Chapter 141
ELENA
The silence Derek left behind was louder than anything he said all night.
Aiden stirred the melted remains of his ice cream with the tip of his spoon, not looking up. The happy chatter from nearby tables felt like it belonged to a different world–one where parents didn’t rush off to the side of someone else at the drop of a phone call. One where families stayed put, even when things got hard.
“He didn’t even say goodbye,” Aiden muttered, eyes fixed on the swirl of vanilla and chocolate as it blurred into beige.
I swallowed, trying not to let the bitterness rise. “I think it was an emergency, bud. Sometimes things happen.”
“He still could’ve said goodbye.”
I didn’t disagree. I just didn’t know how to explain the storm in my chest well enough to make it make sense to a six–year–old. Maybe it didn’t make sense. Maybe it just hurt.
Nonna Lucia approached from the back of the restaurant with a fresh basket of breadsticks and a knowing look in her soft eyes. She placed them gently on the table, then sat down beside Aiden, her hand brushing through his hair.
“I watched that boy grow up,” she said, not even needing to clarify who she meant. “Derek was smaller than you at your age, did you know that?”
Aiden sniffled. “Really?”
“Mmhm.” She smiled gently. “Quiet. Thoughtful. Always trying to be older than he was. His father was… not easy. Strict. Sharp–edged. There were rules for everything, and Derek followed them like his life depended on it.”
“It kind of did,” I murmured before I could stop myself.
Nonna gave me a look. Not judging–just seeing more than wanted her to.
“After his father died, he came here once. Didn’t speak much. Just stared out the window the whole meal. Ordered the exact same thing his father always did, but didn’t touch a bite.”
I pictured it–Derek, alone in a booth, drowning in silence and responsibility.
“He looked lost,” she said. “Like someone had handed him the whole world and told him not to drop it.”
I reached for Aiden’s hand across the table. He squeezed back.
The truth was, I hadn’t thought about that Derek in a long time. The man who brought me back to Silverclaw. The man who had just lost his father. Who gave me a place to sleep that night and stood in the hallway like a sentinel, even though his pack wanted me gone.
***
It had been cold the night we arrived at Silverclaw. Not winter cold–just the kind that settles under your skin and doesn’t let go. Derek hadn’t said much during the drive, just kept one hand tight on the steering wheel and one eye on me, as though afraid I’d vanish.
I was still dazed, still recovering from everything that came before–my name still foreign in my mouth, my
memories still a haze.
1/2
Chapter 141.
+25 BONUS
When we got there, the packhouse was lit like a mansion, ut inside, It was colder than the air outside. Wolves lined the hallway as Derek led me through.
“They didn’t growl. Didn’t snap. They were polite. Polite in that way that’s all teeth behind the smile.
“Welcome,” someone said.
But their eyes said, Why did you bring her?
Caroline was the one who showed me to my room. Or rather escorted me, like I might bolt. Derek had bought me new clothes—he’d stopped at a store on the way in and handed me a bag full of warm sweaters and thick socks.
I’d offered the clothes I had been wearing to Caroline when she asked, and I still remember the way she took them -pinched between two fingers like they were pulled out of the gutter.
She didn’t say anything. Just turned and tossed them toward a passing maid. “Burn them,” she’d said.
That night, I lay on clean sheets and stared at the ceiling, wondering how I could feel more out of place here than I had among the rogues.
The whispers started early. I heard them when I passed in the halls, when I tried to sit in on training, when I asked a question.
“He’s not thinking straight.”
“She’s a rogue, even if she doesn’t smell like one anymore.
“His father would never have allowed this.”
Derek never responded to the murmurs. He pretended not to hear. But I saw the tension in his jaw. The way his hands curled into fists behind his back.
The challenge came a week later.
A gray–furred wolf with scars across his chest stepped forward in the middle of pack drills. He shifted mid- sentence, snarling the moment his paws hit the dirt.
“I call challenge,” he barked. “Silverclaw deserves better than a leader distracted by his mate’s scent. One who’s fated to a rogue.”
