Chapter 4
Sera
The road to the edge district was always longer than I remembered, and today it felt twice as long. The truck's engine rattled like it was holding a grudge, and every pothole sent a fresh jolt through the broken suspension straight into my spine. I kept one hand on the wheel and the other pressed flat against my lower belly, where that strange, sinking ache had settled in like an unwanted tenant. It came and went in slow waves, never quite sharp enough to make me pull over, but heavy enough that I had to breathe through it each time.
Low blood sugar, I told myself again. That's all. You're tired. You didn't eat.
But the crescent at my back was still warm, warmer than it had any right to be, and that scared me more than the pain.
The Rook place sat at the very end of the district, where the pavement gave up and turned to gravel and the houses started looking like they'd been put together with whatever was left over after the real construction was done. A squat little building with peeling paint and a sagging porch, surrounded by a yard that was more dirt than grass. I'd been out here maybe twice before — my father usually handled the far runs — so I didn't know much about the family except what was written on the delivery slip in my pocket: Retired Beta. Lost son. Prone to episodes.
I pulled up to the curb and cut the engine. From inside the house I could already hear it — the crash of something heavy hitting the floor, a woman's high, ragged scream, and underneath it all, a low, guttural snarl that didn't sound like it was coming from a human throat.
The neighbors were out on their porches, arms crossed, watching the house like it was a fire they couldn't put out. One of them, an older woman with her hair tied back in a faded kerchief, shook her head when she saw me getting out of the truck.
"Don't go in there, girl," she called. "He's bad today. Real bad. Yesterday was the boy's anniversary, you know. They went to the grave last night and he came back wrong. Hasn't slept since."
I looked down at the slip again. Lost son. Right. I remembered now — my father had mentioned it once, years ago. The Rooks had a boy who died in one of the old territorial skirmishes, back when the packs were still fighting over boundary lines. The kind of grief that doesn't heal, it just gets older.
Another crash from inside, followed by the sound of breaking glass.
"Someone's gotta get the supplies in," I said, more to myself than to her, and I grabbed the first crate from the truck bed.
The front door was half-open. I nudged it the rest of the way with my shoulder and stepped into a scene that made my stomach clench. The living room looked like a storm had torn through it — chairs overturned, dishes smashed across the floor, a lamp lying in pieces by the wall. And in the center of it all was Rook himself, a broad-shouldered man with graying hair and eyes that had gone red around the edges, his chest heaving like he'd just run a mile. His wife was pressed into the corner with their daughter clutched against her chest, the little girl's face buried in her mother's shoulder, her whole body shaking.
Rook was holding a piece of the broken lamp in one hand, his knuckles white around it, and for a second I thought he was going to throw it. His gaze was fixed on his wife, but it wasn't seeing her — it was looking through her, at something else entirely, something that wasn't in the room.
"I told you!" he was saying, his voice raw and cracked. "I told you I can't — I can't do this, I can't keep — "
His wife's voice came out in a sob. "Please, just calm down, please, the baby's here, she's scared — "
"I know she's scared!" he roared, and his hand went up, and that was when I moved.
"Mr. Rook."
My voice came out steadier than I felt, and I set the crate down by the door with a deliberate thud so he'd hear it. He spun toward me, and for a second I saw the full weight of whatever was eating him alive — the grief, the rage, the exhaustion that had worn him down to nothing but raw nerve and instinct. His lips pulled back from his teeth.
"Get out," he snarled.
I didn't move. I kept my hands where he could see them, open and low, and I made my voice as calm as I could manage even though my heart was trying to climb out through my throat. "I'm Sera. Alden's daughter. I brought your supplies." I took a slow breath, the way Mia Carter had taught me once, back when I used to help her with the lower district disputes. Steady. Soft. No sudden movements. "I know you're hurting. I can see it. And I know it's not fair, what happened to you. Losing your boy like that — no father should have to carry that."
His hand was still raised, but it had stopped moving.
I kept talking, kept my eyes on his. "You've been holding it together for so long, haven't you? Trying to be strong for them. Trying not to break. But it's too much. It's too heavy. And today it all came crashing down, and you don't even know what you're doing anymore."
The red in his eyes flickered. His breathing was still harsh, but it was slowing, just a fraction.
"You don't want to hurt them," I said quietly. "I know you don't. You love them. That's why it hurts so much — because you love them, and you can't protect them from this, and that's eating you alive."
Rook's hand began to tremble. The piece of lamp clattered to the floor, and he staggered back a step, his knees buckling, and then he was on the ground with his head in his hands, and the sound that came out of him was something I'd never heard from a grown man before — a broken, keening sob that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than his lungs.
"I don't — I don't know what I'm doing," he choked out. "I can't — I can't even think — "
I crouched down beside him, not touching, just close enough that he'd know I was there. "You're going to be okay," I said, and I didn't know if it was true, but I said it anyway. "You just need to breathe. Can you do that for me? Just breathe."
He nodded, barely, and I stayed there with him while he pulled himself back together, piece by piece, until the shaking stopped and his breathing evened out. When he finally lifted his head, his eyes were clear again, and the first thing he did was look at his wife and daughter, still huddled in the corner, and his face crumpled.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."
His wife didn't say anything. She just crossed the room and knelt down beside him and wrapped her arms around him, and the little girl crawled into his lap and pressed her face into his chest, and I stood up and backed toward the door because this wasn't my moment to be in.
But before I could leave, Rook's wife looked up at me. Her face was streaked with tears, and her voice came out hoarse and unsteady. "Thank you," she said. "I don't — I don't know what would've happened if you hadn't — "
"It's okay," I said quickly, because I didn't know what to do with gratitude like that, didn't know how to hold it. "Really. It's okay."
She stood and crossed to the kitchen, and when she came back she was holding a small cloth bag. "Please," she said, pressing it into my hands. "It's just bread. I made it this morning. It's not much, but — "
"You don't have to — "
"Please." Her eyes were still wet, and her hands were shaking when she closed them over mine. "You don't know what you did for us. You don't know."
I took the bag because refusing felt cruel, and I carried it back out to the truck in silence. The neighbors were still on their porches, but now they were staring at me with something I'd never seen before — something that looked almost like awe. One of them, a man with a gray beard and a limp, stepped off his porch and nodded at me as I passed.
"Didn't think anyone could bring him down that fast," he said. "Not even Mia Carter could do it that quick, and she's got the gift for it."
I didn't know what to say to that, so I just nodded back and climbed into the truck.
But as I sat there with my hands on the wheel, staring at the bag of bread on the seat beside me, I felt something shift inside me — something small and uncertain, like a door cracking open just enough to let in a sliver of light. The neighbors had looked at me like I'd done something impossible. Like I was something more than what I'd always been told I was.
Maybe I am, I thought. Maybe there's something in me that they can't see yet. Something that doesn't need a wolf to be real.
I shook my head and started the engine. No time for that kind of thinking. I still had one more crate to unload, and the ache in my belly was getting worse.
I made it halfway through unloading the last crate before my body gave up on me.
It started the same way it had before — that slow, sinking pull low in my gut, like something inside me was trying to drag itself downward. But this time it didn't let go. This time it pulled, sharp and sudden and so strong that my knees buckled and I had to grab the edge of the truck bed to keep from going down. The crate slipped from my hands and hit the ground with a crash, and I heard the distant sound of glass breaking inside it, but I couldn't make myself care because the pain was spreading now, radiating out from my belly and down into my thighs, and my vision was starting to go gray at the edges.
No, I thought. *No, not here, not now — *
I tried to straighten up. I got one hand on the truck and one foot under me, and then the world tilted sideways and the ground came up to meet me and everything went black.
