Jaded

Chapter Thirteen

Jade awoke first, the faint light of dawn painting soft hues across the room. Luca was still asleep, his warm body a comforting presence pressed against her back, his arm a heavy, possessive weight around her waist. For a few precious moments, she simply lay there, reveling in the quiet intimacy, the lingering warmth of the night before. Then, with a soft sigh, she eased herself out of his embrace, careful not to wake him, and quietly closed the bedroom door behind her.

She padded on bare feet into the kitchen, the cool tile a welcome sensation against her skin. The coffee pot was already prepared, a silent testament to her thoughtful mate, and she set it to brewing, the rich aroma filling the air. As she waited, her gaze drifted out the kitchen window, toward the main house. Even at this early hour, the grounds buzzed with activity.

Employees were already hard at work, bustling about, preparing the sprawling mansion for the Winter Moon Ball tonight. A wave of relief washed over her. She couldn't be more thankful that she was already bonded, already claimed. The thought of facing the pack tonight, of having to navigate the complexities of a new bond, of being mated to a stranger, or worse, a wolf from the Winter Moon pack with no loyalty, no capacity for love… it was a chilling prospect she was spared.

Her hip leaned against the cool granite counter as she stared out the window, the warmth of her coffee mug seeping into her skin. A light knock sounded at her front door. Moving the few steps, she opened it to find Roman standing just outside, a wicked grin already firmly in place.

"Good morning," he greeted, striding inside as she closed the door behind him, his confidence radiating.

"I figured you would have been the last one smiling today," Jade replies, closing the door behind him.

He shrugged a shoulder, already moving to the cabinet where she kept her whiskey. She sipped her coffee as he poured himself a generous glass. "You and Luca being mates surpasses me having to go through the bullshit of finding mine," he continued, his tone laced with a familiar, cynical humor. "If I am lucky," he added, "I will avoid her for another year."

Jade chuckled, shaking her head as he turned to her, his glass held aloft.

She frowned into her cup, a shadow crossing her features.

"Did I say something wrong?" he murmured.

She stared into her cup a moment longer, the coffee swirling. "I won't be a beta."

That was all she needed to say. Roman understood immediately. He had known for a very long time that Jade craved the freedom of the field, the thrill of the hunt, the chance to prove herself not as Walter’s adopted, spoiled stray, but as the fierce, capable warrior she truly was. The pack, so quick to see her as a delicate doll, fragile and submissive, had no idea of the ruthlessness that lay beneath the surface, the blood on her hands that only he, Walter, and Luca, knew about. Walter had gone to extraordinary lengths to maintain this carefully crafted image of her, ensuring that her more… intense methods of interrogation were kept discreet, with only Roman or Luca present, and a few trusted guards outside, unaware of the true extent of her involvement.

"But," Jade added, pulling Roman from his thoughts, "Luca promised that he would not confine me here."

Roman narrowed his amber gaze, a reflection of his father's piercing stare. "Are you sure he is going to allow you to be on the patrols?" Roman knew exactly how protective Luca was of Jade, a protectiveness that rivaled Walter's, if not surpassed it.

Jade smirked, a glint in her eye. "If he doesn't," she said, her voice laced with a dangerous confidence, "I know how to make his life a living hell."

Roman barked a laugh, because he knew, with absolute certainty, that she could. He remembered a prank they'd played as teenagers – he had promised to take her to follow the scouts on patrol one night, but instead, he led her to a secluded cove. When she realized she had been tricked, she spent an entire week making him pay for it, subtly at first, hiding his keys to make him late, then escalating to throwing his clothes in the pool when he had a date. He had never pranked her again.

"We all should have expected it," Roman finally said, leaning on the counter, his whiskey glass held loosely in his hand. "I mean, it should have been so obvious."

Jade sipped her coffee, her gaze drifting back out the window. "I think Walter knew all along."

Roman smirked, lifting his glass to his lips. "Walter knows everything."

Jade couldn't argue with that. "Tonight is going to be awful," she said, lowering her cup.

Roman looked to her, his brow furrowed in confusion. "What do you mean?"

Jade glanced back to Roman, her expression serious. "The pack is going to have a fit when they find out the future Alpha is mated with me. You know good and well, the Hollow Pack has been pinning all their hopes on their Alpha's daughter, Aurora, to be Luca's mate. She has been in love with him since we were kids and still claims him as her first and only love."

Roman snorted, waving a dismissive hand. "That freak? That's a joke."

Jade tightened her lips at Roman's harsh assessment. "That is not kind to say, Roman."

He shook his head, his expression firm. "No, it is the truth. She stalked him for a year after first meeting him. Sent him her strands of hair. She even went as far to sneak into his room and waited for him to show up." Jade remembered all of it, the invasive, unsettling displays of affection.

"Be that as it may—" Jade started, but Roman interrupted her, pointing his glass at her like a conductor’s baton.

"Don't start that saintly bullshit with me, Jade," he fussed.

"You know… She and I share a birthday."

Roman's eyes widened in sudden realization, a playful horror dawning on his face. "Jade! Shut the f**k up! Don't you dare finish that sentence!"

