Chapter 109 Elara's POV
Kaden didn't come to dinner that evening.
After the revelation about the ghost being his sister, after the servants' descriptions matching someone who'd been missing for fifteen years, Kaden had simply walked away.
"Let him go," Ethan had said when I started to follow. "He needs time to process this."
"He shouldn't be alone right now."
"He's not good with emotions, never has been. Give him space."
But I couldn't not when I'd seen the look on his face when he had realized the ghost might be Kira. Not when I'd watched all the color drain from his skin as the pieces fell into place.
So I waited an hour then I went looking for him. He wasn't in his office. Wasn't in his quarters. Wasn't anywhere in the main pack house.
I was about to give up when I saw him through a window. Walking across the grounds toward the forest. Not the direction of the borders or the training grounds somewhere else.
I followed at a distance, careful to stay far enough back that he wouldn't notice me.
He walked for about fifteen minutes, deeper into the pack territory than I'd been before. To an area that felt forgotten. Abandoned.
Then I saw it. An old house. Smaller than the main pack house but still substantial. Overgrown with vines windows dark. The kind of place that had been empty for years.
Kaden climbed the steps to the front door and disappeared inside. I hesitated because this felt private. Like something I wasn't meant to witness.
But I couldn't leave him alone there. Not tonight.
I followed him inside.
The house was dusty furniture covered with sheets. Everything frozen in time like whoever had lived here had simply walked away one day and never come back.
I heard footsteps above me. On the second floor I climbed the stairs carefully, testing each step before putting my weight on it. The wood creaked but held.
There was a hallway with several doors. Only one was open. I approached quietly and looked inside.
Kaden stood in the middle of a bedroom. A girl's bedroom. The walls were painted pale blue. There was a bed with a faded quilt. Shelves lined with books and small treasures. A desk by the window.
And dust so much dust covering everything.
This was Kira's room. It had to be.
Kaden was standing perfectly still, just looking around. His expression was carved from stone but his hands were shaking.
"Kaden?" I said softly.
He didn't seem surprised to see me. "You followed me."
"I was worried about you."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine, you just found out your sister might still be alive after fifteen years of believing she was dead, that's not fine."
He looked back at the room. "This was her space. Our father had this house built for our mother when they mated.”
“After she died, he couldn't bear to live here anymore. Moved back to the main pack house. But Kira loved this place. She would come here to read to be alone to escape."
"Escape from what?"
"From me, sometimes from pack expectations. From being the Alpha's daughter."
He moved to the bookshelf, running his finger through the dust on the spines. "We were twins born minutes apart. Everyone expected us to be close to understand each other perfectly."
"But you weren't?"
"We were for a while when we were young, we were inseparable and did everything together. We knew each other's thoughts before they were spoken."
He pulled a book from the shelf. A fairy tale collection. "But then our mother died and our father fell apart and suddenly we had to grow up too fast."
"How old were you when she died?"
"Fourteen. Old enough to understand what we'd lost. Young enough to still need a parent desperately."
He set the book back. "Father stopped being a father after that. Stopped being an Alpha too. The elders ran the pack while he locked himself in his quarters and drank himself unconscious every night."
I moved closer, my heart aching for the teenager he'd been. "That must have been terrible."
"It was. Kira handled it by running away coming here hiding from everything and I handled it by trying to hold the pack together. By pretending I was strong enough to lead even though I had no idea what I was doing."
His voice was bitter. "We drifted apart. She resented that I'd stopped being her brother and started being a leader. I resented that she could escape while I was drowning."
"When did she disappear?"
"Six months after our mother died. I was fifteen and woke up one morning and she was just... gone. No note no goodbye nothing."
He turned to face me. "I searched everywhere. Organized hunts called in favors from other packs. Spent months looking for any trace of her but there was nothing. Like she'd vanished into thin air."
"And you thought she would run away when she left you."
"What else was I supposed to think? She'd been pulling away for months. Spending more and more time here alone talking about how she hated pack life. How she wished she could just be normal."
His hands clenched. "I thought she had finally done it, finally escaped and left me to deal with everything alone."
"But she didn't run away, maybe she was taken. Just like I was."
"Maybe or maybe the servants are seeing things, maybe it's just shadow magic creating illusions. Maybe I'm grasping at hope where there is none."
