The silence was thick enough to press against my ears, so heavy it muffled even my heartbeat. Only the archive's old grandfather clock dared to break it, marking time in slow, funereal ticks. Derick's hand found mine again, not squeezing so much as anchoring me—reminding me that, for a moment at least, we had each other and the ghosts of history for company.
It was Nicki who shattered the illusion first. Her voice carried from the stone corridor outside, distorted by distance but unmistakable in pitch and volume. "—I'm telling you, if they're not in here, you owe me a dozen donuts and a full hour of not being a grump."
Matt grumbled in reply, his lower timbre easily drowned out by her echoing footsteps as she barreled through the archives' heavy doors. The pair of them—she in running tights, sneakers barely laced, and a hoodie so aggressively yellow it seemed to resist the room's gloom; he in the same battered jeans as always, jacket half-unzipped despite the cold—brought with them a gust of new air, sharp with snow and adrenaline. The doors crashed behind them, reverberating like a warning shot.
Matt's eyes, usually quick with mischief or skepticism, looked drawn tight as drumheads. He scanned the room and found us instantly, the line of his jaw already set for confrontation. "What did you tell Nicki about being 'fated mates'?" he demanded, voice flat and weirdly formal for someone I'd once watched shotgun six packets of ketchup on a dare. "Because she's ready to tear up half the palace."
Nicki stopped a few steps behind him, arms folded so hard her knuckles went white. For the first time in memory, she didn't smile—not even a flicker of teeth. The sight sent a shiver up my spine.
Derick stood slowly, body language stripped down to essentials—no Prince Derick, no careful heir, just the boy I'd seen in the dark hours of the morning, confessing fears into the crook of my neck. He didn't let go of my hand as he faced them.
"Let's just talk," Derick said, his voice softer than usual but carrying all the same. "Sit, if you want. Or stand. But you deserve to know."
Matt's gaze flicked from Derick's face to our clasped hands and back again, but he moved to the long side of the research table, propping himself against the edge. Nicki stayed on her feet, pacing in a short, agitated loop—one that kept her between me and the door, as if she already suspected she'd want an escape route.
The room felt colder, the lamplight somehow insufficient against the sudden shadow in the air. I tried to catalog details: the curl of dust above the table, the smell of damp stone and forgotten stories, the way Derick's thumb traced small circles on my skin as if he could will the right words to surface. But mostly, I watched the way Nicki's jaw clenched, the way Matt's hands fisted and unfisted in his lap, and the growing certainty that nothing that happened next would leave us unchanged.
"Nicki, Matt—" Derick started, then stopped. He dropped into the battered office chair and raked his hands through his hair. "This goes back years. More than you know. I— I haven't told anyone except Cassy. Not even my parents."
Nicki's scoff was short and sharp. "Because it's that bad?"
Derick looked at her—really looked, all the walls down. "Because it's that important."
For a moment, all I could hear was the whir of the archive's tiny heater and the rush of my own blood. Derick met Matt's eyes, then Nicki's, and something seemed to resolve in his posture—a tension that had been simmering for years finally snapping.
"When I was sixteen," Derick said, "I had a vision." His fingers gripped the table's edge, knuckles pale as bone. "Not a dream, not a hallucination—something real, something from the Moon Goddess. She showed me a world where the mate bond didn't matter. Where wolves lost the ability to shift, where pack magic just… faded." He closed his eyes, jaw working like he was grinding glass. "It scared the hell out of me."
He breathed, in and out, then pressed forward. "I started researching it. Quietly at first, but then… I got obsessed. I traced every bloodline, every lost ability. I found the point—right after the Great War—where everything began to weaken. I thought maybe it was just bad luck, or too many deaths at once. But the more I looked, the more I found one thing in common."
Nicki stopped pacing. Her eyes, big and dark, pinned him to the chair. "Fated mates."
Derick nodded. "The decline started when the Council forced new pairings. They thought arranged matches would rebuild the population, but instead… it broke something. Wolves started losing their gifts. The mate bond failed more and more often. Shifters went insane, or killed themselves, or became just—" He gestured helplessly at the journal on the table, as if even words couldn't do justice to the loss. "Like the guy in Cassy's book. Hollowed out."
Matt let out a breath. "You're saying it's not just politics. It's evolution."
"Exactly." Derick's voice picked up speed, the way it always did when he talked about something that mattered. "It's a kind of extinction. Every time a real bond is broken or ignored, the whole species loses a piece of itself."
Nicki's arms had dropped to her sides. For the first time, I noticed her hands were trembling, barely perceptible in the lamp's dim halo. "Why didn't you tell us?" she whispered, the words so small I almost missed them.
Derick met her gaze and held it. "I didn't want to believe it. And when I finally did… I didn't want to hurt you." He glanced at Matt, then me, then back to Nicki. "But you're my pack. My real pack. I couldn't stand keeping it secret anymore."
For a moment, no one spoke. The air vibrated with things unsaid, every molecule saturated with the ache of knowledge too big for the room.
Matt's voice broke the silence, quieter than I'd ever heard it. "What does this mean for us?" He didn't specify—him and Nicki, or all of us, or maybe every wolf who ever lived. He didn't have to.
Derick's lips twisted in a sad smile. "It means that if you're fated, if the bond is real… you'll know. Instantly. Wolves recognize each other in a heartbeat. Nothing else comes close." He looked to Nicki, his expression softening. "And if you aren't… it doesn't mean you're not right for each other. It just means the Council can't force it anymore. We have to trust the bond. Let it happen on its own."
Nicki's mouth opened, then closed. She paced again, three steps forward and one back, the energy in her body all static and wildness. I could almost see the thoughts ricocheting behind her eyes—years of certainty, of pride in her mate bond with Matt, suddenly twisted into a question mark.
