The wall I built
1044 Words
Sara p.o.v
I stared at those three words for a long time.
I remember you.
My thumb hovered over the screen. Then I put the phone face down, stepped back, and sat on the edge of the bed.
Breathe.
It could be anyone. A wrong number. Someone from the briefing who thought they recognised me from somewhere else. There were a hundred explanations and only one of them mattered and I was not going to give it room tonight.
I turned the phone over and blocked the number. Then I sat in the quiet and listened to the house settle around me and I reminded myself why I was here. The patrol gaps. The broken chain of command. The young wolves with nowhere to take their concerns. This pack needed this work and I was good at it and six weeks was not forever.
I lay back on the bed without removing my cloth and stared at the ceiling until I fell asleep.
The first briefing was at seven the next morning.
I was already in the conference room when the others arrived. That was deliberate. I never liked walking into a full room. Better to be the fixed point they walked into rather than the moving one they watched arrive.
Caden came in last. Alphas always came in last.
He sat at the head of the table and the room reorganised itself around him without anyone meaning to. Backs straightened, voices dropped, the low hum of conversation cut off cleanly.
I kept my eyes on my notes.
"Strategist Seraphina Ash will be leading the restructuring assessment," Lena said. "Six weeks, full cooperation required.
"
A man across the table cleared his throat. Bernard. Beta, mid-forties, fifteen years with Silverstone. He was looking at me with the kind of smile that was not really a smile.
"No offence to the Council," he said, "but we have been running this pack for a long time without outside interference."
"No offence to you," I said, "but the Council's concern is exactly like that."
Quiet.
"I am not here to dismantle anything. I am here to assess what is working and what is not, and write a report. Every recommendation goes through the Alpha before a single word reaches the Council."
I looked around the table. "Full cooperation. That is all I am asking."
Bernard's smile went rigid.
Then Caden spoke.
"She's right."
Two words. Bernard's shoulders dropped.
I still did not look at Caden directly. I looked just past him, at the mountain through the window behind his chair.
"We start with department heads this week," I said. "Individual sessions, two hours each. Financials, patrol schedules, medical records, and conflict logs on my desk by Friday."
I tapped my pen on my notepad twice.
"Any questions?"
No one spoke.
The first week was a careful, daily performance.
Not the work. The work was real and I was good at it. But everything around it was constructed. The way I held my face when Caden walked into a room. The way I made sure there was always someone else between us in conversation.
He was not what I had expected.
I had spent three years building a cold, arrogant version of him in my head. The version that made it easier to stay gone.
The man running Silverstone was not in that version.
He worked harder than anyone. He remembered small details about his pack members' lives. He carried the weight of his position with something that looked less like pride and more like duty.
It made me like him.
I did not want to like him.
Thursday evening I was working late when the door opened without a knock.
Caden.
He stopped when he saw me, like he had expected the room to be empty.
"Sorry. I needed the east sector report." He gestured at the filing cabinet.
"Go ahead."
He found what he needed. He should have left.
He did not leave.
"You're still working," he said.
"I am."
"It's past nine."
"I'm aware."
A pause. I could feel him standing there, that particular weight in the air that happened when he was near and that I refused to acknowledge.
"You're from the northern region," he said.
"The accent."
My pen paused for half a second.
"Originally," I said.
"Where exactly?
I looked up. He was watching me with genuine curiosity. Not suspicion. Just a man trying to place something that did not fit.
"Small town. You would not know it."
That slight pull appeared between his brows again, the same one from the car park.
"Okay," he said, and left.
I waited until his footsteps faded. Then I pressed both hands flat on the desk and breathed slowly.
One-two-three-four.
The way the Council therapist had taught me. Back in those first months after I left, when I could not sleep through a single night without waking to the sound of his voice.
I, Caden Vale, reject you as my mate.
One-two-three-four.
I was fine.
I picked up my pen.
I called Eli at nine-fifteen.
His face filled the screen, blurry because he always held the phone at the wrong angle.
"Mama. We made pasta."
"How was it?"
"Mara burned it a little." He glanced sideways. Somewhere off screen, Mara said I heard that.
I laughed before I could help it. He grinned the way he always did when he made me laugh, like it was the best thing he had done all day.
We talked until he fell asleep mid-sentence, the phone tipping in his hand. Mara picked it up.
" Are you feeling good?" she asked quietly.
"Yes I am," I said.
I ended the call and looked at the blank screen for a moment.
Then I noticed it.
The filing cabinet drawer Caden had opened was still slightly ajar. And sitting on top of the stack of folders inside was a single item that did not belong there.
A photograph.
Old. Small. The edges worn soft.
I pulled it out with two fingers and turned it over.
It was me.
Eighteen years old, standing at the edge of the Blood Moon ceremony crowd, looking at someone just outside the frame.
Someone had known exactly who I was from the very first day.
- Writer
