I cling to when I take the elevator to the garage and slide behind the wheel.
Rain falls in thin, silver threads, soaking the streets. The drive is quiet, too quiet, the kind that leaves room for every thought I’ve tried to bury.
What I remember most about that night isn’t the rejection. It’s her laughter, soft, disbelieving, right before pain replaced it.
The wolf in me has never forgiven that sound.
When I reach her street, I park across from the building and kill the headlights. The window light glows faintly through the rain, warm and alive.
Her apartment. Her scent catches on the air, carried through the drizzle, coffee, jasmine, something sweet beneath it. My pulse stumbles.
I should leave.
Instead, I step out into the rain.
Every instinct screams to go to her, to close the distance, to make sure she’s safe. But safety was the lie I told myself four years ago too.
I had convinced myself that rejecting her would protect her from my world, from the bloodlines and politics that consume everything they touch.
Now the Council has shifted again, power changing hands, and any human who brushes near our business will be erased before they can even name us.
And Aurora… she has never known when to stop digging.
I cross the street. The building’s security lights flicker. A shadow moves past a window, her silhouette. I freeze.
Even after all this time, I could trace her outline in the dark. The way she moves is still the same: quick, determined, never soft, even when she thinks she’s alone.
I stop under the awning, rain sliding down my collar. My hand tightens around my phone. My thumb hovers over the keypad before I finally type the words that have been burning inside me since I saw her again.
Stop investigating Kingston. It is not safe.
I hesitate, then hit send.
The message delivers. A small mercy.
For a moment, I imagine her reaction, frowning, suspicious, maybe annoyed. I almost smile.
Through the window, she moves closer, standing near her desk, looking down at her phone. I can’t see her expression, but the bond hums — faint but alive. The mark on my chest burns in answer.
The wolf pushes again. Go to her.
“No.” The word breaks rough.
I take one step back, then another, forcing distance between what I want and what I can allow. Her light flickers off. The apartment goes dark.
Rain fills the silence, steady and relentless.
I turn away before I do something unforgivable.
When I reach the car, my reflection in the windshield looks like a stranger’s. My eyes flash gold before settling back to blue. Control is a thin, fragile thing.
I start the engine, but I don’t drive off right away. I look up at her window one last time. She’s probably already asleep, unaware of the danger moving closer every day.
Four years ago I told myself I’d let her go. Now I realize I never did.
I whisper to the night, to the bond, to the thing that refuses to die.
“I’ll keep you safe, Aurora. Even if it means staying a ghost.”
The rain answers with nothing but silence.