Matt just sat, staring at the table, his hand absently tracing the wolf's-head bookend. His face was unreadable. For once, I had no idea what he was thinking.
Derick leaned into me, his weight a little heavier, as if the admission had left him hollowed out but also lighter somehow—like a man who'd finally stopped holding his breath.
"You don't have to believe me," he said. "But you do have to know. The Council won't stop pushing, not unless someone stands up and tells the truth."
The clock ticked, and dust motes hung in the air between us, golden and suspended. I thought of the centuries of secrets pressed into the shelves above our heads, of the generations of wolves who'd lived and died by rules they never wrote.
Nicki stopped pacing. "What now?" she asked, voice rough with something I couldn't name.
Derick exhaled. "Now? We prove the bond is real. We prove that it matters. And we find a way to make them listen."
The silence returned, heavier than before but clearer. The truth was out, and whatever it cost, none of us could put it back.
Nicki's voice cracked the silence like a match in a dark room: "So… you think Matt and I might not even be true mates?" The words seemed to bounce off the ceiling beams, ringing in the hush that followed.
No one answered right away. I saw Matt's lips part, his jaw locking and unlocking as he chewed the question over, unable to spit out the response. The tension in the air prickled along my skin. Derick's hand twitched in mine—reflex, or maybe just the urge to shield me from the fallout.
"I don't know," Derick said, and the truth of it hurt him, I could tell. "Nobody can know for certain except the wolves themselves. Some pairs are chosen, and some are… fated. But I do know that when Cassy and I met—" He cut a glance at me, brief and electric. "There was no mistaking it. Our wolves recognized each other instantly. It was like they'd been waiting for that moment since the day we were born."
Nicki's eyes flared—hurt, defiant, then shuttered. She looked at Matt, who wouldn't quite meet her gaze. His shoulders curled forward, arms crossed so tight the muscles jumped beneath his shirt. "We've been together since we were fourteen," Nicki said, her voice fighting to stay steady. "How can you tell me that's not real?"
Derick held up both hands, palms out. "I'm not saying it isn't real. The bond you share—what you built together—could be stronger than anything. All I'm saying is… the Moon Goddess doesn't work on our timetable. Sometimes the fated pair is obvious, and sometimes it's not."
Matt's fingers drummed an uneven rhythm on the table, the motion growing sharper with each beat. "So what, Nicki and I just… wait around for our 'real' mates to show up? Throw away the last five years on the off-chance the universe made a mistake?"
I wanted to reach across the table and take Nicki's hand, but she was too far and too angry to be comforted. Instead, I traced small patterns in the wood grain, the gesture a nervous tick that kept my hands busy while my mind raced.
"I'm not asking you to give up anything," Derick said, the words coming out gentler than before. "But the Mating Ceremony—forcing wolves to choose before they're ready, before the bond has a chance to form naturally—it's killing us. You and Nicki got lucky. You were the same age, you grew up together, and you chose each other. But most wolves aren't so lucky." He glanced at me, then at Matt, as if the two of them were the axis on which the whole argument turned. "The system is broken. And if I don't try to fix it, then what's the point of inheriting a throne?"
The quiet returned, heavier than before. I could feel the aftershocks running through Nicki's body, the anger and pain ricocheting in her chest, and I wondered if this was what it felt like to watch your house catch fire—unable to move, unable to scream, just watching as everything you built went up in smoke.
The scrape of Nicki's chair against the stone floor was loud enough to make me flinch. She shoved away from the table, knuckles white as she grabbed the edge for balance. "I need some air," she said, already halfway to the door. The words came out tight, her throat nearly closed around them.
Her boots echoed in hard, uneven beats down the corridor, the sound receding until it was just another memory in the archive's long history of angry exits.
Matt stayed seated for a few seconds, shoulders squared, eyes on the spot where Nicki had been. Then he stood, slow and deliberate, and looked at Derick—not just at him, but through him, as if searching for something that might explain the mess we'd all just inherited.
"You realize telling people this…" Matt started, but the rest of the sentence stuck in his jaw. He tried again. "You're going to blow up everything. Maybe not tonight, but soon." The warning in his voice wasn't anger. It was concern, like a parent seeing a child ride a bike with no hands for the first time.
He held Derick's gaze for a long, weighted moment, then nodded to me and followed Nicki into the hall, the door closing behind him with a heavy, echoing thud.
The sudden quiet was dizzying, like the world had just run out of air. I waited for Derick to say something, anything, but he just sagged into the chair, elbows on knees, eyes fixed on the cracks in the tile. The gold ring on his hand gleamed in the lamplight, the only bright spot in the grayness of the room.
I slid closer on the bench, pressing my thigh against his until the heat of our bodies seeped through the fabric. For a while we just breathed together, the hum of the bond between us louder than anything else.
"I get why they're upset," I said quietly. "They've built their whole lives around being mates. It's not just about love for them—it's who they are."
Derick nodded, a small and tired motion, and rested his head in his hands. "I know. It was easier when it was just a theory." His voice was muffled but clear. "I hate that I hurt them. But I hate worse what the Council's doing to all of us."
I reached out and traced the line of his shoulder, feeling the knot of muscle and tension there, then let my hand slide down until our fingers laced together. I felt him exhale, some of the weight leaving his body and transferring, atom by atom, into mine.
"Whatever happens next," I said, "we're in it together. Even if it means blowing up the world."
He laughed, the sound dry and a little cracked, but real. "You're the best kind of trouble, Cassy Blackwater."
"Ditto, Derick Silvermoon."
We sat like that for a long time—two wolves alone in the dark, holding hands at the end of history, listening to the future claw at the door.