Chapter 10 010

Chapter 10 010


Zelyne's POV

A week in and I'd stopped counting days.

Not because it got easier. Just because counting made it worse. Like standing at the bottom of a hill and looking up at how far you still had to climb. Better to stop looking and just walk.

I had a routine now. Small stuff. Up before Petra came, dressed before Kael knocked. Something about not being caught still in bed felt important — like the difference between a person things were happening to and a person actually living her life. Small difference. Still mattered.

The garden had become mine without anyone saying so. I just kept going back and at some point the pack stopped cutting through it the way they used to. People do that — they sense when something belongs to someone and they leave it alone. I didn't ask what they'd decided about me. I was just glad to have somewhere I could breathe.

My wolf had flickered twice more since the first time.

Both times in the garden. Both times so quick I'd have talked myself out of believing it except I knew my own chest too well. Seventeen years of checking the same silence — I knew when something was different. Something was shifting in there. Slowly. Like the very first sign of a thaw before anything actually melts.

I kept it to myself.

\---

Kael and I had stopped pretending the morning visits were about food.

He still brought something sometimes, habit mostly, but mostly he just came and we talked. The pack, his childhood here, books — he read more than I expected and then it made sense because there was something in him that needed somewhere to go that wasn't all of this. I understood that.

He told me what it was like growing up behind Dominic. Not bitter about it, just matter of fact, the way you describe the weather — something that was always there, that you didn't cause, that you just grew up inside of. Dominic the firstborn, the future Alpha, the serious one. Kael the other one. He said it gave him freedom and loneliness in equal measure and he'd made his peace with both a long time ago.

"Did you resent him," I asked.

He thought about it. Actually thought about it rather than just answering. "The role? No. Him?" A pause. "Sometimes. When we were kids. Not now."

"Why not now."

"Because I get it now. What it did to him. What it costs." He looked at me. "He's not what people think. What you probably think."

"What do I think."

"Cold. The stories. The burning."

"The burning," I said.

"One time. One situation. The part that matters never made it into the version that spread." Not a defense — a correction, there's a difference. "He's not gentle, I won't pretend that. But he's not that story either."

I sat with it.

"Why are you telling me this," I said.

"Because you're going to be here a long time," he said. "And it helps to see things as they actually are instead of what got passed around."

There was something else there, just under the surface of it. Neither of us said so. The moment passed and we let it go.

\---

Aliya sent for me that afternoon.

Petra handed me the message and her face said everything she didn't. I folded it, pocketed it, and told myself I was fine the whole walk over.

Aliya's rooms were at the opposite end of the main house. Furthest point from ours — I noted that. Everything inside arranged too deliberately, like a room in a painting rather than a room someone lived in. Colors rich but cold. Flowers so perfect they looked fake.

She was at the table by the window when I came in. She looked up and smiled and it was the same smile from the wedding. All surface.

"Zelyne." The way she said my name — like she'd always had it, like she'd been keeping it somewhere safe for years. "Sit."

I sat.

She poured tea without asking. Slid the cup across. I didn't touch it.

She noticed. Something shifted behind her eyes. Not offense. Something closer to amusement.

"How are you finding it here."

"Fine."

"The pack treating you well."

"Yes."

She tilted her head slightly. "You're careful."

"I was raised to be."

"Mm." She looked at me over her cup. "Your mother raised you."

Not a question. I kept my face where it was.

"Mostly," I said.

"She's smart, your mother. Careful." She set the cup down. "She worries about you."

"Most mothers do."

"Yes." Her eyes on mine, steady, that feeling again like something pressing on a bruise — deliberate, checking. "She worries about you being here specifically though. Doesn't she."

My hands were flat on my thighs under the table.

"She wants me happy," I said. "Same as any mother."

"Of course." She looked down at her hands. Too perfect, like everything else in the room. "I chose you for Dominic because I believe you're good for him. Good for this pack." She looked back up. "I hope it starts to feel like home."

"I'm working on it."

"Good." She stood — dismissal. "My door is always open. Whatever you need."

I stood. "Thank you."

"One thing." Light tone. The kind people use when the thing isn't light at all. "Kael."

I waited.

"He warms to people fast. It's just his nature." Her eyes hadn't moved from mine. "Worth being aware of. For your sake as much as his."

The room was very still.

"I'll keep that in mind," I said.

She smiled. Sat back down. Picked up her cup like I was already gone.

I walked out. Kept my pace steady down the corridor, around the corner, and then I stopped and put my back flat against the wall and let out the breath I'd been holding since I walked in.

My wolf flickered.

Not the soft barely-there feeling from the garden. Something sharper. Something with an edge to it, like a sound you hear before you know what made it.

I pressed my hand to my chest.

"Yeah," I said quietly. "Me too."