Page 71 of Fated Wolf's Redemption

Lucas stands behind me, arms crossed. His voice is ice. “Gone.”

Isabella appears beside him, her brow furrowing. “And Lina?”

My lips part. I start to answer. Lucas beats me to it.

“Gone,” he says again.

They ask about the gate. About the glyphs. About the ruins. I see the council elders leaning forward, Ironclaw’s patriarch sharpening a pen on the edge of the table like he’s ready to transcribe history.

Lucas looks down at me. I shake my head once. We say nothing.

The official report will say what it always does—monsters stopped, danger averted, threat neutralized. No one needs to know that the bond Lucas and I share nearly opened the very thing they sent us to stop. No one needs to hear about what it took to destroy Lina. What it cost.

They didn’t carry the storm. We did.

Night falls slow and heavy over the Nightshade Pack. Wolves move through the halls in hushed groups, murmuring to each other like they’re not sure yet if it’s safe to celebrate or if another disaster will claw its way out of the trees.

In the courtyard, someone builds a fire. I watch it through the window of Lucas’s room, arms wrapped around my knees. I haven’t spoken since we got back. I don’t know if I can.

He’s cleaned up now—bandaged, dressed, his hair still damp from a shower he only agreed to take after I shoved him into it. But his eyes haven’t softened. They’re still watching for something. Still tracking ghosts that might crawl out of the cracks we didn’t seal all the way.

I touch the hollow of my throat—the place he bit me. The mark is still there. Raised. Warm. Mine.

No one’s asked about it. But the Nightshade wolves smell it. Feel it. When I pass them in the hallway, they glance at it and smile at me. They’re glad for their beta… for me too, I think.

Eventually, the lodge grows quieter. The elders retreat to their rooms, council members drifting off in packs of two and three. Ryder catches my eye once across the hall, gives me a nod. He doesn’t try to speak. Doesn’t need to.

He knows what we did. He helped build the plan that worked. He was willing to stand behind us if it failed. That’s enough.

By the time I climb the spiral stairs to the observatory, the mountain wind has picked up again. The storm’s rolling in across the peaks—low, fast, and curling with a violet mist that glows faintly against the night.

I press my forehead to the glass, watching the clouds pour over the cliffs like a tide. It’s not magic this time. Not calling me. Just weather. Beautiful and brutal and true.

A door opens behind me. Soft footfalls. No scent—Lucas never carries one long. Not when he burns it off in the storm. He doesn’t speak. Just steps up behind me and rests his forehead against my back, both arms circling my waist like he’s holding in more than words.

I lean into him, fingers tracing slow patterns on his forearm. We don’t talk. We don’t need to. I feel him breathing. I feel him there. For the first time in what feels like days, I close my eyes.

“I love you,” I manage to murmur.

I can’t see his smile, but I can feel it as he presses a kiss to the nape of my neck. “I love you too.”

Pushing away from him, I turn and press a kiss to his lips before making my way down to the library at Nightshade Lodge, which still smells like blood and old books. Someone tried to air it out with dried juniper bundles and a pot of spiced tea left forgotten on the hearth, but no one’s fooled. The mountain may have fallen, the gate may be buried, but something deeper still haunts this place.

I stand by the window, the bite at my throat throbbing like a slow drumbeat. The rain outside is steady now—calm, for the first time in weeks. The storm broke last night and left the sky purged but watchful.

Behind me, the door creaks open. I don’t have to turn. I know that scent. Sun-warmed parchment and the high-altitude snap of alpine pine.

“Hello, Father,” I say without looking.

His steps are soft across the rug. He was always careful in his approach, never abrupt. That’s how Windriders move. Measured. Like fate is a dance they choreograph in advance.

“You look… different,” he says.

“I am.”

He moves closer. I still don’t turn. If I look at him, I might remember too much. The way he smiled at me when I first bent a storm to my will. The day he buried my mother’s warding ring in the hollow tree and said some things are too dangerous to carry.

“You survived,” he says, voice gentle. “And more than that… you succeeded.”

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