Chapter 23
888 Words
Before Her
Kaia couldn’t breathe for a second.
The photograph trembled slightly between her fingers while the sound of rain hitting the roof overhead blurred into distant static in her ears. She stared at the image, unable to look away from the unmistakable figure standing beside Mira.
Rowan looked younger.
Not dramatically younger, but softer somehow. Less guarded. His arm rested loosely across Mira’s shoulders while she laughed at something outside the frame, both of them caught in the middle of a moment that looked real enough to hurt.
Happy.
Kaia swallowed hard.
The sight of him smiling like that felt strangely intimate, like she’d stumbled across a version of Rowan no one else was supposed to see anymore.
Behind her, the room remained completely silent.
No one tried to explain it.
No one tried to take the photograph away.
Which somehow made it worse.
Slowly, Kaia lifted her eyes from the image to Rowan standing a few feet away from her inside the abandoned office. Rainwater darkened the shoulders of his shirt, droplets sliding slowly from strands of damp hair across his forehead, but he didn’t seem to notice any of it.
His attention stayed fixed on the photograph in her hands.
Not defensive.
Not angry.
Just tired.
A deep, exhausted kind of grief that settled heavily into the room between them.
Kaia’s chest tightened painfully.
“You knew her,” she said quietly.
It wasn’t really a question anymore.
Rowan didn’t answer immediately. His jaw flexed once before he finally nodded.
“Yeah.”
The single word landed harder than Kaia expected.
Something sharp twisted beneath her ribs before she could stop it, an emotion she immediately hated herself for feeling considering everything they had just uncovered. But it was there anyway.
Jealousy.
Not because Mira was dead.
Not because Rowan cared about her.
But because the version of Rowan standing in that photograph looked open in a way Kaia had never fully gotten from him. Like somewhere before all of this, before the secrets and distance and fear, he’d once known how to let someone stand close to him without constantly waiting for the world to rip them away.
Kaia looked back down at the picture again.
“She was important to you.”
Another long silence stretched between them.
Then Rowan finally stepped closer.
Not enough to crowd her.
Just enough that his voice didn’t have to compete with the rain anymore.
“She was my friend,” he said quietly. “One of the only people who kept pushing when things in this pack stopped making sense.”
Kaia listened carefully, watching his face while he spoke.
“She didn’t know how to let things go,” he continued, a faint bitterness mixing with the grief in his voice now. “If something looked wrong, she dug into it until she found the answer, even when people warned her to stop.”
His eyes lowered briefly toward the photograph in Kaia’s hands.
“She thought the pack could still be fixed if the truth came out.”
Kaia felt her throat tighten.
“And you didn’t?”
A humorless laugh escaped Rowan softly, barely audible under the storm outside. “I thought she was going to get herself killed.”
The words settled heavily into the room.
Kaia’s gaze drifted slowly back toward the photograph again, toward the bright smile frozen permanently across Mira’s face.
“She did,” Kaia whispered.
Pain flickered across Rowan’s expression so quickly she almost missed it.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
The abandoned office suddenly felt much smaller than before, the stale air thick with old dust, rust, and memories that clearly never left Rowan no matter how much time passed.
Finally, Kaia lowered the photograph slightly. “Is that why you panicked when I started asking questions?”
Rowan looked at her fully then.
And for the first time since she found him here tonight, there was no anger left in his expression at all. No coldness. No walls.
Only fear.
“I watched this place destroy someone once already,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t going to survive watching it happen to you too.”
The honesty in his voice hit Kaia so hard she actually forgot how to respond for a second.
Because he meant it.
Not as manipulation.
Not as guilt.
Truth.
Everything between them over the last few months suddenly looked different through that lens. Every argument. Every cruel distance he forced between them. Every moment she thought he stopped loving her.
All of it traced back here.
To this building.
To Mira.
Kaia looked down again at the photograph still in her hands, her thumb brushing lightly across the bent edge.
Then something caught her attention.
Her brows pulled together slightly.
“There’s writing on the back.”
Rowan’s expression changed instantly.
Kaia turned the photograph over before he could stop her.
The ink had faded slightly with age, but the handwriting was still readable beneath the dim gray light filtering through the broken wall.
If anything happens to me, check Blackwater.
Kaia stared at the words.
A cold chill crawled slowly down her spine.
“What is Blackwater?” she asked quietly.
Nobody answered.
And somehow that silence was more terrifying than anything else she’d heard tonight.
- Writer
