Chapter 53

Chapter 53
Nicholas's POV

I pulled her to her feet but didn't let go of her hand, guiding her down the slope one step at a time. I told myself it was only because the path was rough and her knee was still bleeding.

Except when the ground finally leveled out, my fingers still hadn't released hers.

Abigail walked beside me with her head slightly bowed, picking her way carefully over the loose stones. Exhaustion was etched into every detail of her body, yet her jaw remained tight and her spine stayed straight.

She hadn't complained once the entire time.

I watched her from the corner of my eye, and something in my chest turned over slowly—like a lock clicking shut in some place I couldn't see.

I'd been interested in her from the start. That much I could admit.

The night of the Moon Rise gathering, when she'd engineered her own fall into that lotus pond, I'd known this girl was different.

But "interest" was a word I used for tactical advantages and intelligence anomalies. It couldn't explain why I kept replaying the image of her gritting her teeth through every round of the boulder drill. It couldn't explain why, when she'd collapsed against me at the summit, all I'd wanted was to hold her until she stopped shaking. And it certainly couldn't explain why, in those rare unguarded moments when she looked up at me, that single instant lingered in my mind for so long afterward.

I liked her.

The realization hadn't landed like a punch. It was more like glacial meltwater beneath a rift—seeping silently into cracks, pooling in places I'd never thought to check. By the time I finally noticed, it had already become a current too strong to ignore.

As if answering that admission, a low rumble stirred deep at the base of my skull.

My wolf Shadow, shifting in the dark space he occupied behind my conscious mind.

Took you long enough.

I didn't respond.

He wasn't usually one for conversation. But lately, he'd been restless—a restlessness that had nothing to do with battle.

It had started about a month ago, around the time the detox had been working on her system for a while.

At first it was barely perceptible. Just a thread of scent, impossibly faint, buried beneath something stale and acrid—like perfume smeared over rot. I'd dismissed it the first time, and the second.

Shadow hadn't.

With each training session after that, as more of the toxin was purged from her body, as sweat opened her pores and exertion drove her blood faster through her veins, the buried scent grew a fraction clearer.

Sweet. Clean. Like frost on winter sage, underlaid with a warmth I couldn't name.

And each time, Shadow pressed closer to the surface, straining against the boundary we barely maintained between us.

Closer. His growl came now, low and insistent. Need to be closer.

No. I commanded him silently.

She's ours, Shadow said.

You know it. I know it. Stop pretending.

Five years. Countless empty rooms and strangers' faces, none of which had stirred so much as a flicker in me or in my wolf.

I'd believed I'd made peace with the absence of a fated mate. Told myself that some wolves simply weren't paired, that the Moon Goddess owed nothing to anyone.

Then this girl had walked into my life.

She carried a scent like something half-remembered from a dream. And from that moment on, my wolf refused to be still.

Patience, I told him. Not yet.

A discontented snarl echoed through our bond, but he subsided at last.

He understood, even if he didn't like it.

Abigail's wolf was still sleeping, still locked away behind the damage the poison had done. Until she fully awakened, the bond would remain one-sided. She couldn't feel the pull. She couldn't scent me.

Until that day truly came, I had no right to claim something she couldn't yet confirm for herself.

And I had no intention of adding an unverifiable burden to shoulders that already carried too much.

I glanced at her again.

She was squinting against the sunlight, one hand raised to shield her eyes. The pendant Harper had given her rested against her collarbone, catching a flash of cold silver light.

Completely unaware.

When she wakes, my wolf said, his voice much quieter now. When she wakes, she'll know.

Then we wait.

I tightened my grip on her hand—just slightly—and said nothing, letting the silence stretch between us.

Every time I looked at Abigail, I could see something in the depths of her eyes.

It wasn't the simple pain of a girl mistreated by a vicious mother. It ran deeper, heavier—damage accumulated over years, old scars that had healed crooked.

I recognized that look. It belonged to someone who had confirmed, again and again, that the people who were supposed to protect them never would.

I hadn't asked her directly. Asking wasn't how I operated.

I'd put Winter Pack's intelligence network on it instead. The picture they assembled confirmed what I'd already suspected.

Abigail held no real standing within Crimson Fang Pack. Evelyn's maternal affection was a performance staged for outside audiences, dropped the moment the doors closed. Olivia had been steadily absorbing every resource and opportunity that should have been Abigail's.

None of that was surprising.

What caught my attention was the money trail.

Crimson Fang was a mid-tier pack at best—decent fighters, passable territory, nothing remarkable. Yet over the past seventeen years, it had received resource allocations and political favor far beyond what its actual Council standing warranted.

I'd initially assumed this was repayment for some early military service of Matthew's. But when I pulled the timeline apart and cross-referenced it with the year Abigail had appeared in Crimson Fang Pack, the pattern became impossible to dismiss.

The Alpha King's generosity wasn't directed at Matthew.

It was directed at the girl Matthew was raising.

At the commendation ceremony after Abigail saved Harper, I'd watched the Alpha King's expression carefully.

The warmth in his eyes was not the standard graciousness of a king acknowledging a brave young woman from a middling pack.

There was something far more personal beneath it.

Restrained. Cautious. Calibrated precisely enough that no watchful eye would read anything into it.

Abigail was connected to the Alpha King by blood.

I was nearly certain.

But "nearly" wasn't enough. I wouldn't hand a half-formed theory to someone already bearing more weight than she should. She needed to train, to grow stronger, to awaken.

The truth about her bloodline could wait until I had proof.

I looked toward the distant horizon. Dawn was unfurling in bands of copper and rose across the sky.

My wolf rumbled in agreement.

For once, instinct and strategy aligned.

Whatever she needed—the Hunt, the fight against Evelyn, the answers she was chasing—I would make sure she had it.

All of it.