Her Fractured Crown

Chapter 3 — What Jo Never Told Us

Jane's POV

I haven't seen Jo in nearly four months, which feels wrong the moment I actually sit down and count it — four months since the last time we shared coffee at the same table where she once teased me mercilessly about Xavier, back when all of this was still new enough to feel like gossip instead of governance.

Green Valley greets me the way it always does now, half like coming home and half like stepping back into a version of myself I've mostly outgrown. Dad meets me at the gate personally, older around the eyes than he was a year ago, though something steadier sits in him too, the particular calm of a man who's finally allowed himself to stop bracing for the worst every single morning.

"You look tired," he says, pulling me into a hug that still, somehow, makes me feel seventeen again despite everything.

"I am tired," I admit. "Coalition meetings and cracking seals will do that."

"Your mother's been asking when you'll actually stay long enough for a proper visit, not just a diplomatic stop-through," he says, leading me toward the house. "She's convinced Xavier's keeping you too busy to remember you have a family outside Blood Moon territory."

"Tell her I'm staying three days this time," I say. "Real ones. No meetings, unless something genuinely urgent surfaces."

Dad raises an eyebrow, clearly skeptical of my ability to keep that promise, though he doesn't push it. "Ray and Jo are already here, by the way. Your mother invited them the moment she heard you were coming."

"And Amelia?"

"Due any week now," Dad says, something soft entering his expression. "She sent her love, but Daniel's under strict instructions not to let her travel this close to her time."

I find Ray in the kitchen exactly where I expect her, already deep in conversation with Mom over something involving wedding favors for someone else's upcoming ceremony, the easy domestic chaos of home settling around me the moment I step through the door. Ray catches sight of me and abandons the conversation entirely, pulling me into a hug fierce enough to lift me slightly off my feet.

"You're actually here," she says. "In the flesh. Not a letter, not a messenger, not some hurried five-minute visit between political crises."

"Three whole days," I confirm, laughing despite the exhaustion still sitting heavy behind my eyes. "Where's Jo?"

Something flickers across Ray's expression, quick enough that I almost miss it. "She's upstairs. Said she wasn't feeling well."

"Is she okay?"

"I don't actually know," Ray admits, lowering her voice slightly. "She's been strange for weeks, Jane. Distant. Distracted. I thought it might just be stress — her mate situation's been complicated lately — but honestly, I was hoping you'd have better luck getting her to actually talk about it than I have."

I find Jo curled on the guest bed upstairs, staring at nothing in particular, and the sight of her stops me cold in the doorway. She looks thinner than I remember, dark circles carved deep beneath her eyes, an exhaustion that has nothing to do with ordinary tiredness and everything to do with something she's clearly been carrying alone far too long.

"Jo."

She startles, sitting up too fast, something guilty flashing across her face before she manages to smooth it into something closer to her usual composure. "Jane. I didn't hear you come in."

"Ray says you've been strange for weeks," I say, sitting carefully on the edge of the bed beside her. "You look like you haven't slept properly in longer than that."

"I'm fine," she says, the lie so transparent it barely qualifies as an attempt.

"You've never once been a good liar, Jo. Not even about small things." I take her hand, the gesture more instinctive than calculated. "Tell me what's actually going on."

She's quiet for a long moment, something warring behind her expression before she finally, visibly, gives up trying to hold the wall together. "I found my mate," she says. "Months ago. I never told anyone because—" she stops, breath unsteady. "Because of who he is."

Something cold settles in my stomach, some instinct already reaching toward an answer I don't want confirmed. "Jo. Who is he?"

"His name is Alaric," she says. "He's Thornwood's Beta."

The name lands heavier than I expect — Thornwood, the pack whose Alpha watched me across Corwin's negotiating table with an expression that never fully softened, skepticism sitting deep enough in his features that even a productive afternoon of diplomacy didn't shift it.

"The coalition," I say slowly.

"The coalition," Jo confirms, voice barely above a whisper. "I felt the pull the same week the coalition first started forming, apparently. I didn't understand what it meant until I actually met him — some diplomatic gathering my father dragged me to, trying to smooth over old trade disputes between our packs. The moment I saw him, I knew. And the moment I found out which pack he belonged to, I knew exactly how impossible this was going to be."

"Have you told him? Does he know you're bonded?"

