Chapter 6 THIRTEEN
They brought Seth home on a makeshift stretcher lashed together from pine branches.
Four pack members carried him slow and careful through the trees, like rushing would be some kind of disrespect to the kid who’d just died in them. Ronan walked right beside them the whole way, face locked down tight, and nobody said a single word. The forest kept its cold, heavy silence around us, like it knew exactly what this was and had seen it too many damn times before.
I walked a little behind them.
Far enough not to intrude, close enough that turning around and bailing felt wrong as hell.
When the packhouse finally came into view through the pines, I watched the rest of the pack trickle out one by one as the word spread. Doors creaking open, wolves stepping into the yard with faces that said they’d been bracing for this exact moment and it had finally shown up. No big shock. Just that deep, settled grief...the kind you get when you’ve done this dance too many times and already know how heavy the next few days are gonna feel.
Nara came out last.
She took one look at Seth’s peaceful, empty face and both hands flew up to cover her mouth. She stood there frozen for a long second, then dropped them, straightened her shoulders, and started giving quiet, steady instructions about where to take him. Her voice didn’t shake once.
Watching her do that hit me right in the gut. That’s what years of this shit looks like. Learning to keep the breaking apart locked inside so you can still function for everyone else. Learning to save the ugly crying for later, when no one’s watching and no one needs you to hold it together.
I knew that feeling way too well.
I’d been doing versions of it since I was eleven years old.
The pack gathered in the main hall an hour later.
I hovered in the doorway, feeling like a total outsider who had zero right to be there. I didn’t know these people. I sure as hell hadn’t earned a place in their grief. But Pira brushed past me, grabbed my arm without a word, and pulled me inside like it was decided. So that was that.
Thirteen wolves in a hall built for way more.
The empty space felt loud as hell.
Ronan stood at the front.
He didn’t give some big speech or put on a show. He just stood there and looked at every single one of them, giving each face its own quiet moment, then said, “Seth. Nineteen years old. Three years with Shadowpine. He was quiet. He was loyal as hell. Showed up every single day, no matter what.” A pause, heavy. “And that mattered. It mattered to me.”
That was it.
No fancy words. No ceremony. Just plain truth from a man who meant every syllable.
Somehow the simplicity of it hit harder than anything flowery ever could.
Around me, wolves were crying soft and quiet...not the loud, dramatic kind, but the controlled kind that came from people who had learned how to feel everything while still keeping their feet under them. Kade’s jaw was clenched so tight I could see the muscle jumping from across the room. Garrett...the older guy from the storage room conversation. stood rigid, eyes straight ahead, not blinking once.
Nara was the only one who let it all show. She cried openly, no apology, no wiping the tears away, and somehow that felt like the most dignified thing in the whole damn room.
I stood among them and felt the weight of it settle heavy on my chest...the specific ache of a pack losing one of its own. I’d felt echoes of this in Bloodmoon when someone died on a hunt or patrol. But this was different. This wasn’t bad luck or violence. This was the land itself slowly eating its people alive, and everybody knew it was gonna keep happening until there was nothing left.
Thirteen now.
My wolf pressed hard against my ribs.
I pressed back.
Not yet, I told her. I’m not deciding anything yet.
She didn’t fight me.
But she didn’t back down either.
The rest of the morning passed in that careful, muted way mornings after loss always do...people moving around each other like they were made of glass, voices low, everyone handling each other with that gentle carefulness that settles over a group when someone’s been taken out of it.
I stayed out of the way.
Found a quiet window seat in the east corridor and sat there staring out at the pine forest, trying to make sense of things I still didn’t have any conclusions for yet. My wolf kept doing that slow, deliberate turning toward something I wasn’t ready to name out loud.
Ronan found me there around midday.
He stepped into the corridor and just stood there for a second, looking at me curled up in the window seat. No big production. Just checking on me the way he’d been doing since the border...quiet, no agenda, like making sure someone was still standing was the most natural thing in the world.
“You ate,” he said finally.
“Pira basically forced me.”
“Good.” He leaned against the opposite wall, arms crossed, and looked out the window over my shoulder at the trees. “I want to apologize for this morning.”
I looked at him.
“Not for telling you the truth,” he said. “You deserved that and I should’ve given it to you sooner. I’m sorry for the way it came out. For you finding out like that and feeling what you felt.” His green eyes held mine, steady and open. “That’s on me.”
I stared at him for a long moment.
The hollow in my chest did something weird—not the sharp painful pulse from before, but something different. The strange feeling of someone actually giving you a real apology when you weren’t expecting one and didn’t quite know what to do with it.
“Lucifer never apologized,” I said quietly. “Not once. Not for any of it.”
Ronan stayed silent, letting me talk.
“He’d twist it, redirect it, make it about how I was reacting instead.” I looked out the window. “But the actual words...‘I’m sorry, I was wrong’...never came. I forgot that was something people could just… say.”
“It’s something people should say when they mean it.”
I met his eyes again. “Do you mean it?”
“Yes.”
I searched his face. Those green eyes were completely unguarded. No performance. No careful editing of what I was allowed to see. Just a man owning that he’d hurt someone and looking her in the face while he did it.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay?”
“I believe you.” I pulled my knees up tighter to my chest. “Doesn’t fix the whole ‘angles and usefulness’ thing. That’s still sitting there. But I believe you.”
“I know.”
“And I’m still not deciding anything today.”
“I know that too.” He pushed off the wall. “But I want to tell you something. Not to change your mind. Just because you should have the full picture.”
I waited.
