Chapter 8 Eight

Chapter 8 Eight
Chapter Eight

June's POV

I stayed in his arms longer than I should have.

The foyer still smelled like Paige's perfume and broken glass, and somewhere under that was the cold metallic thread of BloodMoon wolves. My old pack. My old life, standing on the doorstep like a debt collector.

But Cassian's chest was warm under my cheek, and his heartbeat was so steady it made my own slow down against my will.

He set me down gently when his Beta appeared at the end of the hall. Ryker was tall, dark-eyed, with a jaw that looked like it had been hit more than once and healed slightly wrong. He gave me a brief nod, no judgment in it, and looked at Cassian.

"She's gone. Both soldiers retreated past the ridge." He paused. "But they didn't go far. They made camp just outside boundary line."

Cassian's expression did not change. "How many total?"

"Seven that I can smell. Adrian's not with them yet. But his scent is threaded through Paige's clothes. He sent her first to take the temperature." Ryker's eyes flicked to me briefly. "Smart."

"No," Cassian said. "Cautious. There's a difference. A smart man wouldn't have done what he did in the first place."

Ryker dipped his chin in agreement and left without another word.

The silence stretched between us. I looked at the broken window. One of the pack's younger wolves was already there with a board and nails, moving quietly, not looking at me. Like this was simply a thing that happened and needed fixing. Like I had not just stood on those stairs and looked my sister in the face for the first time since she took everything from me.

"You should eat," Cassian said.

I almost laughed. "That's what you're leading with?"

"You haven't eaten since yesterday." He moved toward the kitchen, glancing back once. "Come on."

I followed him because my legs were tired and because following him was easier than standing still with my own thoughts.

The kitchen was large and simple. Stone counters and a long table worn smooth from years of use. It smelled like woodsmoke and coffee and something faintly sweet from a pot someone had left simmering on the stove. Cassian lifted the lid, stirred it once, and poured a bowl without asking what I wanted.

He set it down at the end of the table and pulled out the chair.

I sat. I looked at the bowl. Some kind of broth with vegetables and what smelled like rosemary.

"Your pack cooks like this at midnight?" I asked.

"My pack knows their Alpha keeps strange hours." He sat across from me, forearms on the table, watching me the way he always watched me. Like I might disappear if he looked somewhere else. "Eat, June."

I ate.

It was good. Simple and honest and hot, and somewhere halfway through the bowl my throat tightened for no reason I could properly explain except that no one had made sure I ate in a very long time. Not without it being conditional on something.

I put the spoon down and looked at him.

"She sounded almost sorry," I said. "For one second. Right at the end."

Cassian was quiet for a moment. "Does that change anything for you?"

I thought about it honestly. "No," I said. "But it surprised me. I stopped expecting her to feel things a long time ago."

"People like Paige feel things," he said. "They just feel them in the wrong direction. Everything points inward." He leaned back in the chair. "She's not the one you need to prepare for."

"Adrian." I said his name flat, like a stone I was putting down somewhere.

"He'll come himself when Paige reports back." Cassian's eyes were steady on mine. "Not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow. He'll wait until he thinks you've had time to doubt yourself again. He knows how you work, June. He spent years learning exactly where to press."

The accuracy of that hit me somewhere quiet and deep.

"He does know," I said. "He knows I spiral. He knows if he leaves enough silence I start filling it with all the worst explanations." I looked down at my hands around the bowl. "I used to apologize for things I hadn't done just to end the quiet."

Cassian said nothing. He just listened, which was somehow worse than if he'd spoken, because the silence he made was completely different. It didn't demand anything from me. It just held.

"I'm not going to do that anymore," I said, and I meant it as a statement but it came out sounding closer to a promise. Something I was making to myself out loud for the first time.

"No," he agreed quietly. "You're not."

I looked up at him. The kitchen light caught the angles of his face, the hard line of his jaw, the gold still faintly burning in his eyes even now when everything was calm. He looked like something the forest had made. Like something that existed outside of rules and politics and the small cruelties of people who called themselves leaders.

"What happens when he crosses the boundary?" I asked.

"I go to meet him."

"And if he challenges you?"

"Then I accept." No hesitation. No bravado in it either. Just fact.

"He's not weak, Cassian."

"I know."

"He fights dirty."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth. "So do I."

I pushed the empty bowl aside and folded my arms on the table, leaning forward. "I don't want to be the reason your pack bleeds."

He leaned forward too, closing the space between us until I could feel the warmth radiating off him. "You're not the reason. He is. The moment he put his hands on his own mate was the moment this was always going to end in someone's blood." His voice was low. "I'm simply making sure it's his."

Outside the wind moved through the pines and somewhere on the eastern ridge, seven wolves sat around a fire that hadn't been invited.

But in here the broth was warm and Cassian's eyes were steady and for the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt something that had nothing to do with fear or heat or survival.

I felt like myself.

Quiet and fragile and just barely beginning. But real.