Shadows & Secrets

Chapter 11

"All right," Marcus said. "Now that we've committed to a low-grade insurrection against my Alpha, can we please talk about something normal for ten minutes before we have to shift again?"

"Define normal."

"I'll tell you about how Liam keeps trying to get Rylan to admit that the equipment fight this morning was actually his fault and not Rylan's."

"That's not normal, that's just gossip."

"Gossip is a form of normal."

She let him talk. He had a gift for it—the ability to take a low-stakes interpersonal observation and spin it into ten minutes of genuinely entertaining narrative, complete with voices and reconstructed dialogue.

By the time Mikhail signaled that they were shifting back to wolf form, Aurora's shoulders had unclenched a degree, and she was reminded again that whatever was waiting for her at the end of this run, she was not facing it alone.

It mattered. More than she had words for.

They covered another seventy miles before nightfall and made camp in a stand of old hemlocks three miles from the formal boundary of Bloodmoon territory.

Dawn would see them crossing into Bloodmoon.

Alpha Damien would be waiting.

–

The team set up the practiced rhythm of an Order camp—watch rotations assigned, perimeter walked, the small fire built into the shallow pit that any wolf who knew what to look for could identify as the signature of Order travel.

The night was cool but not cold.

Aurora requested the second watch, putting her purposely awake in the deep middle of the night when most camps were quietest and most operatives slept hardest.

The best for uninterrupted thought.

She walked the perimeter slowly.

Halfway through her circuit, she became aware that she was not alone in being awake.

Mikhail was sitting on a fallen log at the edge of the firelight, exactly the way he always sat when he wanted to be available without seeming to seek anyone out.

He was not looking at her. He had not turned when she approached. But he had registered her, the way an Alpha registered everything within his perimeter, and his stillness was the stillness of a man making space for a conversation if one was wanted.

She considered walking past him.

She considered keeping the silence between them clean.

Then she remembered Marcus's voice that morning “if you're asking whether my judgment is compromised, the answer is no” and the specific quality of Mikhail's face when he had not answered the question Aurora had asked him in the briefing room.

She walked to the log.

"Mind if I sit?"

"Please."

She sat. They did not look at each other. They looked at the fire.

"You're quiet tonight," he said.

"I'm always quiet on the second watch."

"You're quieter than usual."

She let that land without immediately responding. Then: "I asked you something this morning that you didn't fully answer. I'm wondering if you'd like to try again now that we're not in front of the team."

He didn't speak for a long moment. When he did, his voice was lower than it had been in the briefing room, and softer in a way that was not necessarily reassuring.

"There are things I'm not at liberty to share yet," he said. "Some of that is Council confidence. Some of it is my own judgment about what serves the mission. I am aware that the gap between those two categories looks the same from your side."

"It does."

"I know."

She watched the fire shift. "Mikhail. I have served under you for four years. I have followed orders I didn't understand and trusted that the understanding would come later when it could. I have a long track record of being patient with the parts of this job that require patience."

She paused. "What I am asking you tonight is not for the secrets you're not at liberty to share. What I am asking you for is the courtesy of being told when I'm being kept in the dark deliberately, so that I can calibrate my own decisions accordingly."

He turned his head then, just enough to look at her properly. His amber eyes in the firelight had that careful quality again. But there was something else in them too—something almost like regret.

"You are being kept in the dark deliberately," he said. "About one specific thing. I cannot tell you what it is, not yet, and I cannot tell you when I will be able to. What I can tell you is that the decision to keep you in the dark was not mine alone, and that it was made by people who care about your wellbeing." A pause. "I know that is not satisfying."

"It isn't."

"I know."

They sat with that for a long moment.

"Can I ask one more question?" she said.

"You can ask."

"Is what you're not telling me going to make me unsafe at Bloodmoon?"

He thought about that one for a long time. Long enough that she began to suspect he was choosing the answer with the kind of care that meant he was telling the precise truth rather than the convenient one.

"No," he said finally. "What I'm not telling you is not going to make you unsafe at Bloodmoon. Bloodmoon is the safest place you could be right now, given the circumstances. That is part of why we are going there."

She turned her head sharply to look at him. "Given the circumstances?"

"That's all I can say, Aurora."

"That's quite a lot, actually."

"I know."

She stood up slowly. Her watch was not over, and she had a perimeter to finish walking, and she was not going to use this conversation to pretend that any of the larger questions had been resolved when in fact only one of them had been clarified and several more had just opened.