Chapter 69 FRACTURES BENEATH THE ARMOR
AMBER’S POV
I start noticing the pattern because it refuses to leave me alone. Derek’s cruelty is never random; it comes in waves, sharp and sudden, followed by moments that feel almost…almost gentle. One day, his words cut so deep I carry them like bruises beneath my skin. The next, he stands before me like a wall no one dares cross, eyes blazing with a fury meant for anyone but me. It doesn’t make sense, not in a way that fits neatly into the story everyone tells about him. He was cold and ruthless, unfeeling. If that were true, he wouldn’t contradict himself so violently.
I lie awake at night thinking about it, staring at the dark beams of the ceiling, listening to the slow rhythm of the pack settling into sleep. When he’s cruel, it’s as if he needs distance, as if closeness threatens something fragile inside him. When he defends me, it’s instinctive, almost feral, like a reflex he doesn’t have time to suppress. The contrast is dizzying. I find myself wondering…quietly, guiltily…if something inside him is fractured. If the man who snaps at me and the man who shields me are not enemies, but two sides of the same wound.
The word slips into my mind one afternoon as I watch him from across the yard. Bipolar. The elders whisper about it when they think no one is listening, about warriors who burn too bright and then freeze themselves to survive. I don’t know if it fits him exactly, but the idea lingers. Extreme highs of rage and control. Crushing lows masked as indifference. It doesn’t excuse his behavior. It doesn’t erase the hurt. But it gives it a shape, and somehow, that makes it easier to breathe around.
Fauna notices my distraction before I say a word. She always does.
“You’re thinking too loudly,” she says, settling beside me on the low stone bench near the herb racks. Her hands move with practiced ease as she sorts dried leaves, her presence warm and grounding. Fauna has lived long enough to recognize storms before they break.
“I’m trying to understand him,” I admit. “I don’t think he’s… steady.”
Her hands still. Slowly, she looks at me, eyes softening with something that feels dangerously close to pity.
“Derek was never meant to be steady.”
That’s how it starts.
She tells me about Valhalla not as a legend, but as a wound that never healed properly. Long before Derek became Alpha, before I ever set foot here, the packs lived under a fragile accord. Valhalla was not just a place, it was an idea. A stronghold meant to unite the northern packs, a council forged to prevent another bloodbath like the First Divide. But unity, Fauna says, is always fragile when power is involved.
The war didn’t begin with swords drawn. It began with whispers, with fear and an accusation that Valhalla was no longer neutral, that one pack was exerting influence where it shouldn’t. The Golden Moon Pack, she says quietly, eyes sharp, played a larger role than history admits. Their Alpha at the time was charismatic, persuasive and compromised. Influenced by forces no one understood until it was far too late.
By the time the truth surfaced, alliances had already fractured. Trust had already bled out onto the ground.
Derek was young then. Too young to carry what was placed on his shoulders, but old enough to remember every scream, every order barked in desperation. He fought not because he wanted glory, but because survival demanded it. Fauna tells me he lost more than warriors. He lost his parents, his sense of certainty, his belief that protecting people means they stay protected.
“Valhalla fell because love and power don’t coexist easily,” she says. “And Derek learned that lesson in blood.”
I listen in silence, my chest tight. Suddenly, his contradictions feel less like cruelty and more like scars that never faded. The anger. The distance. The way he flinches from softness as if it’s a trap. It doesn’t excuse him, but it explains why kindness might feel like weakness to him, why attachment could feel like the beginning of another loss.
“So when he pushes me away,” I whisper, “it’s because he’s afraid?”
Fauna doesn’t answer right away. “It’s because caring once cost him everything.”
That night, I see Derek differently. He’s standing near the stables, hands resting on the fence, shoulders rigid as he watches the horses settle. I approach quietly, not because I fear him, but because I’ve learned he startles easily when he thinks too much. He doesn’t turn when I stop beside him.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he says.
“I know.”
Silence stretches between us, familiar and heavy. I don’t try to fill it. For once, neither does he.
“You look at me like you’re solving a problem,” he mutters.
“Maybe I am.”
He finally looks at me then, eyes narrowing. “Careful.”
There it is. The warning. The edge. And yet, he doesn’t leave.
“I talked to Fauna,” I said softly.
Something flickers across his face…annoyance, suspicion, something darker beneath it. “Of course you did.”
“She told me about the war.”
His jaw tightens. “She talks too much.”
“Maybe,” I agree. “Or maybe she talks because no one else will.”
The air shifts. I expect him to lash out, to shut me down. Instead, he looks away, grip tightening on the fence until his knuckles pale. The vulnerability is brief, but it’s there.
“I don’t need your understanding,” he says.
“I know,” I replied. “But you have it anyway.”
He scoffs, but there’s no heat in it. “You think you’ve figured me out?”
“No,” I say honestly. “I think you’re fighting yourself harder than you fight anyone else.”
That does it. His expression hardens, walls snapping back into place. “Don’t mistake protection for affection, Amber. You’ll only hurt yourself.”
The words sting, but I don’t show it. I nod, calm, composed. “I won’t.”
He turns away, conversation over. I stayed a moment longer, watching his back, the tension etched into every line of his. When I finally leave, it’s with measured steps, my face carefully blank.
Only when I’m alone do I let the truth settle.
I care. Not because of the bond, not because fate decided it, but because I see the fractures beneath his armor and want…foolishly to believe they don’t make him unlovable. He hurts me without trying. He protects me without meaning to. And somehow, both truths exist at once.
Our relationship lives in that contradiction. Love tangled with resentment. Warmth buried under cruelty. I don’t know how it will end, only that whatever grows between us will not be simple or gentle.
But as much as he hates that I see him, Derek hates even more that so me part of him doesn’t want me to look away.
TRADITION AND TEMPTATION