Chapter 11: 011

Zelyne's POV

I didn't sleep well.

Aliya's voice kept finding me every time I got close to it — that light tone she'd used, the way she'd dropped Kael's name at the end like an afterthought that wasn't an afterthought at all. He's fond of people quickly. Like she was doing me a favor. Like it was concern.

It wasn't concern.

I didn't know exactly what it was yet but I knew what concern felt like and that wasn't it.

Dominic came in late. I was still awake but I kept my eyes closed and my breathing even and he moved around the room quietly in the dark — boots off, belt, the chair pulling slightly against the floor — and then nothing. Just his breathing and mine and the night outside the window.

I lay there thinking about what Kael had said. He's not what people think he is. And then Aliya with her perfect hands and her surface smile telling me to be aware. Two people telling me opposite things about the same person and both of them with reasons for what they were telling me that had nothing to do with me.

I didn't know who to believe.

I wasn't sure I believed either of them fully.

I fell asleep somewhere near dawn and slept badly and woke up feeling like I hadn't slept at all.

.....

Dominic was gone.

I sat up and looked at the empty chair and then at the window — gray light, early, the pack not fully awake yet — and made a decision I'd been circling for a few days.

I was going to find out about the burning.

Not from Kael, who had reasons to soften it. Not from anyone in the pack who'd either be loyal or afraid. I wanted the actual version, whatever that was, and there was only one place I could think of to find it.

Sera.

The woman from the garden. She'd been here long enough and she talked like someone who didn't bother with the performance of things. That kind of person either knows everything or knows nothing and I had a feeling about which one she was.

.....

I found her where I'd found her before, at the side of the main building with her basket, this time pulling dead leaves off something climbing the wall.

She heard me coming and didn't turn around. "You want to ask me something."

"How do you know."

"Because you walked over here with a purpose and you don't know me well enough for it to be social." She pulled another dead leaf. "Ask."

"The burning," I said. "Dominic. What actually happened."

She was quiet for a moment. Still working.

"Why do you want to know."

"Because everyone's given me a version and I don't want a version. I want what it was."

She turned around then. Looked at me properly, the way she had the first day — assessing, not unkind.

"Sit," she said, nodding at the low wall beside her.

I sat.

She set the basket down and stood there for a moment like she was deciding how far back to start.

"Three years ago," she said. "There was a group. Four wolves, from a pack to the north. They came onto our lands, which was already a violation, and they — " she stopped. "There was a girl. One of ours. Sixteen. They hurt her badly. Left her at the edge of the forest."

I was very still.

"Dominic found her," Sera said. "He was on patrol. Alone." She looked at the wall. "By the time the others caught up to him he'd already tracked all four of them down."

"And burned them."

"Yes."

I sat with that.

"The girl," I said. "Did she —"

"She lived." Sera picked the basket back up. "She's still here actually. Married now, two children." She looked at me. "That's the story. The whole thing, not the piece of it that travelled."

I looked at the ground. At the cracked stone under my boots.

"Why didn't that part travel," I said.

"Because she asked him not to tell it. Didn't want to be the reason. Didn't want people looking at her differently." Sera shrugged. "He kept it."

I didn't say anything for a while.

All that time the story had been one thing in my head — proof of what he was, what I was walking into — and now it was sitting in front of me rearranged, the same facts in a different order making something I didn't know how to file away quickly.

"He let people think the worst of him," I said.

"He didn't let or not let. He just didn't correct it." She pulled another dead leaf. "Dominic doesn't explain himself. Never has. Even when it would help him."

I thought about the night he came in and told me this was political and laid it out flat with no softening. The way he'd said don't make this complicated like he was already tired of things being complicated and couldn't afford for this to be another one.

I thought about the garden. The far end of the bench. The quiet that he'd come there for the same reason I had.

"Why are you telling me this," I said. Same question I'd asked Kael.

Sera looked at me. "Because you asked and you deserved a straight answer." She picked up her basket. "Also because you're going to be here a long time and it's easier if you see things clearly from the start rather than spending a year working through other people's edits of it."

She walked off.

I sat on the wall alone for a while after she'd gone.

The burning. Sixteen years old, one of his own, left at the edge of the forest. Him finding her and then finding them. Four of them. Alone.

I wasn't going to call it mercy. I didn't know what to call it.

But it wasn't what I'd thought it was.

....

Kael found me at lunch.

He came into the small dining room off the kitchen where Petra had set me up and he stopped in the doorway when he saw my face and said "what happened."

"Nothing," I said.

"Zelyne."

"I'm fine." I looked at him. "Sit down."

He sat. Watched me for a moment. "You went to find out about it didn't you."

I looked up.

"The burning," he said. "I saw you talking to Sera this morning."

"You were watching."

"I was passing." He held my gaze. "Did she tell you."

"Yes."

He nodded. Looked at the table. Something moved across his face — relief maybe, that it was out, that he didn't have to carry the edge of it anymore the way he'd been doing since the day he first mentioned it.

"Why didn't you just tell me the whole thing yourself," I said.

"Because it wasn't mine to tell. It's hers." He paused. "And his."

I looked at him for a long moment.

He was looking back and there it was again — that thing between us that neither of us was naming, that had been sitting in the corner of every morning visit getting slightly bigger, that Aliya had seen clearly enough to mention it as a warning.

I looked away first.

I always looked away first.

"I had a meeting with your mother yesterday," I said.

Something changed in his face. Small but immediate. "What did she say."

"That you get fond of people quickly." I kept my voice even. "That I should be aware."

He was quiet for a beat. Jaw slightly tight.

"She said that."

"Yes."

He looked at the table. Then back at me. "And what do you think."

I thought about the bread on the first day. Every morning after. The book he'd brought. The way he sat with me without making me feel like I owed him anything for it.

"I think," I said carefully, "that you've been kind to me and I don't have much of that here and it matters to me." I held his gaze. "And I think that's as far as it goes."

He held it back.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "Okay."

It didn't feel like enough and we both knew it. But it was what was true and what was safe and sometimes those two things are the only options you get.

We ate lunch.

Neither of us said much.

Outside the window the pack moved through its grey afternoon and somewhere in the main house Dominic was doing whatever Dominic did during the day and Aliya was sitting in her perfect cold room and my wolf was shifting slowly under the surface of me like something learning how to move again after a long time still.

And I sat across from Kael and ate my lunch and kept my eyes on my plate and told myself that line I'd drawn was solid.

Told myself that a few more times for good measure.

Didn't fully believe it.