WREN POV
I don't sleep.
I lie in the dark holding that newspaper clipping and staring at the ceiling and turning the four words over and over until they stop making sense and start making too much sense. I am sorry, Wren. Four words in careful handwriting on the back of a photograph of my parents that he has been carrying long enough for the paper to go soft.
The man kept a photograph of the people he killed.
I don't know what to do with that. I have been not knowing what to do with things for about eighteen hours straight now and I am getting very tired of it.
By the time the sky outside my window starts going gray, I have made a decision. I am not going to lie here and wonder. I am going to go find Killian Voss and ask him every question I have been building since I was six years old, and he is going to answer them, and then I will know what I am dealing with.
I am done being kept in the dark by people who decided what I could handle.
I find him in the training yard at dawn.
He is alone, no guards nearby, working through some kind of fighting form with a long practice staff. Focused. Controlled. Every movement precise, like he has done this so many times it has become something close to automatic. He is not wearing a shirt, which I notice and then decide not to keep noticing, and the scars across his back and shoulders tell a story about a life that has not been easy, even for the most powerful man alive.
He hears me coming. Of course he does. He slows and stops before I reach him, sets the staff down against the yard wall, and turns to face me.
He takes one look at my face and does not ask if I slept well.
Good. I would have said something sharp about that.
"I have questions," I say.
"I know," he says.
"About my parents."
Something in his expression settles, like he has been waiting for this and is not going to try to delay it. He picks up a cloth from the wall, wipes his hands, and gives me his full attention. No distractions. No looking past me. Just full, complete, undefended attention.
"Ask," he says.
"Did you kill them?" I ask. "My parents. Personally."
"I gave the order," he says. "That is the same thing."
I appreciate that he does not try to split the difference on that. "Why."
He is quiet for exactly two seconds. Not avoiding the question. Choosing how to tell the truth properly.
"Your father's name was Desmond Ashwood," he says. "He was an Alpha of significant power and significant anger. For three years before his death, he had been making deals with dark practitioners. Blood magic. The kind that does not simply enhance a wolf's strength but corrupts it, changes it into something that spreads. He was building an army, yes, but the army was not the real problem. The magic he was using was contagious. One wolf exposed to it would expose their pack. One pack would expose a territory. He had the potential to start a chain reaction across the supernatural world that would have killed or corrupted thousands of wolves who had absolutely nothing to do with his war."
I listen. My face is doing something I cannot control, but I keep my feet planted and my eyes on his.
"I sent people to talk to him first," Killian continues. "Twice. He refused. He accelerated his timeline. I had intelligence that said the army was ready to move within a week. I made the decision to end it before it spread."
"And my mother?" My voice comes out steady. I am proud of that.
Something crosses his face. Quick and honest. "Your mother was not involved in his work. I did not know that until after. My intelligence was incomplete." A pause. "That is not an excuse. It is a fact that I have had to carry."
The yard is very quiet. Birds somewhere, distant. The pale early morning light is flat and gray.
"You thought no children survived," I say.
"Yes. I found out otherwise approximately eight months later. A report from a field operative who saw you with your uncle at a border crossing." He holds my gaze. "I have known where you were every year since then."
The weight of that lands on me slowly. Not threateningly. Heavily. Like the sky lowering itself.
"The clipping," I say.
"Yes."
"The money. The academy." I had not connected those dots until Mira said it last night, but now they line up like a clear path. "That was you."
"Yes."
I look at him for a long moment. "Why didn't you just leave me alone? If you felt guilty, why not just leave me alone and let me live my life?"
He does not look away. "Because your father made enemies besides me. People who knew what your bloodline was and would have come for you eventually. I kept watch because someone needed to."
I think about the thing in the trees last night. The scout that was not his.
I think about my uncle, who kept me small and quiet for reasons I still do not fully understand.
I think about eighteen years of being told I was defective, weak, not enough.
The grief is enormous. Not sharp grief, not the kind that comes out in crying. The slow, heavy kind that fills up all the space inside you and makes breathing feel like work. Grief for my parents, who were real people and more complicated than a child's memory and now I have to figure out how to hold both of those things, who they were and what they did and what was done to them.
Grief for the childhood I didn't get.
Grief for the girl who kept waiting for her wolf and was told the waiting was her failure.
"I need time," I say. "To think about all of this."
"Take it," he says immediately. No pressure. No reaction.
"I'm not saying I forgive you. I'm not saying I don't. I'm saying I need to sit with it."
"I understand."
I look at him. "You're very patient for someone who runs the entire supernatural world."
The corner of his mouth moves. Nearly a smile. "I have my moments."
I open my mouth to say something else.
His Beta Ren appears at the training yard entrance at a near-run, which I suspect is the fastest Ren ever moves, and the expression on his face is the specific controlled-urgency of someone delivering news that is bad but not catastrophic.
"My lord." Ren's eyes cut to me briefly, then back to Killian. "The Ashwood pack. Alpha Grey Senior filed the duress challenge with the Lycan Council forty minutes ago. It has been accepted for review."
The air in the yard changes.
I feel Killian go still beside me. Not tense. Just completely, precisely still, the way a blade is still before it moves.
I feel something change in myself too.
Because the Ashwood pack just told the Lycan Council I was taken against my will.
Callum's father just told the most powerful legal body in the supernatural world that I am a victim who needs rescuing.
And if the Council agrees, I will be sent back.
I look at Killian.
He is already looking at me.
"What happens if they rule in the Ashwood pack's favor?" I ask, very quietly.
His jaw is tight. "They won't."
"But if they do."
A pause. One single second where something real and unguarded crosses his face.
"Then I will deal with that," he says, "when it happens."
It is not a reassuring answer. But it is an honest one.
And somewhere underneath the fear and the grief and the enormous complicated weight of everything I learned this morning, a small and stubborn part of me decides that honest is enough to start with.