Chapter 4 Chapter 4

Beth made a strangled sound that told me more than any confession could have. Ty had not walked in blind. He had come home carrying secrets, evidence, and a fury so cold it had learned patience. Which meant he had been preparing for this. Which meant he had known enough to come for me before anyone warned me he was near.

I should have stepped away from him. I should have protected what was left of my pride and demanded answers before allowing my body to remember him like this. But his nearness pulled at me with dangerous force, a tide I had neither invited nor could resist. “You knew,” I said, barely above a breath. “You knew before you walked in.”

When he answered, his voice lost its edge and turned into something infinitely worse—something tender. “I knew the second I crossed the border.” He paused. “My wolf nearly tore me apart trying to get to you.”

My throat tightened. “Then why didn’t you come sooner?” The question escaped before I could stop it. It carried every lonely night, every bruise, every whispered insult, every piece of me that had waited and then hated itself for waiting.

Ty inhaled sharply, as if the answer cost him. “Because if I had come back before I was certain, they would have buried the truth before I could reach it. And because the night you were attacked”

The office door slammed open hard enough to rattle the walls.

A patrol wolf staggered in, breathless and panicked. “Alpha,” he gasped, “the Lancaster house is on fire.” He swallowed once, voice breaking. “And Marian Lancaster is gone.”

Before anyone could move, Neeka surged to the front of my mind with a snarl so violent it stole my breath. “Too late,” she said. “The woman who blinded us is running.”

Everything after that happened at once.

Alpha Cameron barked orders. Chairs scraped back. Someone ran for the guards. Luna Lea cursed Marian Lancaster so vividly that under any other circumstance, I might have laughed. But all I could hear was the pounding of my own heart and Neeka’s furious breathing inside my head.

“It’s her,” Neeka snarled. “I know her scent now. Smoke can’t hide it. Fear can’t hide it. That woman touched us that night.”

My stomach turned so violently I had to brace a hand against the desk. For two years I had lived beside my own ruin without a name to give it. Pain had a hundred shapes—cold, hunger, humiliation, darkness—but now it had one face. Marian Lancaster. Beth’s mother. The woman who had fed me scraps, who had spoken to me in honeyed lies, who had tucked blankets around my shoulders in front of witnesses and then taken them away when no one watched. The woman who had blinded me.

“Lock Beth down,” Ty said, already moving. His voice carried the kind of command that expected obedience and received it. “No one lets her out of their sight.”

“You can’t do this!” Beth cried as guards closed in. The sharp clatter of bracelets and the scrape of heels told me she was struggling. “I didn’t know she’d run. I didn’t know she’d burn the house. I didn’t know—” She broke off too late.

“Interesting choice of words,” Alpha Cameron said, his anger so controlled it sounded far worse than shouting. “You didn’t know she’d run. That suggests you knew she had something to run from.”

A hand closed around mine—warm, calloused, steady. Ty. The contact sent a jolt through me so sharp it nearly stopped me where I stood. “You’re coming with me,” he said, quieter now, for me alone. “If Neeka can track Marian, I need you there.”

I stared toward the sound of his voice even though staring had long ago become habit instead of sight. “You need me there?” I asked, my throat tight. “Or you just don’t want to let me out of your reach now that you’ve found your mate?”

His fingers tightened once around mine, not enough to hurt, just enough to tell me he had heard every jagged edge in the question. “Both,” he said. No hesitation. No apology. “And if that makes you angry, you can hate me after we catch her.”

I should have argued. I should have torn my hand free and demanded answers first, demanded years back, demanded some protection for the soft and furious part of me that still remembered loving him before loving him had teeth. But Neeka was already straining toward the door, every instinct fixed on the hunt. I swallowed hard. “Fine,” I said. “But if you order me around, I’ll bite you myself.”

For the first time since he entered the room, Ty made a sound dangerously close to a laugh. “There’s the Sila I remember.”

Then we were moving. Ty led me through the pack house at a pace just short of a run, one hand still gripping mine, the other no doubt free for whatever weapon Alpha trainees learned to keep hidden. The moment we burst outside, heat slammed into my face. Smoke choked the air. Wolves shouted over one another across the courtyard. Somewhere ahead, timber cracked and fell with a roar that made the ground shudder beneath my feet.

Blindness had taught me to read the world differently. Fire had its own language—the hiss of wet wood, the hungry collapse of beams, the frantic footsteps that told me who was useful and who was only watching. Beneath all of it, threading through smoke and fear and ash, Neeka followed a single scent trail with relentless certainty.

“She ran east,” Neeka said. “Toward the old boundary trail. Fast. Panicked. But not fast enough.”

Ty did not question me when I turned without hesitation. He simply matched my pace as we left the chaos of the courtyard behind and cut through the trees. Branches whipped at my sleeves. Damp earth shifted under my boots. Every few steps Ty tightened his hold or shifted his body just enough to steer me around a root, a fallen trunk, a drop in the land. The ease of it made my chest ache. Once, long before blood and betrayal, moving together had felt like this—natural as breathing.

“You still lean left when you’re angry,” he said suddenly.

Even now, in the middle of smoke and pursuit and pounding fear, the words hit me somewhere painfully soft. “And you still pick the worst possible moments to sound familiar,” I muttered.

He drew breath, maybe to answer, maybe to apologise, but Neeka cut across the moment with a violent surge of warning.

“Blood,” Neeka snapped. “Fresh. On the air. And silver.”

Ty halted so abruptly I nearly collided with him. Then he crouched, still keeping one hand anchored to my wrist. I heard leaves shift, metal strike lightly against his palm, and the sharp inhale he took a second later.

“A blade,” he said grimly. “Silver. Small enough to hide in a sleeve.”

The forest tilted under me. Rain. Mud. A hand at my throat. Another at my face. Burning—goddess, the burning. I heard myself make a sound I did not mean to let out. Not a scream. Worse. A broken, helpless breath torn from somewhere deep and buried.

Ty was in front of me instantly. His hands hovered at my arms for a fraction of a second before settling, careful and controlled, as if he feared I might break beneath too much force. “Sila,” he said, low and urgent, “talk to me.”

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