Jade, with a triumphant smirk, said it anyway. "She turns twenty-one today, too."

Roman growled, a mock threat, while he sat his glass to the counter, as Jade chuckled and darted away from him, leading him on a chase through the kitchen, their laughter echoing through the still morning air.

Roman caught Jade from behind, his arms locking around her waist like a vice, and lifted her clean off the floor. Her feet pedaled air.

"Take it back!" His voice boomed off the kitchen tile, half-laugh, half-demand, as her laughter pitched higher and higher until it threatened to crack the ceiling.

"Never!" she screamed between gasps, twisting in his grip, her elbow finding his ribs. The fight was sloppy, graceless, the kind of wrestling that only came from years of knowing exactly where each other's bruises lived. Roman stumbled backward, taking her with him, and they crashed through the doorway into the living room—a tangle of limbs and breathless cursing.

The bedroom door flew open.

Luca stood in the mouth of the hallway in nothing but his briefs, dark hair a riot from sleep, his chest still carrying the red lines her nails had left hours ago. His eyes were wild—that half-second of pure predator before his brain caught up with what he was seeing.

Jade, suspended in Roman's arms, laughing. Roman, grinning like an i***t, holding her like a sack of flour.

Luca's scowl could have curdled milk.

"Give someone a f*****g heart attack, why don't you?" He dragged a hand through his hair, making it worse. The adrenaline bleed was visible in the set of his shoulders, the way his hands still twitched at his sides. He had been ready to kill something. Instead he found his mate giggling in his brother's arms.

Roman dropped Jade like she was on fire. Both hands went up, palms out, the picture of innocence. "Okay, Buff Daddy! Put the guns away!"

Luca's response was immediate and anatomical—a single pointed gesture before he turned and stalked back down the hall, presumably to find the sweatpants he had abandoned sometime around 2 AM.

Jade's laughter followed him. He didn't turn around, but she caught the hitch in his stride. The almost-smile he was fighting.

---

The kitchen smelled like bacon and coffee by the time he reappeared, sweatpants on, hair still a disaster. The cook had outdone himself—a spread that covered the island: eggs scrambled and fried both, a mountain of bacon, toast browned and buttered, pancakes stacked high enough to be structurally questionable.

Jade was already halfway through a strip of bacon when he sat down. She pointed the remaining end at Roman. "Tell me about the patrol to the caves." The shift in her voice was immediate—the playfulness draining out, replaced by something sharper. A blade sliding from its sheath.

"Where Lucian's holed up," she clarified. "You said they haven't picked up any sign of movement."

Roman leaned back, hooked an ankle over his knee, and wrapped his fingers around the whiskey he had poured himself. Breakfast liquor. Their father's influence.

"They're dug in deep," he said. "Deep enough that our normal scouts would've walked right past them. But Walter's chem guy cooked up a compound that masks our scent completely. Wiped our signature off the air like it never existed." He took a sip, let it settle. "We've been running rotations past their position for six days now. Sat on the ridge above their cave system for twelve hours straight yesterday. They've got no idea we're even in the same territory."

Jade absorbed that, her jaw working through a bite of pancake. "Thermal? Audio?"

"Thermal shows seven bodies consistent. Audio's trickier—cave echoes distort everything—but we caught snippets of what sounded like a council meeting two nights ago. Eight distinct voices arguing. Couldn't make out the words, but the tone was..." He paused, searching for the right word. "Desperate."

"Good." She reached for another piece of bacon. "Desperate makes them sloppy."

Luca watched her from across the table, silent. His coffee sat untouched, growing cold.

She was good at this. The way she pulled information—precise questions, no wasted words, processing Roman's answers while already planning the next move. She'd learned it from Walter, sure, but there was something innate in the way she dissected a situation. A mind that saw patterns before they fully formed.

He remembered the promise he had made her. The words that had fallen out of him in the heat of a moment, when his blood was up and his judgment was clouded by the taste of her skin.

"You will not be chained here. That much I can promise you. Once I am Alpha, I am going to want the one person I trust out there, watching my back."

The knot in his stomach tightened.

Across the table, Jade was asking about escape routes, sight lines, probable sniper positions. Roman answered each question with the easy confidence of someone who'd already thought through all of them. They worked like a unit—brother and sister, yes, but also soldier and strategist.

Luca couldn't imagine letting her walk into danger. Couldn't imagine the moment the ground gave way, or an ambush sprang, or a bullet found her before he could reach her. The thought made his chest feel like it was caving in.

But he also couldn't imagine looking her in the eye and telling her she wasn't ready.

Because she was.

More than any wolf in this pack. More than half the men he'd fought beside. She was sharp and ruthless and she thought three moves ahead while everyone else was still figuring out the first one. Denying her this wouldn't protect her. It would diminish her.

And she would never forgive him for it.

He picked up his coffee. Took a sip. It was bitter and cold.

Jade glanced at him—just a flicker of those pale green eyes—and something passed between them. A question. A check-in.

He gave her the smallest nod.

She turned back to Roman. Kept talking strategy.

But under the table, her foot found his ankle. Resting there. Light. A tether.

He didn't move it away.

