ThorneVale

chapter eighteen

Ines had left a message at the house while Wren was out, an old fashioned habit that Wren had come to appreciate, a handwritten note tucked into the doorframe asking her to stop by the historical society when she had a chance, something about an old clipping worth seeing.

Wren went the next morning, curiosity outweighing the mild unease that any summons from Ines these days seemed to carry with it.

"I found something while I was reorganizing the archive," Ines said, once Wren was settled across the desk from her, sliding over a brittle, yellowed newspaper clipping considerably older than the others Wren had already seen. "This is from almost sixty years ago. Different Alpha, different generation, but I think you'll recognize the pattern."

The clipping described a death, ruled accidental, of a young woman connected to the Ferro family, the language eerily similar to the more recent articles Wren had already read. But it was the smaller detail, buried in the final paragraph, that made something cold settle in Wren's chest.

The woman had shown symptoms, in the weeks before her death, described by a family member in the article as a wasting illness. Fatigue. Persistent cold. A doctor at the time had apparently suspected some undiagnosed condition and been unable to identify a cause.

"That's the wane," Wren said quietly. "She was rejected too. Before whatever happened to her."

"That's what I thought, when I found this." Ines's expression had gone grave. "I don't think this pattern is coincidence, Wren. I think whoever's behind these deaths has been tracking rejected bonds specifically, for at least three generations. Watching for exactly the kind of vulnerability you're currently living through."

"Which means they knew, decades ago, that rejection creates a window. A window where the mate is vulnerable, exposed, and the Alpha is too afraid or too careful to protect them properly because he's spent all his energy trying to keep his distance." Wren felt the pieces settling into a shape that made a grim kind of sense. "The rejection isn't just failing to protect the mate. It's actively making them easier to find and easier to kill."

"I think that's exactly right." Ines nodded slowly. "Which is a hard thing to hand you, I know, especially now that things seem to be shifting between you and Callum. But I think it matters that you understand the mechanism as clearly as possible. Not to frighten you further, but because I suspect knowing exactly how this pattern has worked before might be useful, going forward, in whatever the two of you decide to do about it."

Wren sat with the old clipping in her hands, the brittle paper a physical reminder of a woman decades gone, killed by a danger that had apparently repeated itself with grim, mechanical patience across generations without anyone in Thornevale ever quite managing to break the cycle.

"I need to show this to Callum," she said finally. "And Marcus. If this is a pattern they've been tracking, they need to know the wane itself might be the thing making all of this possible in the first place. Not just an unfortunate side effect, but part of how the Circle operates."

"I agree." Ines reached across the desk, closing her hand briefly over Wren's, the same gesture of quiet support she'd offered weeks earlier when Wren had first started to fall apart in this same building. "You're doing something brave, you know. Staying, digging into this instead of running back to your old life the moment things got frightening. Your aunt would be proud of you for that, I think."

The mention of Rosalind landed with unexpected weight, and Wren found herself blinking back a sudden, surprising sting of tears. "You knew her well."

"Well enough to know she'd have wanted you to see this through, rather than running from it." Ines's smile was gentle, tinged with old grief of her own. "She believed, very firmly, that some things were worth the risk of loving them. I imagine you've found that note in the drawer by now."

Wren had, and the memory of it, her aunt's looping handwriting on the back of an old photograph, settled into new significance now, a piece of guidance left behind by a woman who'd apparently understood more about Thornevale's dangers, and its worth, than Wren had realized.

She left the historical society with the old clipping carefully folded into her bag, alongside the earlier folder of more recent history, and walked toward the pack house with a new, clarifying sense of purpose. Whatever came next, she wasn't going to face it as someone waiting passively to be protected.

She was going to be part of breaking whatever pattern had cost three generations of women their lives before her.