Chapter 14 – His Anger Is Not For Show
1346 Words
Dawn comes gray and cold, dragging a headache with it.
By the time I make it to the patrol staging area, the clearing is already a tangle of movement—wolves shrugging into jackets, checking weapons, stretching sore muscles. Breath hangs white over the circle where we tried to break each other yesterday.
Rowan stands near the map board, arms folded, listening to Jarik rattle off assignments. He looks like he hasn’t slept, but there’s nothing sluggish in the way his gaze tracks every movement.
Jarik finishes, claps a hand to Rowan’s shoulder, and peels away with a team. Brynn peels off with another. No one has called my name.
I clear my throat. “I was told I’d be on patrol today.”
Rowan’s eyes find mine, flat and unreadable.
“Change of plans,” he says. “Walk with me.”
It’s becoming a habit—him tossing those three words over his shoulder and expecting me to obey. More annoyingly, I do.
He leads me away from the bustle, toward the narrow path that winds behind his house, up a small rise overlooking the treeline. From here, the whole territory spreads below: the clearing, the smoke, flickers of movement between trunks further out where patrols fan.
He doesn’t speak until we’re out of easy earshot. When he does, the sharpness in his voice makes the hairs on my arms lift.
“What, exactly,” he says, “did you think you were doing last night?”
I blink. “Eating. Breathing. Answering questions I’ve avoided for six years.”
“Don’t,” he snaps. “Don’t play smart with me.”
Anger radiates off him, a hot, controlled thrum. Not the wild, messy rage of a slighted boy. The cold, precise fury of an alpha who’s counted every risk before deciding to be angry.
“You stood in my hall,” he says, “in front of my wolves and yours, and you rewrote a story they’ve been telling for years. You didn’t warn me. You didn’t ask what it would do to them. To you. To us.”
I stiffen. “I thought you wanted the truth.”
“I want control,” he bites out. “Over when and how that truth is used.”
“What was I supposed to do?” I demand. “Smile and say it was all a misunderstanding? That the moon made a clerical error and Daddy fixed it?”
His eyes flash, green gone almost feral. “You were supposed to think. Not bleed in front of a room full of wolves who can smell weakness ten miles out.”
“I’m not weak,” I say.
“No,” he agrees. “You’re dangerous. There’s a difference.”
The words land like blows. I wrap my arms tighter around myself, more to keep from flying apart than from the chill.
“You asked why your pack hates you,” he continues. “You gave them better reasons. You think admitting you were wrong makes you noble. To them, it just confirms the story: their leaders played gods with bonds and lives, and now every wolf who ever got thrown out can put your face on that.”
“I know,” I say, throat tight. “I heard it in their breathing.”
“And mine?” he asks. “Did you think about what it would do to hear that out loud? To have every set of ears in that room turned toward us when you said my fear mattered more than his life?”
Silence drops heavy between us.
Truth is, I hadn’t thought that far. Not really. I’d thought about Garin’s eyes, about Brynn’s flint gaze, about the pups who would grow up on lies if I didn’t crack the shell.
I hadn’t thought about Rowan’s lungs taking that confession in, the way mine did.
“I’m—” The word snags on my tongue. I force it out anyway. “I’m sorry. Not because it hurt you. Because I didn’t think about how it would hurt you now.”
He studies my face like he’s trying to decide whether that nuance matters.
“It was easier,” he says slowly, “when you were just the villain in my story. When I could point at the memory of you and say: that’s what killed me. That’s why I left. That’s why I don’t owe them anything.”
He looks away, jaw working.
“Last night,” he continues, voice rough, “you made them see the girl behind the crown. And you made me remember that girl was scared. Not just cruel.”
“Both,” I say. “I was both.”
His laugh is harsh. “Congratulations. You’re human.”
“I’m a wolf,” I snap. “Same as you.”
“Exactly my point.”
He steps closer, enough that his aura brushes mine, that old half‑healed thread between us giving a faint, treacherous tug.
“I am angry,” he says quietly. “At what you did then. At what you did last night. At how you keep opening doors I promised myself I’d nail shut.”
My heart stutters. “If you want me to stop, say it.”
He barks a short, humorless laugh. “You think it’s that easy? That I can just command you not to be yourself and you’ll fold?”
His eyes search mine, some of the sharpness bleeding into something more desperate.
“I need you to understand something, Lyris,” he says. “My pack trusts me because I don’t let my wounds call the shots. I can’t afford to fall apart every time you breathe near an old scar.”
“I haven’t asked you to fall apart,” I say, softer.
“No,” he says. “You’ve asked me to stand next to the woman who put me on the floor and believe she won’t do it again.”
There it is. The real fear.
“I won’t,” I say. “Not like that. Not ever again.”
“How do you know?” he fires back. “How do I?”
“Because I’m not nineteen anymore,” I say. “Because I’ve held wolves while they died for my father’s pride. Because I know what fear looks like now, and I’m tired of letting it write my choices.”
I take a breath that feels like it might tear me in half.
“And because,” I add, “if I hurt you like that again, I won’t walk away from it either.”
His gaze locks on mine. The bond thread hums, low and insistent, like a distant drum.
For a long, aching heartbeat, neither of us looks away.
Then he exhales, some of the tension leaking from his shoulders.
“I am still angry,” Rowan says. “Don’t mistake this for forgiveness.”
“I’m not,” I say. “I’m just… glad you’re angry here, with me, instead of out there, alone.”
Something flickers in his eyes at that—surprise, maybe. Or recognition.
He huffs out a breath, half laugh, half surrender.
“Come on,” he says, turning back toward the clearing. “If you’re going to bleed for this pack, better we do it on patrol than over stew.”
He pauses, glancing back over his shoulder.
“And Lyris?” he adds. “Next time you decide to rip the mask off in front of my wolves—warn me. I like to know when I’m about to watch my own story get rewritten.”
Despite everything, my mouth quirks.
“I’ll put it on the schedule,” I say.
His eyes roll, but the corner of his mouth lifts.
“Smartass,” he mutters.
He starts down the path. My wolf stretches, then lopes to follow.
Not forgiven.
Not safe.
But, for the first time, walking at his side instead of just in his shadow.
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