He looked at me, and I saw the vulnerability he usually kept hidden. "What if it's not really her? What if I let myself believe she's alive and I'm wrong?"
I moved to him and wrapped my arms around him. He stood rigid for a moment, then slowly, tentatively, his arms came around me.
"Then we will deal with that together," I said.
"But what if it is her? What if she's been trapped all this time, unable to come home, and now she's finally found a way to reach out? Don't you owe it to her to at least try to find out?"
He buried his face in my hair. "I buried her. In my mind, I buried her years ago and accepted she was gone. Moved on. I don't know if I can survive losing her again."
"You won't lose her, we will find the truth. Whatever it is."
We stood there for a long time. Kaden held onto me like I was the only solid thing in his world. Me holding him back, wishing I could take away even a fraction of his pain.
"I never let anyone mention her name," he said finally.
"After the first year of searching turned up nothing, I banned anyone from talking about her. From even acknowledging she'd existed. The elders thought it was grief. But it wasn't."
"What was it?"
"Anger betrayal. I was so furious at her for leaving me when I needed her most. For abandoning me to deal with our father's grief and the pack's problems and everything else completely alone.”
“So I erased her. Pretended she'd never existed. Because that hurt less than admitting she'd chosen to leave me."
"But she didn't choose, maybe she was taken. Kaden, she was nine years old, a child she couldn't have chosen to leave."
"I know that now but for fifteen years, I believed she'd abandoned me. And I hated her for it."
His voice broke. "I hated my own sister for something that wasn't her fault. And now I might get the chance to tell her how sorry I am and I don't know if I deserve that chance."
"You deserve it, you were a child too. A traumatized, grieving child trying to survive impossible circumstances. You did what you had to do to cope."
We stayed in Kira's frozen bedroom for another hour. Kaden told me more stories. About the pranks they'd pulled as children.
About how Kira had been the brave one, always pushing boundaries. About how he'd been the careful one, always trying to keep them both safe.
About how much he'd loved her. I still loved her.
Finally, as full darkness fell, we left the abandoned house and walked back to the main pack house together.
"You should eat something," I said when we arrived.
"I'm not hungry."
"Kaden-"
"Please. I just... I need to be alone for a while. Process everything."
I wanted to argue but I could see he'd reached his limit. "Okay. But if you need anything, I'm just down the hall."
He nodded and disappeared into his quarters.
I went to my own room but couldn't settle. Couldn't stop thinking about Kaden alone with his grief and guilt.
Around midnight, I gave up trying to sleep and went to his room. Knocked softly there was no answer.
I tried the door unlocked.
Inside, Kaden was lying on top of his bed, fully clothed, staring at the ceiling. He didn't acknowledge my presence.
"I couldn't sleep," I said. "Thought maybe you couldn't either."
"I can't every time I close my eyes, I see her. The way she looked the last time I saw her. Nine years old telling me she was going for a walk.”
“Asking if I wanted to come and me saying no because I had pack business to attend to."
His voice was hollow. "What if I'd gone with her? What if I'd said yes? Would they have taken both of us? Or would my presence have stopped them from taking her at all?"
"You can't think like that. You will drive yourself crazy with what-ifs."
"Too late. I've been driving myself crazy with what-ifs for fifteen years."
I climbed onto the bed beside him. Not touching, just lying there parallel. Close enough that he'd know he wasn't alone.
"Tell me about her," I said.
"About who she was before. Not the ghost. Not the missing sister. Just Kira."
And he did. For hours, he told me about his twin sister. About her laugh and her stubbornness and her dreams.
About how she'd wanted to be a healer like their mother. About how she'd been terrified of spiders but fearless about everything else.
About how much he missed her.
Somewhere around three in the morning, his voice trailed off his breathing evened out.
Finally, he'd fallen asleep.
I stayed there beside him, watching him rest. His face looked younger in sleep. More vulnerable. Like the fifteen-year-old boy who'd lost everyone he loved and had to keep going anyway.
Tomorrow we'd figure out how to find his sister. How to break whatever spell was trapping her and how to bring her home.
But tonight, I'd just stay here making sure he wasn't alone.
Making sure he knew someone cared.