Chapter 15
897 Words
"They could hear things other wolves couldn't," Kiyiya said.
"Feel things."
"Dream differently."
Aurora thought of the frequency.
The pull beneath the earth.
The strange certainty she'd felt the instant she'd crossed Bloodmoon's border.
She hadn't imagined any of it.
She'd been recognized.
"And that frightened people."
Damien's eyes held hers.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"They carried the mate bond differently."
Silence.
"It wasn't merely emotional. It affected the balance of power between packs in ways the Council couldn't control."
Aurora's stomach tightened.
"The Council was afraid."
"They were."
"Afraid enough to what?"
Neither Damien nor Kiyiya answered immediately.
Finally Kiyiya spoke.
"Long before either of us were born, the Council made a decision."
Her voice was steady.
"Not publicly. Not by formal decree. But the work was done all the same."
She held Aurora's gaze.
"The Silverveils were hunted."
A long pause.
"Quietly."
"Thoroughly."
"In the name of stability," Damien finished.
Aurora didn't move.
"The Council exterminated them?"
Damien never looked away.
"They tried." The words settled over the room.
The fire cracked softly in the hearth.
Somewhere downstairs, a child laughed before being gently hushed.
The sound was painfully ordinary.
Aurora stared into the flames.
The first draft of her life—orphan, found, adopted, trained, useful—shifted inside her all at once, its edges loosening beneath the pressure of a truth that had been waiting years for language.
She looked back at Damien.
"How do you know all this?"
His expression changed.
For the first time since she'd entered the room, something heavier than composure crossed his face.
Regret.
"Because my line failed yours once."
Silence.
Not empty this time.
Heavy.
Aurora held his gaze.
Neither of them looked away.
Kiyiya broke the quiet.
"The question that matters now isn't only what Mikhail knows."
Aurora looked toward her.
"It's what was kept from you."
She paused.
"And why."
"You think there was a reason."
"I think there was fear."
Kiyiya folded her hands together.
"And fear can produce both cruelty and protection."
A faint sadness entered her voice.
"Sometimes in the very same choice."
Aurora looked toward the window.
Outside, evening settled over Bloodmoon.
The forest stood motionless beneath fading gold light.
She could still feel the quiet resonance humming beneath the land.
Silverveil.
The word moved through her again.
Less like an impact now.
More like something opening.
She turned back.
"My mother."
Her voice was quieter than before.
"Was she Silverveil?"
Damien answered without hesitation.
"Yes."
Aurora swallowed.
"What was her name?"
Damien's composure slipped just enough for grief to show through.
"Celeste."
Aurora went completely still.
The name passed through her differently than Silverveil had.
Silverveil had been recognition.
This was something else.
Something warmer.
Something infinitely sadder.
Her mother had a name.
Not an idea.
Not a ghost.
Not a story someone else had chosen to erase.
A name.
She closed her eyes for only a heartbeat.
When she opened them again, the room hadn't changed.
But nothing inside her was the same.
Kiyiya saw it. Rose. Came closer, but not too close.
"She was born of the line," Kiyiya said. "And hidden, for a time, among allied wolves farther inland. We believe she met your father there. We know they tried to stay out of sight. We know they had you." Her expression shifted, sorrow threading through its steadiness. "And we know the people hunting Silverveils found them."
Aurora closed her eyes briefly.
Not long enough to lose the room. Just long enough to keep herself in it.
When she opened them again, Damien was watching her with the expression of a man who understood that a life could split cleanly into before and after on the strength of a single conversation.
"How old was I," she asked.
"Seven," he said.
The same age she'd always been told.
Only now it meant something different.
Not a child who wandered out of nowhere.
A child who survived something.
"Who brought me to Emerald Forest," she said.
That was the question neither of them answered immediately.
Aurora felt the hesitation before she saw it, knew Marcus register it too.
Finally, Damien said, "That part, I think, should come from Mikhail."
Aurora's gaze sharpened. "Why."
"Because whatever his choices were, the answer to that question belongs to him."
The room went quiet again.
Aurora held his gaze for a long moment.
It was clear to her he wasn't protecting Mikhail. He was drawing a line around one piece of the truth and insisting that the man who had carried it this long speak it himself.
Which meant the answer mattered and his role in her story began earlier than she'd thought.
She straightened. "Then I'll hear it from him," she said.
Damien nodded once.
But Kiyiya spoke before the silence could settle again.
"Not all at once," she said quietly. "Don't let every truth arrive in the same hour if you can help it. Some of them need room to land before the next one comes."
Aurora almost said she didn't have that luxury.
Then she realized Kiyiya wasn't offering comfort.
She was offering strategy.
And that, somehow, was better.
Aurora didn't go to Mikhail that night.
She considered walking straight from the west study to his quarters. Considered forcing the next answer out into the open before sleep could complicate it. However, Kiyiya's advice stayed with her on the walk back upstairs.
- Writer
