Chapter 97
ELENA
The silence Derek left behind was louder than anything he'd 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 I 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.
When we got there, the packhouse was lit like a mansion, but 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.”
Derek didn’t hesitate. He stripped off his shirt and stepped forward, every inch of him radiating authority.
“You’re formally challenging my station as Alpha?”
“I am,” the other wolf said.
“I accept.”
The fight was brutal.
The challenger was older, heavier, but Derek was faster—more precise. Every move had purpose. But there was nothing clean about it. The man didn’t fight like he expected to win. He fought like he wanted to wound.
I stood at the edge of the circle with my heart in my throat. Every punch Derek took felt like it landed on me too. Blood spattered the ground. Bones cracked.
It went on longer than it should’ve. The pack watched in silence, like they didn’t care who won—only how much damage was done.
In the end, Derek pinned the man to the ground and shifted—his wolf tearing into the throat of his opponent with a final, shuddering bite.
The man didn’t move again.
Derek stood over the body, blood dripping from his mouth, his chest heaving. He shifted back.
“Anyone else?” he growled, voice raw and thunderous.
No one spoke.
He turned, barely pausing to wipe the blood from his hands before crossing the space between us. He took my hand—gently, but firmly—and led me back toward the packhouse.
But as we walked, I heard them.
“What a waste.”
“If that rogue hadn’t been here, none of this would’ve happened.”
“His father is rolling in his grave.”
Derek’s grip tightened. I don’t know if he heard them or just felt the weight of it in the air.
When we got inside, he didn’t speak. Just wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and stood behind me, silent and tense, until the sun came up.
Back in the restaurant, Aiden had stopped stirring his ice cream. He was watching me now, his big brown eyes searching mine.
“Was Dad always like this?” he asked quietly.
I blinked, pulling myself out of the memory.
“I haven’t always known him,” I said. “But I think… he used to be different.”
“Better?”
“Not better. Just... less broken. I met him just after his father died. It was a hard time for him. But he tried really hard to keep it together. For his pack.”
Aiden looked down. “I still don’t get why he left.”
I hesitated, then leaned in closer.
“Sometimes, people do what they think is right in the moment. Even if it hurts someone they love.”
“Even if it’s wrong?”
“Yeah. Especially then.”
We sat in silence for a while, the last of the sunlight fading from the window beside us. Outside, a breeze shook the trees. Inside, Nonna Lucia returned with a paper bag of leftovers and a quiet smile.
“For later,” she said.
I thanked her and stood, guiding Aiden out with one hand on his shoulder.
As we walked to the car, I looked up at the sky.
I didn’t know where Derek had gone after the phone call. Or what he was thinking. Or what, exactly, Cassandra had told him.
DEREK
I burst through the door of the Silverclaw packhouse, barely registering the greeting from the guard at the front. My eyes found Cassandra immediately—curled on the couch, face buried in Caroline’s shoulder, her body shaking with sobs.
Her hand was clutching her stomach. My heart dropped.
She looked up when she heard me, eyes red-rimmed and swollen. “I’m sorry,” she choked. “It just started. I didn’t know what to do.”
The weight of her words sank into me like a stone. It hit harder than I expected. Harder than it would have before I knew what fatherhood felt like—what it meant to hold your child in your arms and know they were yours.
The grief was sharp, immediate. Real.
I knelt beside her. “You need to go to the doctor. Now.”
She recoiled slightly. “I’d rather just stay home. Please, Derek. I just want to rest.”
I looked at Caroline. Her expression didn’t shift, but something in her eyes narrowed.
Caroline spoke softly, “Don’t you think it would be a good idea if you went to the doctor to make sure the baby is really gone? Maybe there’s still a chance to save it?”
“I’m sure,” Cassandra said quickly, too quickly. “There was so much blood.”
I studied her. “I’m going to have to insist.”
Cassandra’s whole body stiffened. Her tears vanished like someone had flipped a switch. She wiped her face and stood. “Fine. But I want to go by myself.”
I blinked.
Alone?
That wasn’t like her. Not at all.
Something inside me shifted.
Not grief.
Suspicion.