“When I found you at the border,” he said, voice low, “before I understood what the energy meant, before any of the Moon Blessed shit clicked...I picked you up because you were a hurt person lying in the cold. That part had nothing to do with anything else.” He looked at me straight. “I want you to know that.”
The corridor went very quiet.
My wolf turned all the way toward him.
I felt it so clearly it almost had sound—this deeper, more certain warmth. Like something that had been searching had finally found what it was looking for and was done pretending otherwise.
I wasn’t ready for it.
I was twenty-one, chest still hollow, barely forty-eight hours out of the worst night of my life. I was nowhere near ready.
“I know,” I said quietly.
Because I did. I’d known since the boots left without ceremony. Since the simple “okay” with no strings attached. Since a stranger stood guard outside my door all night.
I knew.
I just needed time to catch up to knowing it.
Ronan nodded once. “Nara wants to check your feet this afternoon.”
“I know.”
“And Garrett’s doing a perimeter check at the south ridge. I’m heading out at three.” He paused at the corridor entrance. “You can come if you want. Get a real look at the territory.”
“I’ll think about it.”
He glanced back once.
That thing in his face was there again—raw, unhidden, looking straight at me.
Then he was gone.
---
I went to Nara first.
She unwrapped my feet with quick, efficient hands, checked the cuts, rewrapped them tight, and muttered, “Holding up well considering,” which from Nara was basically a standing ovation.
I sat on the edge of the bed while she worked and watched the top of her grey-streaked head. “How do you do it?” I asked.
She didn’t look up. “Do what?”
“This. Every single time.” I gestured vaguely toward the territory outside the window. “Watching it happen and not being able to stop it.”
Her hands slowed for half a second, then kept moving. “You cry when you’re alone,” she said simply. “You keep your hands busy. You show up the next day anyway.” She finally looked up, eyes sharp but kind. “There’s no big secret. You just keep going because stopping doesn’t help a damn thing.”
I swallowed hard.
“Did you know Seth well?” I asked.
“Since he was sixteen.” She tied off the last bandage. “Used to sneak extra food from the kitchen after late patrols. Thought I didn’t notice.” A small, private smile flickered across her face and disappeared. “I always left extra for him.”
I pressed my lips together tight.
She stood, gathered her supplies, and paused at the door.
“Ronan’s been trying to fix this since he was seventeen,” she said without turning around. “He’s watched people he loves go hollow and die, and he still gets up every single morning.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Whatever you’re thinking about...whether to stay or go, whether to trust or not...just factor that in. That’s all I’m saying.”
She left.
I sat there in the small stone room with my freshly wrapped feet and the grey light pouring through the window, thinking about a seventeen-year-old boy finding his fifteen-year-old sister cold in her bed one morning.
Thinking about five years of being Alpha over a pack that was slowly disappearing.
Thinking about thirteen wolves standing in a hall built for way more.
My wolf pressed against my ribs again.
Steadier this time.
More certain.
---
I went to the south ridge at three.
Didn’t announce it or make it a thing. Just showed up at the back door as Ronan was pulling on his jacket and fell into step beside him. He didn’t ask questions. Just gave me a small nod and we walked.
Garrett and two others were already up there when we arrived, doing the perimeter check—marking positions, the quiet, practical work of a pack trying to stay one step ahead of its own slow death.
The ridge looked south over the deepest, oldest part of Shadowpine territory. Dark. Dense. Ancient.
I stood beside Ronan at the edge and looked out.
“How far does it go?” I asked.
“South border’s about four miles from here. East to the river. West past that second ridge.” He pointed. “North opens up past the packhouse.”
Four miles of thick, unforgiving forest.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, surprised I actually meant it.
Ronan looked out over his territory. Something private and permanent crossed his face. “Yeah,” he said simply. “It is.”
We stood in the biting cold, looking at it, and I tried to imagine what it would feel like to watch something you loved this much slowly go quiet around you. Pack member by pack member. Year by year. The forest staying beautiful and indifferent while everything inside it hollowed out.
Garrett came over with a map and they talked low about patrol rotations. I stepped away to give them space and walked a little further down the ridge line alone.
The cold up here was clean. Sharp. The kind that cut through all the noise and left you with just the basics.
I stood in it, let it work on me, closed my eyes, and breathed it in deep.
My wolf was very still.
Not the wounded stillness from two nights ago. Not the careful restraint from this morning.
Just… settled.
The way she settled when she’d stopped searching because she’d already found it.
I opened my eyes.
“I’m not leaving tomorrow,” I said.
Ronan was looking at me from about ten feet away. Garrett had moved down the ridge. Just the two of us up here with the cold wind and the ancient forest spread out below us like it was waiting for something.
He didn’t speak. Just waited.
“I’m not committing to anything,” I added quickly. “I’m not deciding shit. I just…” I searched for the honest words. “I’m not ready to walk into another unknown right now. And this one...” I looked at the forest, “...doesn’t feel unknown anymore.”
Ronan was quiet for a long beat.
“Okay,” he said.
I looked at him. “You keep saying that.”
“It keeps being the right thing to say.”
Something warm and specific moved in my chest. Not the hollow. Something shaped exactly like the man standing ten feet away in the cold, looking at me like I was real.
I looked back at the forest.
My wolf let out this low, satisfied sigh inside me.
And then...somewhere in the deep southern pines below us, so faint I almost missed it...
A sound.
Not wind. Not an animal.
Deliberate.
I went completely still. “Ronan.”
“I heard it.” He was already moving, his hand finding my arm, warm and sure. “Stay close.”
The sound came again.
Closer this time.
And underneath it...the sharp, metallic click of a weapon being readied.
