Blood And Broken Promises

CHAPTER 5

ZARA

Seven months.

That was how long I had been in Ashford when Sable showed up at my door with a rucksack, a fruit platter, and an expression that said she had driven two hours and was not leaving without a conversation.

I let her in.

She walked into the flat above Petra's shop — it was mine now, Petra had helped me move into the upstairs unit six weeks earlier, and stopped in the kitchen doorway.

Her eyes went to my stomach immediately.

I was twenty weeks by then. Showing clearly. I had stopped being able to pretend otherwise even to myself, so I had stopped trying with everyone else too. Mostly.

Sable looked at me for a long time.

"Okay," she said finally.

"Don't," I started.

"I'm not going to yell at you," she said. "I drove two hours. I'm tired. Let me sit down."

I made tea. She arranged the fruit on a plate with the focused care of someone who needed something to do with her hands. We sat at the small table by the window and for a moment neither of us spoke.

"When did you find out?" she asked.

"Six weeks after I left."

"And you didn't…"

"I needed to do it on my own first," I said. "I needed to know I could before I let anyone else have an opinion about how."

She looked at me. Then she nodded slowly. "Okay," she said again. "That actually makes sense."

"Don't tell Demi yet," I said.

"Zara..."

"Sable. Please. I will tell him. I just need a little more time."

She picked up a piece of mango. Ate it. Looked out the window at the street below. "He's going to lose his mind," she said.

"I know."

"Not at you. At him."

"I know that too."

She looked back at me. Her mismatched eyes, one icy blue, one blue-green, were steadier than I expected. "What are you going to do? Long term."

"Stay here," I said simply. "Build something real. Make sure my son grows up knowing he is enough. Exactly as he is."

Something in Sable's face went soft and then firm again very quickly. "Your son," she said.

"His name is Eli."

She pressed her lips together hard. I could see her fighting something behind her eyes.

"Don't cry," I warned.

"I'm not crying," she said, already crying slightly.

"Sable."

"I'm just…" She wiped at her eye roughly. "You are the bravest person I know and you genuinely don't see it and it drives me absolutely mad."

I looked at her across the table.

"I'm not brave," I said. "I'm just out of other options."

"That's what brave is," she said firmly. "It's not having another option and walking forward anyway."

Outside the window, Ashford moved. The bus went past. Someone below the flat was opening the flower shop, the bell above the door carrying up through the floor.

I looked down at the table.

The tea was going cold.

"Stay a few days," I said.

"I already planned on it," she replied, and helped herself to more fruit.

Sable stayed four days.

She was, as always, the person who made things feel slightly less like carrying weight alone. She came with me to the midwife appointment on the third day and held my hand during the scan not because I asked her to but because she looked at the screen and immediately reached for me.

"He's real," she whispered.

"I know," I said.

"He's going to be so annoying."

I laughed, a real one, the kind that surprised me. The midwife smiled at her notes.

On the fourth morning Sable sat across from me at the kitchen table and said, "Something's happening at Ironveil."

I looked up.

"What kind of something?"

"I don't have details. Demi hasn't told me specifics, but he's stressed in a particular way. The kind where he won't talk about it." She paused. "And Stone's people have been around."

My hands stilled around my cup.

"When?"

"Two weeks ago. And again last week. Rook came both times, not Stone himself. Your dad met with him."

I said nothing.

"Demi thinks it's about the attacks. There have been more, three packs in the midlands hit badly in the last month. Something organised."

"Is Dad…"

"Everyone at Ironveil is fine. Your mum is fine." She met my eyes. "But Zara, if Stone and your father are working together on something, it means Stone is going to be around Ironveil more. And when he's around more, someone is going to tell him about you. About leaving."

I knew what she was not saying. I knew what she was carefully not saying.

"They won't tell him about the baby," I said. "Nobody here knows except you and Petra."

