Chapter 4 A Rift in the Silver
ELARA
Sleep is a distant country I cannot find the path to. I lie in my bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the house grieve. It is not a loud sound. It is the silence. A heavy, suffocating silence where the usual nighttime creaks and groans of an old house are too afraid to speak.
Downstairs, a floorboard whines. My father. He has been pacing for hours, a restless lion trapped in the cage of his own loyalty. I heard him earlier, his voice a low, ragged murmur on the phone with one of the pack elders, the words “unprecedented” and “insubordination” drifting up the stairs.
Liam is in his room across the hall. He is not pacing. He is a statue of fury. I can feel his anger through the walls, a simmering heat that promises to burn everything down.
My mother is the quietest of all. I think that is the worst. Her pain is a ghost that slips under my door and settles in the corner of my room, watching me.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed. The air is cold on my skin. I cannot stay in here anymore. The happy birthday banner mocks me from the wall. The unopened gifts on my desk feel like relics from another girl’s life, a life that ended on the lawn a few hours ago.
I slip out of my room, my feet silent on the wooden floor. I just need some water. Something to wash away the taste of ashes in my mouth. The stairs are dark, and I hold the railing, taking each step with a care I do not feel.
As I reach the bottom, I hear voices from the back patio. Low and tense. My father’s, and another. Alpha Marcus.
My blood turns to ice. I freeze in the shadows of the hallway, just out of sight of the open kitchen door that leads outside.
“You cannot ask this of me, Marcus,” my father is saying. His voice is tight, stretched thin like a wire about to snap.
“I am not asking,” the Alpha’s voice replies, calm and cold as a river stone. “I am reminding you of your position. Of your oath. The pack needs to see a united front. Now more than ever.”
“A united front? After what your son did to my daughter? In front of everyone? He tore her apart and you stood there and watched.”
“My son did what he had to do. The Games are coming. A wolf-less Luna is not a sign of strength. It’s an invitation for challenge. You know the other packs. You know how they would see it. They would see us as weak, Kaelen.”
My breath catches in my throat. I press my back against the wall, making myself smaller, as if I could disappear into the plaster.
“She is not a political statement,” my father snarls. “She is my child. And he is her mate. The Goddess chose them. Damon spat on her choice.”
There is a heavy sigh from Alpha Marcus. It is not a sound of sympathy. It is a sound of impatience.
“The boy was panicked. The bond manifested unexpectedly. He reacted based on his training. On his duty to be the strongest possible Alpha he can be.”
“His duty? His duty was to her. To his mate.”
“His duty is to this pack,” Marcus counters, his voice hardening. “As is yours. I need my Beta to stand with me. We need to present this as a difficult, but necessary, decision for the security of Silver Creek. Damon will choose a strong mate, we will win the Games, and this will all be forgotten.”
Forgotten. The word is a slap. As if I am a minor inconvenience to be swept under the rug.
“I cannot do that,” my father says, his voice raw. “I cannot look my daughter in the eye and tell her that her public humiliation was ‘necessary’. I cannot look my son in the eye and tell him to respect an Alpha who would do this. Who would allow this.”
“Be very careful what you say next, Kaelen.” The Alpha’s tone drops, losing all pretense of friendship. It becomes the voice of command. “I am your Alpha. You have served this pack, and me, loyally for twenty years. Do not let a daughter’s misfortune undo all of it.”
Misfortune. He makes me sound like a failed crop. A bad investment.
“Is that what she is to you? A misfortune?” My father’s voice trembles with a rage he is barely holding in check. “She grew up in your house. She called you uncle. And you speak of her like she is a problem to be managed.”
“She is a problem,” Alpha Marcus says, his voice devoid of all emotion. “Her presence now creates a rift. A divide. Damon has made his choice. For you to stand against it is to stand against your future Alpha. It is a challenge. It is creating a schism in the leadership of this pack. Is that what you want? To tear this pack in two over your wolf-less girl?”
I clap a hand over my mouth to stifle a sob. The words hit me harder than Damon’s rejection. A rift. A schism. Tearing the pack apart. Wolf-less girl.
It is true. I can see it. Liam’s fury. My father’s defiance. The whispers I heard from the other pack members. I am the fault line. The crack in the foundation of everything my family has built.
My father’s loyalty to the Alpha, his best friend, is being tested. His position as Beta is threatened. My brother is talking about treason. All because of me.
There is a long, terrible silence from the patio. I can picture them out there. Two powerful men, friends since childhood, now standing on opposite sides of a canyon I created.
“I need to know where your loyalty lies, Kaelen,” the Alpha says finally. “With your Alpha, or with your daughter’s wounded pride.”
I do not wait to hear my father’s answer. I cannot bear it. I cannot force him to choose. I turn and flee back up the stairs, my heart a wild, panicked bird in my chest. I move on autopilot, a ghost slipping back into the room where my life used to be.
I close my door, my back pressed against it. My body is shaking. I slide down to the floor, my arms wrapping around my knees. I pull them tight to my chest, trying to hold myself together.
He is right. Alpha Marcus is right. My pain is a luxury the pack cannot afford. My presence here, it is a poison. It is forcing my father to choose between his daughter and his duty. It is turning my brother into an enemy of his Alpha. It is giving other packs a reason to see Silver Creek as weak and divided.
Damon called me a liability. I thought he meant in the Games. But it is so much more than that. I am a liability to my family’s safety. To their standing. To the unity of my home.
I look around my room. At the pictures on my nightstand. Me and Liam as pups, covered in mud. Me and my parents at the last spring festival. A picture of me and Damon, taken just last summer, his arm slung casually around my shoulders, both of us grinning at the camera without a care in the world.
A bitter laugh escapes me. What a fool I was. I lived in a child’s dream, and tonight it was burned to the ground.
I can stay. I can stay and watch my family tear itself apart fighting for me. I can watch my father lose his friendship, his position, everything he has worked for his entire life. I can watch Liam’s rage push him into a confrontation he cannot win.
Or I can leave.
The thought is a shock of cold water. Leave. Leave Silver Creek. Leave everything I have ever known. My home. My family.
If I am gone, the problem is gone. My father will not have to choose. The rift will close. Liam will have no one to defend. The pack can present their ‘united front’. They can focus on the Games. They can forget the wolf-less girl.
They can forget me.
The pain of it is sharp, a physical ache deep in my bones. But it is a clean pain. A surgical pain. Better to cut out the disease than let it fester and kill the whole body.
My mother’s words come back to me. You are the strongest person I know. Is this strength? To run away? No. It is not running away. It is taking the only action I have left. It is protecting them.
Damon’s rejection took my future. Alpha Marcus’s words just took my past. There is nothing left for me here but a legacy of strife for my family.
My shaking stops. A cold, hard certainty settles in its place. I get up from the floor, my movements steady now. I walk to my desk and pick up the picture of me and Damon. I stare at his smiling face, the easy charm, the lie in his eyes.
He did what he thought was necessary for the pack. Now, I will do the same.
I place the picture face down on the desk. I will not cause a rift. I will not be the reason my family falls. I will not be a liability.
I will disappear.