Chapter 261
+25 BONUS
Chapter 261
DEREK
The growl of the four–wheeler under me did nothing to quiet the growl inside my chest.
I’d been patrolling for hours.
The wind whipped against my jacket, tugging at the collar as I tore down another ridgeline, the sun low and angry behind me. Dust kicked up behind the tires in plumes. My hands were clenched too tightly on the grips, my knuckles stiff beneath leather gloves.
I couldn’t sit still.
Hadn’t been able to for days. Weeks, maybe. Ever since she looked at me with those tired eyes and said she wanted nothing more to do with me.
Ever since I let her go.
And now, all I wanted was a fight.
A rogue. A threat. Something I could put my fists or claws or teeth into. Something to make the pressure inside me finally crack and release.
But there was nothing.
I slowed as I reached the fence line–the outermost perimeter of Silverclaw’s territory. I killed the engine and climbed off the ATV. My boots sank slightly into the soft soil. Around me, the trees shifted and creaked in the wind.
Everything was quiet.
Too quiet.
I checked the usual trouble spots, my eyes scanning the brush, the soil, the fence posts. Not even a bent nail. Not a footprint. Not a scent trail. Just forest and fading light.
I walked a bit further, past the old trailhead where rogues had been known to slip across the border.
Still nothing.
The rogues had been quiet lately. Even with the full moon.
Elena’s foundation–barely out of the womb, really–was already making ripples. Aiden had told me with pride that they still had the plastic on half the desks. That the coffee machine wasn’t even installed yet. But already, the word was spreading.
Something was changing.
And she was the one changing it.
I stared out into the trees and thought of her.
Of her laugh. Of the scar on her brow. Of the way she looked when she was angry and didn’t want to be, when her voice went tight and her hands fidgeted and she tried not to care, even though she did.
Of the way she looked when she told me goodbye.
I thought of all the times I could have said something, done something, and didn’t. Of the way I let Cassandra get close again, like a fool. Of how it felt to watch Elena walk away, proud and devastated and utterly out of my reach.
I scrubbed a hand down my face, my jaw aching from the clench of my teeth.
The wind rustled the trees again, and in the distance, I heard a hawk cry..
Chapter 261
Then my phone rang.
Tjumped.
I fumbled for it, my heart already sprinting ahead of my body.
Elena.
Her name lit up the screen.
I answered before the first ring even ended. “Elena? What’s wrong Is it Aiden? Is he-”
“He’s fine,” she said. Her voice was calm, but there was something underneath it. Fragile. Unsteady.
I swallowed. “Then what is it?”
+25 BONUS
“I’m at Dr. Voss’s office,” she said. “He says I’m not in any condition to drive myself home. 1–I was wondering if you could come get me.”
I froze.
A thousand questions surged into my mind at once. Why not Jacob? Why me? Did she need me? Or did she just have no other option?
I wanted to ask.
I wanted to not care.
But I did.
I took a breath. “Of course. I’ll be right there.”
JACOB
4
She sat across from me, her legs tucked beneath her on the sofa in the office, her hands curled around a cup of tea that had long since gone cold. Her shoulders had relaxed slightly, but her eyes still carried the weight of everything she’d just told me.
I had heard the story once already at the Alpha Ball, or at least the vague shape of it–the Moonstone princess gone missing, the cliff, the rogues, the return.
But not like this.
Not from her.
Not in a voice this steady and broken at the same time.
She told it all. Every piece. The cliff. The memory loss. The way she wandered with rogues for months. The moment she met Derek again and knew instantly that they were fated mates, even if she couldn’t remember why.
Aiden. The lies. The fragments. The raw, unrelenting loneliness of being back in a world that had moved on without her. And the foundation she was trying to build, even while she was still stitching herself back together from pieces she had to reclaim one at
a time.
It was so much..
Too much for one person. Too much for ten.
And still she sat there, graceful in her unraveling. Quiet in her courage.
When she finished, she leaned back against the cushions and stared at the window like she wasn’t sure the world outside still existed. Like part of her still didn’t believe she’d spoken the words aloud.
I watched her for a long moment.
Chapter 261
“That’s an awful lot for one person to deal with,” I said finally.
She huffed a breath of dry laughter. “Feels like three lifetimes.”
“It is,” I said. “And then some.”
+25 BONUS
She turned her head slightly, her eyes still far away. “I asked him to pick me up from the doctor’s office. Derek. I was going to tell him. About what really happened when we were kids. About how I was the one who saved him, not Cassandra.”
I tilted my head. “But?”
She shrugged. Her voice was so soft I almost missed it. “What good would it do? It wouldn’t take back everything he’s done. It wouldn’t erase the hurt. I don’t even know if I want him to know.”
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees.
“You don’t owe him anything, Elena. Not a thing. But if he’s living his life chained to this idea that Cassandra saved him, that he owes her some kind of eternal loyalty… doesn’t he deserve to know the truth?”
She didn’t answer right away. Her thumb traced the rim of her cup.
“It’s not about vengeance,” I added. “It’s about the truth. About giving yourself the credit you’ve never taken. About cutting through the bullshit.”
She looked down at her tea.
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe.”
I hesitated. Then said it anyway.
“You should tell him. If nothing else, he needs to know that the girl he’s been running to his whole life… wasn’t the one who pulled him out of the fire.”
Her eyes welled. Not a flood. Just a shimmer. Just enough to betray how much she’d been holding in
And then she smiled, just a little. “Thanks. For listening. I know we’re not really friends. Just business partners.”
“No,” I said. “We’re friends.”
That made her blink. The kind of blink that tried to hold something back. That didn’t succeed.
I looked at her for a long time. Looked past the weary smile, the sadness in her eyes, the quiet storm she carried like a second
skin.
And suddenly, I knew. It was a blow, to be sure. To my ego. And maybe to my own heart.
“You’re still in love with him,” I said.
She didn’t argue.
Didn’t look away.
She just nodded. Once.
Then whispered, “But if Cassandra stays in his life, we’ll never have a chance.”
I nodded slowly. There was nothing else to say.
Except maybe this:
Maybe he’d rise to meet her this time.
And if he didn’t-
Chapter 261
Then he never deserved her to begin with.