"Demi will figure it out," she said quietly. "You know him. He will want to see you and when he sees you…"

"I know." I pressed my hand flat against the side of my stomach. The small familiar reassurance. "I know, Sable."

"What are you going to do when it's not a secret anymore?"

I looked out the window.

"Be ready," I said.

She left that afternoon. I stood at the window and watched her car until it turned the corner.

Then I turned back to the flat. The small kitchen, the yellow curtain room, the shelves I had put up myself last month with a borrowed drill. The space I had made that was mine.

I looked at my reflection in the dark screen of the turned-off television.

Twenty weeks pregnant. Amber eyes. Hair down today, loose around my shoulders. A jaw that did not shake.

Ready, I told my reflection.

CADEN

Ironveil in winter was a different place.

The hills were grey-green under low cloud, the pack roads quiet in the early morning. Elijah Cole met me at the packhouse without warmth but without theatre, which I respected. We were men who could conduct business without needing to like each other. We had proven that over the past two months as the pattern of attacks had made cooperation unavoidable.

He walked me through his territory maps in the east hall. Large table, spread with route markers and incident reports. His Beta stood to the left. Rook stood to my right.

"Three more hits last week," Elijah said, dragging his finger along the map. "Two near the Fell pack, one near Colton's border. Same method, small group, fast, gone before the pack could respond. They're not taking anything. They're just hitting."

"They're measuring response time," I said.

"That's what I thought." He looked at me directly. "Why?"

"Because whoever is planning the next move needs to know how quickly an Alpha can mobilize. They're building a picture of every pack's delay time."

Elijah's jaw was tight. "And then?"

"And then they pick the one with the longest delay. The one that gives them the most time." I looked at the map. The two most heavily marked territories were Ironveil's eastern border and my own southern one. "Which is why both our borders keep showing up."

Silence in the hall.

"You think we're the targets," Elijah said.

"I think we're being softened up for something larger," I said. "Which means we need to fix every gap in both perimeters before whoever this is decides the picture is complete."

Elijah looked at the map for a long time. I watched him calculate, not just the tactical problem but the thing underneath it. The thing every Alpha calculated, always, when the threat became large enough.

His family.

"My wife," he said finally. Not asking. Just saying it aloud.

"Would need to be in the most protected part of the territory until this is resolved," I said. "Yes."

He nodded once.

There was a pause. The kind where something else was sitting in the space that neither of us was saying yet.

Elijah picked up his pen. Tapped it twice on the table. "My daughter is in Ashford."

I went very still.

He did not look at me. "Zara. She's been there seven months. Since…" He stopped. Tapped the pen again. "I want her back in Ironveil."

"If she's outside pack territory…" Rook started.

"She's not in danger there," Elijah said quickly. Firmly. "Ashford is clean. I've checked." A pause. "But if the threat escalates I want her home."

I said nothing.

The map was in front of me and I was looking at it and I was not seeing it.

Seven months.

She had left seven months ago.

I had not let myself track that number. And here it was in the room with me, from her father's mouth, seven months, with a particular weight to it that I could not name.

"I'll have Rook extend the monitoring perimeter south," I said. My voice came out even. "It'll cover the Ashford corridor."

Elijah looked at me then.

His eyes were the same colour as hers. I had not noticed that before. Sharp amber.

"Thank you," he said. Brief, not warm, but genuine.

I nodded.

We went back to the maps.

I did not think about Zara for the rest of the meeting.

I thought about her for the entire drive home.

Rook waited until we were an hour out before he said anything.

"She's in Ashford," he said. "I have an address."

I looked straight ahead.

"Caden."

"I heard you."

"Do you want…"

"Leave it."

Silence.

Twenty minutes later, without discussing it, without planning it, I heard my own voice say:

"Send me the address."

Rook said nothing.

He sent it.

I looked at it once.

Then I put my phone away and watched the road and told myself I was only going to make sure she was safe.

That was all.

That was the only reason.

I almost believed it.