Chapter 143 Ekon

Chapter 143 Ekon
Age Sixteen

A Single Night of His Thoughts

The house always felt too quiet after midnight.

I sat on the roof outside my window with my back against the slanted shingles, knees drawn up, and watched the dark shape of the training fields below. A thin wind moved across the territory. Somewhere far out a patrol called once and was answered. The sound should have felt like safety. Instead it sat in my chest like a stone I could not spit out.

My hands still smelled like the field. Dirt. Sweat. The faint metallic edge of the cut I had opened on my own palm during the last drill when my claws came out too fast. I flexed my fingers and watched the thin scab pull. It did not hurt enough.

I wanted it to hurt more.

Sleep never came easy. When I closed my eyes I saw the same things on a loop: Valdus’s eyes the night he put me on the ground in front of the entire conquest party. The weight of his paw on my jaw. The way my own growl had died in my throat when the pressure increased. The quiet, ugly satisfaction that had flickered across his face for half a second before he stepped away.

I had submitted.

The memory still burned under my skin like a brand that refused to fade.

I dragged both hands down my face and exhaled hard. The air left me shaking. Sixteen years old and I still woke some nights with the phantom weight of that submission on my neck. I hated it. I hated that I could still feel it. I hated that part of me had wanted him to keep the pressure there longer—just so the choice would be taken away and I would not have to decide what I felt about him.

The wind shifted. Faint traces of the pack moved with it. Familiar scents. Warriors who nodded at me in the daytime and still watched me a fraction too long when they thought I would not notice. I was the Luna’s chosen. The future. The outsider pup who had been carried in and set down in the center of everything like a claim.

Some days I believed them when they called me heir.  

Most nights I did not.

I tipped my head back against the roof and stared at the stars. They looked the same as they had when I was ten and newly brought here—cold, distant, uninterested in whatever I became. Aphrodite had stood in the estate that first day and told me I would have a place. She had said it with that steady voice she used when she was already decided. I had wanted to believe her so badly it made my stomach hurt.

I still wanted to believe her.

That was the worst part.

A floorboard creaked somewhere inside the house. I went still, listening. Soft footsteps moved down the hall—too light for Valdus, too measured for one of the younger warriors. Aphrodite. She paused near my door, the way she sometimes did when she thought I was asleep. I pictured her standing there in the dark, one hand maybe lifted like she wanted to knock and then did not. After a moment the footsteps continued on.

Something tight pulled under my ribs.

I wanted to be better for her. The thought arrived the same way it always did—quiet, relentless, almost embarrassing in its intensity. She had taken me out of a dead pack and given me her name, her protection, her expectation. She looked at me sometimes like she could already see the Alpha I was supposed to become. I wanted to be large enough to fit that look. I wanted to stop feeling like a stolen thing she was trying to turn into a bridge.

But wanting and becoming were not the same.

I remembered the way she had watched me on the field three days ago. I had taken an older warrior down harder than the drill required. For a second, when he hit the dirt, something bright and vicious had lit in my chest. When I looked up she was standing on the rise with her arms crossed. She did not smile. She did not correct me either. She only watched, and the expression on her face had been complicated in a way that made my stomach twist.

Pride, maybe.  

Fear, maybe.  

Both at once.

I dragged my knees closer to my chest and pressed my forehead to them. The night air cooled the back of my neck. My wolf moved restlessly under my skin, wanting to run, wanting to fight, wanting something it could not name. I swallowed it down. Running would not fix the thing sitting in my chest. Fighting would only give Valdus another reason to look at me like a problem that needed solving.

Valdus.

The name alone made my jaw tighten.

I wanted him to look at me and see something worth keeping. Not the foreign pup. Not the obligation. Not the living reminder that he would never have a blood heir of his own. I wanted the kind of approval he gave Liam without thinking—the short nod after a clean kill, the rare flicker of respect when a warrior did something exactly right. I had chased that look for years without ever catching it for longer than a heartbeat.

Some nights I told myself I did not care.  

Those nights were lies.

A low growl tried to rise in my throat. I choked it back and dug my nails into my shins. The small pain steadied me. I breathed through my nose until the urge passed.

I did not understand what I was supposed to be.

If I became soft, the pack would never respect me.  

If I became hard, Valdus would only see his father looking back at him.  

If I stayed in the middle, I would remain what I was now—an almost, a nearly, a question mark walking around in an heir’s place.

The confusion sat so deep some days I could taste it.

I lifted my head and looked toward the main wing of the estate. The window of their bedroom was dark. They were in there together. I did not need to hear anything to know it. The bond between them was a living thing; even from here I could sometimes feel the edge of it, the way the whole pack seemed to orient around the two of them without conscious thought. I had never had that. I had never been anyone’s first choice. I had been a leftover pup with a dead name until Aphrodite decided I would be useful.

The thought was ugly. I let it stay anyway.

A pair of warriors crossed the open ground below, speaking in low voices. One of them laughed under his breath. The sound reached me thin and distant. I watched until they disappeared between the trees. Neither of them looked up. No one ever looked up at this hour. That was why I came here.

I pressed the heel of my hand hard against my sternum, trying to push the restless ache into something smaller. It did not work. The ache only spread, warm and sick and familiar.

I wanted the pack to stop watching me like I might turn on them.  

I wanted Valdus to say my name without the faint pause that meant he was reminding himself to be civil.  

I wanted Aphrodite to look at me without that shadow of worry she tried so hard to hide.  

I wanted to be strong enough that none of those things could touch me anymore.

Ambition flared hot and sudden behind my ribs. It felt clean for a second—sharp, purposeful. I imagined standing at the head of the pack one day and having every wolf lower their eyes because they chose to, not because a title had been handed to me. I imagined Valdus forced to acknowledge that the thing he had never wanted had become better than the bloodline he lost. I imagined Aphrodite proud in a way that did not also look like fear.

The images burned bright.

Then they flickered, because I did not know how to reach any of them without becoming something I was not sure she would still claim.

I lay back against the roof and let the cold of the shingles seep through my shirt. The stars blurred. I did not cry. I had trained that out of myself years ago. The pressure behind my eyes stayed, though, stubborn and useless.

A long time passed.

Eventually the eastern edge of the sky began to pale. The patrols changed. Someone started the early fires near the kitchens. The house would wake soon. Aphrodite would rise and begin her day. Valdus would already be moving. The training fields would fill again, and I would step onto them and perform the version of myself that knew how to work and fight and keep its mouth shut.

I sat up slowly. My body felt heavy. The cut on my palm had reopened a little; a thin line of blood sat in the crease. I rubbed it against my pants and watched the dark smear it left.

I did not know what I was becoming.

I only knew that the wanting—the sharp, exhausting, contradictory wanting—would still be here tomorrow night, and the night after that, and every night until something finally broke or settled or changed shape so completely I could no longer recognize it.

I climbed back through the window before the first real light could find me.

The room was the same as I had left it. Bed untouched. Desk stacked with the maps and notes I studied when sleep refused to come. I sat on the edge of the mattress and stared at the floor until my breathing evened out.

Outside, the pack began to rise.

Inside, I stayed still and let the confusion sit where it belonged—lodged deep, unspoken, and nowhere close to finished.