Chapter 175 Chapter 175

Chapter 175 Chapter 175


The sound wakes her.

Not gentle. Not the kind of sound that belongs in a bedroom. A metallic click definitive and final like a door being sealed.

Rowan's eyes snap open.

For a moment, her body doesn't catch up to her mind. She's still half-dreaming, still in that soft place between sleep and waking where her body hasn't remembered how to panic yet. But then reality crashes in and her chest seizes.

She throws off the blankets and crosses the small distance to her door in three quick steps.

Locked.

From the outside.

Her hand is on the handle, her fingers pressing down uselessly, when she hears it: the shift of boots. The deliberate stance of someone trained to stand guard.

Warriors.

Stationed outside her room.

Not officially imprisoned, she realizes with a clarity that's somehow worse than if her father had simply thrown her in a cell. He's doing this kindly. Carefully. The way you would contain something you love but couldn't afford to trust.

She presses her forehead against the cool wood of the door and feels her throat tighten.

This is what happens when you choose wrong.

Hours pass like water through fingers.

Rowan sits on her bed and watches light move across the floor as sun climbs higher. Her room the one she's occupied since childhood, decorated with things that suddenly feel childish and naive becomes a prison not through cruelty but through abandonment.

Nobody comes to see her.

Nobody brings food.

Nobody acknowledges her existence.

The silence is worse than any punishment her father could have inflicted.

When the knock finally sounds, Rowan's entire body goes rigid.

"Come in," she calls, but the words come out smaller than she intended.

Luna enters.

Her mother moves like she's carrying extra weight. Her shoulders are tense in a way Rowan doesn't remember seeing before. There's a small line between Luna's brows worry or disapproval, Rowan can't tell which.

Luna sets a tray of food on the table.

For a moment, neither of them speaks.

Then Luna sits on the edge of Rowan's bed and does something that completely undoes her: she reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind her daughter's ear. A gesture from childhood. From before politics and duty and pack warfare meant anything.

"Your father isn't angry because he hates Kaelen," Luna says quietly.

Rowan looks at her mother.

"He's angry because he's terrified."

The words hit differently than Rowan expected. She'd built her entire narrative around Damian's fury being about pack politics, about tradition, about duty superseding love. But hearing it said aloud that her father's anger comes from fear shifts something fundamental in her understanding.

"Terrified of what?" Rowan asks.

Luna's eyes are soft. Sad in a way that suggests she's carried this knowledge for a long time.

"Of losing you," Luna says. "The same way he almost lost me."

She reaches for Rowan's hand, and Rowan lets her. Her mother's palm is warm. Real. Grounding her to something solid when everything else is dissolving.

"When your father and I came together, it was similar," Luna continues. "Different circumstances, but the same essential conflict. He had to choose between pack duty and personal love. And he chose love. It nearly destroyed him."

Luna's thumb traces small circles on the back of Rowan's hand.

"Your father doesn't hate that you love Kaelen. He's terrified because he knows exactly how much loving someone from an enemy pack costs. He's lived it. And he doesn't want you to experience that pain."

Rowan feels tears starting hot, unwelcome tears that come from somewhere deep and complicated.

"But it's my choice to make," Rowan says.

"Yes," Luna agrees. "But he's a father first, Alpha second. And right now, the father is winning."

Luna kisses her daughter's forehead.

"Give him time," she whispers. "He'll come around. Your father is stubborn but he's not cruel. He just needs to understand that you're not sacrificing yourself. That you're choosing something worth the cost."

Across territory, in Shadowfang compound, Kaelen stands before his father.

"You're not going back there," his father says. It's not a command. It's a warning.

Kaelen is already pulling on traveling clothes. Already gathering what he'll need for the journey back to Blackwell territory. His movements are deliberate. Controlled. Everything about him speaks to a decision already made.

"Rowan is locked in her room," Kaelen says, and his voice carries that specific quality it takes on when he's channeling his obsidian nature dark, absolute, unmovable. "Her father is using isolation as punishment. She's suffering because she chose me."

He turns to face his father directly.

"I'm not leaving her alone in that."

His father older, weathered, carrying centuries of leadership in his bearing steps closer.

"Blackwell territory right now is a nest of angry wolves," he says. "Damian is in pain, which makes him dangerous. Walking back in there could get you killed."

"Possibly," Kaelen agrees.

"You would die for her?"

Kaelen doesn't hesitate.

"Yes."

His father studies him for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nods.

"Then go," he says. "But go prepared to fight for her. Because Damian won't simply let you walk in and claim her."

Rowan sits alone after Luna leaves.

She closes her eyes and reaches through the bond.

The cosmic connection that's been constant since the dream, since the moment Kaelen recognized her across centuries she reaches through it like a hand extended across vast darkness.

Kaelen?

Nothing.

She tries again, pushing harder, filtering all her emotion and urgency through the bond.

Kaelen, where are you?

Still nothing.

Panic begins to bloom in her chest. Small at first, then growing. Her left eyelid starts that frantic twitch. Her hands are shaking. She presses her palms against her thighs to steady them but it doesn't help.

Has Damian done something? Blocked the bond somehow?

Or and this thought is worse, so much worse has something happened to Kaelen?

Is he hurt?

Is he—

No.

She won't think that thought.

But the silence in the bond is absolute. Total. Like someone has severed the connection from the other end.

Rowan stands and paces her small room, five steps in one direction, five steps back. Over and over. Creating rhythm because her mind needs something to hold onto.

He's coming, she tells herself. Of course he's coming. He wouldn't just abandon her.

But the bond remains silent.

And the silence terrifies her more than her father's fury ever could.

The scream comes from the courtyard.

Not a battle scream. A warning scream.

The kind that means something is wrong.

Rowan rushes to her window.

A warrior is sprinting toward the main house, covered in blood not his own, she realizes with sickening clarity. His clothes are torn. His breathing is ragged. There's a wildness in his eyes that speaks to panic rather than injury.

She hears the sound of boots below. Warriors mobilizing. Damian's voice cutting through the chaos with Alpha authority.

"What happened?"

The warrior reaches the courtyard, collapsing nearly, breathing hard.

"Alpha—" he gasps. "Shadowfang's heir he crossed the border."

Rowan's heart stops.

"And he's heading here."

The warrior gestures vaguely toward the eastern boundary.

"Alone. Moving fast. No pack. No guards. Just him. And he's…he's moving like he doesn't plan to stop at the border."

Damian goes very still.

Rowan watches her father from her window, watches the exact moment the information settles into his consciousness. His shoulders tense. His hands clench. His entire body tightens like a wolf preparing to spring.

"Get every warrior to the eastern boundary," Damian orders. "And someone tell Rowan to.."

But Rowan isn't listening anymore.

The bond suddenly flares alive.

Kaelen.

She feels him like lightning, like coming home, like every terrified moment of silence suddenly resolved into purpose.

He's coming.

He's actually coming.

He's crossing into Blackwell territory openly, defying her father completely, walking directly into danger because he couldn't leave her alone in this.

Rowan's hand presses against the window.

And down below, she watches her father recognize the reality of what's about to happen.