"He knows," she says, tears finally spilling over, the composure she's clearly held together for months cracking fully now that someone's actually asking the right questions. "He felt it too. But Jane, his Alpha specifically joined this coalition because he distrusts your alliance. Distrusts you, specifically, given everything the Rare One represents to packs worried about concentrated power. If Alaric's Alpha ever found out his own Beta was mate-bonded to the Rare One's closest friend—"

"It would look like exactly the kind of manipulation they're already afraid of," I finish, understanding crashing through me all at once. "Not a genuine bond. A calculated infiltration."

"Exactly," Jo says, wiping at her face with the back of her hand. "So I've been hiding it. From everyone. Even Ray, even my own parents, terrified that the moment anyone finds out, it'll either destroy whatever fragile trust the coalition's building with your alliance, or destroy Alaric's standing in his own pack, or both. And every day I don't tell him what I actually want, every day I keep pretending I haven't found what Ray and Amelia both got to have without any of this complication attached—" her voice breaks fully. "I don't know how much longer I can keep doing this, Jane. It's eating me alive."

I pull her into a proper hug, letting her cry against my shoulder the way she never let herself cry in front of anyone else, apparently, for months now. "You should have told me sooner," I say softly. "You didn't have to carry this alone."

"I didn't want to put you in an impossible position," she admits, pulling back slightly. "You're literally negotiating with his Alpha right now, Jane. What was I supposed to do, tell you my personal life was tangled up in the exact political mess you're trying to solve?"

"You were supposed to trust me," I say, though there's no real accusation in it, only gentle correction. "The same way I'm learning to trust Xavier with things that scare me instead of managing them alone. We're not so different from each other right now, Jo. Both of us pretending strength means carrying things by ourselves."

She laughs, wet and unsteady. "When did you get so wise about all this?"

"Six months of marriage and one apocalypse will do that," I say, and she laughs again, more genuine this time, some of the tension finally easing from her shoulders.

"What do I do?" she asks. "About Alaric. About any of it."

I consider the question honestly, turning it over the same careful way I've learned to weigh every decision this past year. "I don't think hiding it is sustainable, Jo. Not for months more, and definitely not once the coalition's oversight structure actually forms and everyone's under more scrutiny than ever. Secrets like this have a way of surfacing at the worst possible moment, usually because someone else decides to reveal them instead of you controlling how and when it happens."

"So I just — tell everyone? Tell Thornwood's Alpha that his own Beta's been secretly bonded to the Rare One's best friend for months?"

"Not everyone. Not yet. But maybe Alaric first, properly, instead of both of you circling around a bond you've apparently both already confirmed feeling. And then, together, figure out how to bring it forward on your own terms, instead of letting fear decide the timing for you." I squeeze her hand. "I learned that lesson the hard way too, you know. Hiding things out of fear just makes the eventual reveal more damaging, not less."

Jo's quiet for a long moment, processing that. "You really think it could work? Given everything happening politically right now?"

"I think," I say carefully, "that a genuine bond between someone in Thornwood's own pack and someone close to our alliance might actually prove something the coalition needs to see — that trust isn't some abstract policy question. That it's built the same way between individual people as it is between entire packs. It's a risk, Jo. I won't pretend otherwise. But I think the alternative — years of hiding, watching him from a distance, pretending you don't feel what you clearly feel — costs you more than the risk does."

She wipes her face fully now, something steadier settling into her expression. "I need to actually talk to him. Really talk, not just the careful, coded conversations we've been having at diplomatic functions where neither of us can say what we actually mean."

"Then talk to him," I say. "And Jo — whatever happens, whatever this coalition eventually decides about our alliance, you're not choosing between me and him. I won't ask you to. Whatever you decide, I'll support it."

She hugs me again, tighter this time, something like relief flooding through the embrace. "Thank you," she whispers. "I've missed you. The real you, not the Luna everyone else gets."

"I've missed being her too," I admit. "It's easy to forget, sometimes, that I'm allowed to just be Jane instead of the Rare One managing an entire political crisis."

We spend the rest of the afternoon in the kitchen with Ray and Mom, the four of us falling into something close to the easy rhythm we shared before any of this began — before Ceremonies and eclipses and coalitions reshaped every single one of our lives into something none of us could have predicted. Jo doesn't share the full truth with Ray yet, not today, though something lighter sits in her by the time evening settles over the valley, the particular relief of no longer carrying a secret entirely alone.

Dad finds me on the back porch after dinner, the same spot where Xavier once proposed, though the memory sits gentler now than it did in the raw uncertainty of that night five days before an apocalypse.

"You handled that well," he says, settling beside me. "Jo told your mother a little of what's happening. Not everything, I don't think, but enough that we understand roughly what's weighing on her."

