Unclaimed Bonds

Chapter 14

Fractures

The call came in the late afternoon, just as the light over the Silver Ridge forests was beginning to turn gold.

Lila was in the library again, the one place in the pack house that still felt relatively private. She had a pack history open on the table in front of her, though she had stopped reading pages ago. The broken bond had been quiet for most of the day—only a low, manageable ache—and she was trying to enjoy the stillness while it lasted. When her phone buzzed against the wood, she almost ignored it. Then she saw the name on the screen.

Mom.

For a long moment she simply stared at it. The phone rang three more times before she picked it up and answered.

“Lila?” Her mother’s voice was tight, strained, as if she had been holding herself together for weeks and the effort was finally showing. “Is that you? Are you all right?”

Lila closed her eyes. “I’m fine.”

“You’re fine?” A short, broken laugh came through the speaker. “You disappeared in the middle of the night. You climbed out a window. You left your phone location off and drove into another territory without a word. Kane has been losing his mind. Marcus has been trying to keep the pack from escalating. And you just say you’re fine?”

The words landed harder than Lila expected. She had known, in a distant way, that her absence would cause damage. She had simply not allowed herself to look at it directly. Hearing it in her mother’s voice made the abstract concrete.

“I couldn’t stay,” Lila said. Her own voice came out quieter than she intended. “Not after what I saw.”

There was a long silence on the other end. When her mother spoke again, the anger had softened into something more exhausted. “I know what you saw. Kane told us. Sienna told a different version. The whole house has been a war zone since that night. But running away to Silver Ridge? Living under another Alpha’s roof while the packs are already on edge? Lila, do you understand what that looks like?”

“I didn’t do it to make a political statement.”

“That doesn’t matter. It still is one.” Her mother drew a shaky breath. “Marcus is trying to be patient. He understands you were hurt. But Kane is… not handling this well. And Sienna is making everything worse by pretending she’s the victim. I need you to come home. Just for a conversation. Please.”

Lila stared out the library window at the dark line of the trees. The request was reasonable on the surface. A conversation. A chance to explain herself to the people she had left behind. But the thought of walking back into the Blackwood mansion—of smelling the same hallways, of possibly seeing the guest room door—made her stomach tighten.

“I’m not ready,” she said.

“Then when will you be ready? After the packs start formally arguing over you? After someone gets hurt because tempers are running too high? You’re not just a girl who left home, Lila. You’re a she-wolf with a broken mate bond living under the protection of a rival Alpha. That has consequences whether you want them or not.”

The truth of it sat heavy in Lila’s chest. She had been so focused on her own pain and the thin comfort of revenge that she had pushed the wider fallout to the edges of her mind. Hearing it laid out so plainly made the fractures in everything she had left behind feel suddenly visible.

“I’ll think about it,” she said finally.

Her mother was quiet for a moment. “That’s not a no.”

“It’s not a yes either. I need time.”

“You’ve had weeks.”

“And I needed every one of them.” Lila’s free hand curled into a fist on the table. “I’ll call you when I decide. Don’t send anyone after me. Please.”

She ended the call before her mother could argue further. The silence that followed felt louder than the conversation. Lila set the phone face-down on the table and pressed both hands over her face. The broken bond gave a slow, unhappy throb, as if it too had been listening.

She was still sitting like that when Ronan appeared in the doorway. He took one look at her expression and came in, closing the door quietly behind him.

“Your mother,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

Lila nodded. “She wants me to come back. For a conversation. She says the packs are getting restless. That my being here is making everything worse.”

Ronan pulled out the chair across from her and sat. “Is that what you think?”

“I think I didn’t consider how far the damage would spread when I left.” She dropped her hands and looked at him. “I was just trying to survive the night. Then I was trying to hurt Kane the way he hurt me. I didn’t stop to think about my mother. Or Marcus. Or what it would look like to everyone else.”

“You’re allowed to put your own survival first,” Ronan said. “Especially right after a bond breaks. That kind of pain doesn’t leave room for careful politics.”

“Maybe it should have.” Lila leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. “She sounded tired. Like she’s been holding the whole house together by herself. And Kane is still pushing. And Sienna is still there, twisting everything. I left all of that behind and called it self-preservation. From here it just looks like I made the fractures deeper.”

Ronan was quiet for a while. When he spoke, his voice was measured. “You can feel responsible for the consequences without accepting blame for the original break. Kane and Sienna created the wound. You’re dealing with the aftermath the best way you can. Those are not the same thing.”

Lila let out a slow breath. “She wants me to come home long enough to talk. Officially. With Marcus present, I think.”

“Do you want to?”

“I don’t know.” The admission felt raw. “Part of me thinks I should. Face it. Stop hiding. Another part of me feels sick at the idea of walking back into that house. The guest wing is still there. The doorway is still there. I’m not sure I can stand in those halls without feeling the bond snap all over again.”

Ronan nodded once, accepting the honesty without trying to fix it. “You don’t have to decide today. Or tomorrow. When and if you do decide to go, you won’t go alone unless you want to. I’ll take you myself, or I’ll wait at the border, or I’ll stay here. Whatever makes it possible for you.”

The quiet certainty in his offer settled something restless in her chest. Lila looked at him—at the calm patience that never seemed to run out, at the way he consistently refused to turn her pain into a demand—and felt the new bond between them pulse warm and steady in answer.

“I’ll think about it,” she said again, and this time the words felt less like a deflection and more like a promise to herself.

That night the conversation with her mother replayed in fragments while she tried to sleep. The strain in her mother’s voice. The reminder that her absence had weight beyond her own grief. The uncomfortable truth that revenge and self-protection had both left cracks in places she hadn’t been watching.

Near midnight she gave up on sleep and went downstairs. The pack house was dark and quiet. She found Ronan in the kitchen, as if he had expected her, two mugs of tea already waiting on the island. They sat side by side without speaking for a long time.

“I’m afraid if I go back, even for a conversation, everything I’ve started to build here will crack,” Lila said eventually. “And I’m afraid if I don’t go back, the cracks I left behind will get worse.”

Ronan turned his mug slowly between his hands. “Both of those things can be true at the same time. Fear doesn’t always give you a clean option.”

“What would you do?”

“I’d wait until the fear of staying away became heavier than the fear of going back,” he said. “And then I’d go with someone I trusted at my back.”

Lila looked at him in the low light of the kitchen. The new bond pulsed once, quiet and sure. She reached across the small space between them and laced her fingers through his.

“When I decide,” she said, “I’ll tell you first.”

Ronan’s hand tightened gently around hers. “I’ll be here.”

Outside the kitchen windows the forest was black and still. Somewhere beyond it, in Blackwood territory, her mother was probably still awake too, waiting for a decision Lila was not yet ready to make. The fractures were real. The damage was real. But for the first time since the phone call, Lila felt like she might eventually be strong enough to face them—on her own terms, and not alone.