The knowledge settled in Luca's chest like a stone he had swallowed. Not yet Alpha. Still just the future Alpha, still bound by his father's decrees, still able to stand here and listen to Jade map out a takedown strategy without having to follow through on his promise.

He was grateful for it. The cowardice of that relief tasted bitter on his tongue.

"Walter will not be making his move right now," Roman said, setting his whiskey down with a definitive clink. "Not until after the ball."

Jade exhaled through her nose. A sound of pure, frustrated acceptance. "I know good and well that he will not allow me to join you." She stabbed a piece of pancake with unnecessary force. "I could apprehend that son of a b***h myself."

The image rose unbidden—Jade in combat gear, moving through those caves like a blade through shadow, finding Lucian before he even knew she was there. Roman's smirk echoed the thought.

"Seeing him eat dirt because of you?" Roman said. "I'd pay good money for that show."

The lightness of the moment was a mask, and they all wore it. But underneath was the marrow of the thing that had shaped them: a man named Lucian who had loved Evelyn with a love that curdled into rot. She had never been his. Her heart had belonged elsewhere, her body had never welcomed his touch the way she had welcomed her true mate's, and Lucian had carried that rejection like a splinter in his soul for ten years before it killed him from the inside out and turned him into something that murdered women in their beds.

Jade's parents had woken to smoke and fire and a man who thought that if he couldn't have Evelyn, no one could.

That was the wound the pack was still bleeding from.

Luca watched Jade clean her plate with mechanical precision—scrape, rinse, stack—and felt the weight of everything he hadn't told her press against his ribs like a second skeleton.

Roman pushed back from the table. "I've got business with Astrid. Father wants an update before the ball."

The name hit Luca's stomach like a fist.

Astrid. Still alive. Still breathing in one of the holding cells beneath the main house. Jade had given her word that the prisoner would be kept alive—had extracted a promise from both Roman and Luca that no harm would come to her. And they had agreed. Because how could they refuse her anything when she looked at them with those pale green eyes and asked for something so simple?

But Walter had never agreed.

Walter had smiled, and nodded, and said of course, sweetheart, while already drafting the execution order in his head.

Luca knew. Even though Walter did not force him to be the one to kill her, he had seen the paperwork, he had stood in his father's study and read the command for Astrid's death—scheduled for three nights from now, once the ball was over and the guests had gone home and the attention had shifted elsewhere.

And he hadn't told Jade.

The plates clinked in the sink. Water ran. Jade's hands moved through the suds, unaware, her shoulders relaxed in a way they only were in this space—this pool house that had become theirs, piece by piece, night by night.

Luca's feet carried him to the front door before he made the conscious decision to move. His hand found the handle. The cool wood pressed against his palm as he pulled it open.

The yard was a war zone of preparation.

Employees swarmed the grounds, dragging tables and chairs across the lawn, hoisting floral arrangements that looked like they cost more than most people's rent. Through the iron gate, he could see the larger pieces being brought in from the main drive—a gazebo frame, a dance floor being assembled piece by piece, lights strung between trees like captured stars.

The ball. Walter's masterpiece. A celebration of the pack's unity and strength, with absolutely no mention of the war they were about to wage.

"Are you ready for our announcement?" He kept his eyes on the chaos outside. Couldn't look at her. If he looked at her, she'd see it—the guilt, the secret, the way his father's orders were carving a hollow inside him.

"Not really." Her honesty was a blade. Clean. Unapologetic. "The Hollow pack is not going to be happy about it."

Aurora's face flickered through his mind. The way she had looked at him during the last gathering. The way she had touched his arm, lingered too close, let her fingers trail when she pulled away. The Hollow Alpha's daughter had made her intentions clear for years—she wanted the future Alpha of Winter Moon, wanted the alliance that would come with their bonding, wanted him like a prize to be claimed.

And he was about to stand in front of every pack in the region and announce that the Moon Goddess had chosen someone else for him.

"Ugh." He let his forehead thunk against the door frame. "Do not remind me."

He felt her move before he heard her—that particular warmth as she settled beside him, shoulder brushing his. Her scent hit him clean and familiar, cutting through the chaos outside.

"If we are lucky," she said, "we will walk out of there without her choking you or me."

He laughed. A real one, unexpected, dragged out of him by the image she had painted—Aurora lunging across the ballroom, hands outstretched, while Luca and Jade dodged between formally dressed guests.

"It could happen," he admitted. "I've seen her throw a punch. She's got a decent right hook."

"I can take her."

"I can. That's what scares me.”

Jade's grin was sharp and beautiful in the afternoon light, cutting through the window. She looked at him—really looked—and something in her expression softened. "Hey."

"Hey."

"You okay? "You've been quiet all morning.”

The question hit him like a shot to the chest. He could tell her. Right now. The words were right there—my father is going to kill Astrid, I've known for days, I can’t stop it, I didn't tell you. The confession sat on his tongue, heavy and hot.

But then she would look at him differently. The trust in her eyes would crack. And tonight, when they stood in front of everyone and announced themselves, that crack would be visible to anyone who knew where to look.

"I'm fine." He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Just nervous about tonight."

She bought it. Of course, she did because she trusted him.

The guilt coiled deeper.