"It's complicated," I say. "Thornwood's Beta. Right in the middle of everything happening with the coalition."

Dad's quiet for a moment, considering. "Do you think it complicates the negotiations? If it comes out?"

"Maybe," I admit. "Or maybe it proves something important. That trust isn't something you can legislate into existence through oversight councils and formal structures alone. Sometimes it just happens, between two people who have every political reason not to trust each other, and chooses to be real anyway."

"You've grown into quite the philosopher," Dad says, something warm and proud entering his voice. "I remember when your biggest concern was surviving Monday mornings and avoiding Mance at school."

I laugh, the sound catching me by surprise. "Speaking of Mance. Have you heard anything more about him? Ray mentioned he's been gaining standing with one of the smaller coalition packs."

Dad's expression sobers slightly. "I have, actually. Wanted to bring it up while you're here rather than through a messenger." He pauses, choosing his words carefully. "Mance approached the family a few months back. Quietly, through his parents. Apparently he's built genuine standing within Ashenford's broader network — not just posturing, from what I understand, but actual respect from packs frustrated with how things have shifted since the Ceremony."

"What does he actually want?" I ask, though something in me already suspects I know the shape of the answer even before Dad says it.

"Recognition, mostly," Dad says. "He feels — and I think there's some legitimate grievance underneath the parts of this that are still just old wounded pride — that our family's rise coincided with his own family losing standing we never intended to take from them. His father was passed over for a Gamma position two years ago in favor of someone with closer ties to our family, right around the same time everything with you and Xavier started unfolding. Mance believes, not entirely unreasonably, that the connection wasn't coincidental."

"Was it?" I ask, needing to know despite bracing for whatever answer follows.

Dad's quiet for a long moment, something like genuine discomfort crossing his features. "I don't know for certain. Uncle James made that decision, not me. But I won't pretend it's impossible that favoritism played some role I wasn't fully aware of at the time. Politics rarely stays as clean as we'd like to believe, even within our own family."

The admission sits heavy between us, an uncomfortable truth I hadn't expected to reckon with tonight. "So Mance has a real grievance," I say slowly. "Not just wounded pride over me rejecting him years ago."

"I think it's both, if I'm honest," Dad says. "But yes. A real one, underneath everything else. Which means, if this coalition situation continues escalating, he's likely to become a more significant voice than either of us might be comfortable with — not because he's wrong to be frustrated, but because frustration like that has a way of curdling into something less reasonable the longer it goes unaddressed."

I sit with that for a long moment, watching the last light fade fully from the valley, the weight of an entire evening's revelations settling heavy across my shoulders. Jo's hidden bond. Mance's legitimate grievance building toward something more dangerous. The coalition's fear, uneven and complicated, some of it earned and some of it not.

"I should talk to him," I say finally. "Mance. Properly, not through messengers or secondhand reports."

"Are you sure that's wise?" Dad asks. "Given everything else happening?"

"I think ignoring legitimate grievances is exactly the kind of mistake that turns manageable political tension into something worse," I say. "I just spent an entire afternoon telling Jo that hiding things out of fear only makes eventual reveals more damaging. I should probably practice what I'm preaching."

Dad studies me for a long moment, something like renewed pride settling into his weathered features, the same expression Corwin wore yesterday when he told me my father raised me well. "You really have grown into this," he says quietly. "I'm not sure I fully believed it, watching you struggle through the Ceremony and everything after. But watching you now—" he shakes his head, something thick in his voice. "I'm proud of you, Jane. More than I know how to properly say."

"Thank you, Dad," I say, leaning into him the way I used to as a girl, before wolves and mates and ancient prophecies reshaped every corner of my life into something so much larger than Monday mornings and school friendships. "I couldn't have done any of it without you and Mom teaching me what actually matters, underneath all the politics."

We sit together as the stars emerge fully over Green Valley, the quiet, ordinary comfort of home settling around both of us despite everything still unresolved — Jo's bond, Mance's grievance, the coalition's fear, the seal's uneven containment somewhere far beneath a mountain none of us have properly investigated yet.

Tomorrow, I think, watching the darkness settle fully over the valley that raised me, I'll write to Mance. Properly. Honestly. Whatever this coalition eventually decides about my family's power, I won't let old wounds fester unaddressed simply because confronting them feels harder than continuing to avoid them.

Some lessons, I'm learning, apply just as much to the people closest to you as they do to entire fracturing worlds.