Chapter 12 012

Chapter 12 012


Zelyne's POV

Darius got worse on a Tuesday.

No announcement. Nobody said anything out loud. You just felt it — the way the pack slowed down, voices dropped, people stopped cutting through the east corridor like they used to. Bad news travels like that in a house. Doesn't need words.

Petra told me when she brought breakfast. Just said he's bad, set the tray down and left. I sat there with my tea and thought about a man I'd barely spoken to dying down the hall.

Dominic went into the east wing and didn't come back out.

Whole day. No meals, no garden, nothing. Just gone behind that door and the pack moving quietly around the fact of it like water around a rock.

I didn't go after him. It wasn't my place and I knew that and knowing it sat uncomfortably but I left it alone.

.......

Kael came in the morning.

No food. Just sat down and looked out the window with that face people get when something has been going wrong for long enough that the waiting has tired them out more than the thing itself.

"How bad," I said.

"Bad." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Hanging on but — bad."

I didn't try to fill it with anything. Nothing I could say would help so I didn't bother trying.

We sat there. The pack outside moving slow and quiet. A bird going off somewhere that felt wrong for the day.

"Dominic hasn't slept," Kael said. Not really to me. Just out loud because it needed to go somewhere.

"Since when."

"Two days. Maybe longer. Won't leave the room, won't eat." He looked at his hands. "That's what he does when something's out of his hands. He just goes still and waits."

I thought about the garden. Far end of the bench. The way he could sit and say absolutely nothing and somehow it wasn't empty.

"He'll get through it," I said.

Kael looked at me. Didn't answer straight away. "Yeah," he said eventually. Didn't fully believe it but said it anyway.
......

After he left I went to the garden.

Sat down, hand on my chest, same as always.

She flickered.

Stronger than before. Still not something I could hold — more like catching the tail end of something before it slips away. But the shape of it was there. Real enough that I couldn't talk myself out of it this time.

I thought about the binding seal. About Sera's face when she told me. About whoever did it standing over me as a child and making a deliberate choice.

My wolf moved again and this time it didn't feel like waking up.

It felt like anger.

Good, I thought. That's fine. That's something I can use.

\---

I was in the corridor that evening when Dominic came out of the east wing.

He turned the corner and nearly walked into me and we both stopped and just stood there.

He looked rough. Not broken — he wouldn't do that where anyone could see — but worn. Like two days of sitting with something he couldn't fix had taken a layer off him and whatever was underneath was closer to the surface than he was used to.

"How is he," I said.

"Sleeping." Voice came out low and a bit scraped. "For now."

I nodded.

He looked at me. Properly, the way he almost never did, like he was too tired to hold the usual distance in place.

"You haven't eaten," I said. "Kael said."

"Kael needs something better to do with his time."

"He's worried about you."

He looked away down the corridor. "I'm fine."

He wasn't. We both knew that. Neither of us said so.

"Petra left a plate in the kitchen," I said.

He didn't answer.

I moved past him toward the room.

"Zelyne."

I stopped.

He still hadn't turned around. Looking down the corridor at nothing. "Thank you," he said. Quiet. Like the words were something he didn't take out often.

I didn't say anything back. Just went to the room and sat on the bed in the dark.

Hand on my chest.

My wolf was there.

Not flickering — just there. Steady. Settled in a way she hadn't been before, like something had shifted and she'd settled into the new shape of it without asking my permission.

I didn't try to understand it.