Chapter Twenty-One: What Max Knew
1991 Words
Max didn't move for a long moment.
Just sat in the chair across from her with his hands folded and his smile gone and the specific quality of someone who has shifted into a register that doesn't get used very often and is finding the adjustment slightly unfamiliar.
Without the smile he looked different.
Not older — ageless the way all old wolves were ageless. But different. Like the smile had been doing more structural work than she'd realised, had been holding a particular shape in place, and without it the face underneath was something else entirely.
Still Max.
But quieter.
She sat on the sofa with her hands in her lap and the broken things around them on the floor and waited.
He looked at her.
At the ring.
"How much do you know about Shawn," he said.
"What he told me," she said. "Which I now understand was edited."
"Significantly," Max said.
"Then fill in the gaps."
He looked at the fireplace.
At the remains of the crystal decanter.
Something moved across his face — not the smile, the other thing, the thing that lived underneath it that she was only now beginning to understand existed.
"Shawn Calloway," he said. "Son of Aldric Calloway. Alpha of the Western Mountain Pack." He paused. "You know what it means to be an alpha's son."
"I know what it means to Jace," she said.
"Then you know it means something," Max said. "Weight. Expectation. The specific pressure of a bloodline that has always produced something significant looking at you and waiting for you to be it."
She said nothing.
"Shawn had all of that," Max said. "Same as Jace. Two alpha sons from neighbouring packs. It made sense that they'd find each other." He looked at his hands. "They were close. Genuinely close. The kind of close that happens when you're the same age and the same rank and the same specific brand of capable and you find someone who understands the weight of what you carry because they carry the same weight."
"Friends," she said.
"Too close for comfort," Max said. "My words. Not then — I didn't have words for it then, I was — occupied with other things." A pause that had something behind it she didn't examine. "But looking back. Yes. Too close for comfort."
She waited.
"The problem," Max said, "wasn't anything either of them did. It wasn't a betrayal or a falling out or a specific incident that broke something between them." He looked at the fireplace again. "The problem was Jace."
"What about Jace."
"Being Jace," Max said simply.
She looked at him.
"You've seen it," he said. "You know what he's like in a room. What he does to the air in a room just by being in it. The way things — orient toward him. People. Situations. The way everything adjusts itself around his presence without being asked to."
She knew.
She knew exactly.
"Wolves felt it," Max said. "Packs responded to it. And people—" He paused. "Girls specifically. They always found him. Always. From the very beginning of whenever we were somewhere with other people Jace collected attention the way certain things collect light. Without trying. Without particularly wanting it a lot of the time." He looked at her. "You know he didn't care about most of it."
"I know," she said quietly.
"Shawn cared," Max said.
The sitting room held that sentence.
She looked at Max.
"Not at first," Max continued. "At first it was fine. They were young — young by wolf years, which means still old by any other measure — and the attention imbalance was just a fact, just a feature of who Jace was, and Shawn was his own person with his own capabilities and it didn't matter." He stopped. "Then it started to matter."
"Why," she said.
"Because Shawn is—" Max paused, choosing. "Exceptional. In every measurable way. Stronger than most wolves his age. Smarter. Better instincts. More authority in his voice by twenty than most alphas develop in a century." He held her gaze. "He should have been the one the room oriented toward. By every objective measure he deserved that attention more than Jace did."
"But it went to Jace anyway," she said.
"It always went to Jace," Max said. "That's not a slight against Shawn. It's just — Jace. There's something in him that isn't about strength or intelligence or authority. Something older than all of those things. Something you either have or you don't."
She thought about silver eyes in a school corridor looking at her like she wasn't something to be afraid of.
"I know what you mean," she said quietly.
"Shawn watched it for decades," Max said. "And the watching changed him. Not immediately — gradually. The way water changes stone. Slowly and then all at once." He leaned forward slightly. "He started competing. With Jace. In ways that Jace didn't even register as competition because Jace wasn't competing — he was just existing and Shawn was measuring himself against the existence and coming up short in his own estimation every time."
"That's—" She stopped. "That's a painful way to live."
"Yes," Max said. "It is."
She looked at him.
At this wolf who she had spent months hating and was currently watching speak about someone else's pain with what appeared to be genuine understanding and found the combination disorienting.
"What happened," she said. "Specifically. What made it—"
"He went rogue," Max said.
The words landed flat and final.
"Define rogue," she said.
"Lost the thread of himself," Max said. "The thing that keeps a wolf connected to their pack, their bloodline, their reason — he lost it. Not all at once. Gradually and then completely." He paused. "We didn't see it coming. That's the honest answer. Jace didn't see it coming because Jace still thought they were friends and assumed what he felt was returned and didn't examine it closely enough to notice that what Shawn felt had become something else entirely."
"What did he do," she said.
Max looked at her directly.
"He came for Jace," he said. "In the night. At the estate. He came through the grounds with the specific intent of someone who had made a decision and was implementing it and had gone past the point of reconsidering."
She went cold.
"He tried to kill him," she said.
"He nearly succeeded," Max said. "And that—" Something moved in his face. "That is the one thing I will not be casual about. Whatever else I am — and I am aware of the list — I am not casual about that."
She looked at him.
At the not-smile.
At the thing underneath that was, she was increasingly certain, the closest Max Ryder came to love. Not soft. Not warm. The specific ferocious thing that certain people produced instead of warmth — the thing that looked like aggression from the outside and was, from the inside, the only form devotion took in people like him.
"You defended him," she said.
"Cole and I," Max said. "Yes."
"You nearly killed Shawn."
"We stopped short," Max said. "Cole's decision. I had a different opinion."
She believed that completely.
"Shawn left," Max said. "We let him leave. And he swore — before he went, standing on the estate grounds with Cole's decision being the reason he was still standing — he swore that he would come back. That he'd take every member of this family apart one by one." A pause. "Starting with Jace."
The sitting room.
The broken things.
The ring on her finger.
She pressed her hand flat against her knee and felt the gold and thought about storm grey eyes saying stand down and cotton candy and wonky-eyed stuffed wolves and managing fine and being alright are two different things —
And a vow made on the Ryder estate grounds to kill every single one of them.
"Aaron," she said.
Max looked at her.
"He knew," she said. "Aaron knew about this."
"Aaron," Max said carefully, "has always known more than he reveals. It's his most useful quality and his most irritating one."
"He introduced me to Shawn," she said. "He took me to that forest. He left me there."
"I know," Max said.
"Why would he—"
"Aaron's motivations," Max said, "are Aaron's. I don't speak for him." A pause. "What I will tell you is that he was afraid when you first met Shawn. Not of Shawn specifically. Of what Shawn near you would mean."
"Because of Jace," she said.
"Because of Jace," Max confirmed.
She looked at the floor.
At a piece of crystal near her foot.
At the ring.
"How close is he," she said quietly. "To following through."
Max was quiet for a moment.
"He hasn't moved against Jace directly," he said. "In all this time. Which is either restraint or strategy and with Shawn it's difficult to know which."
"But the vow stands."
"The vow stands," Max said.
She stood up.
Crossed to the window.
Stood with her back to Max and looked at Victoria's garden in the dark and thought about everything that had just been handed to her in this sitting room full of broken things.
Shawn who had appeared in forests and carnivals and sat on her sofa watching children's comedies.
Shawn who had stepped between her and five wolves with two words.
Shawn who had looked at her laughing at a stuffed wolf with storm grey eyes going warm.
Shawn who had sworn to kill Jace Ryder.
"I need to stay away from him," she said.
Not a question.
Max said nothing.
She turned.
"That's what you're going to tell me," she said. "Stay away from Shawn."
Max looked at her.
At the ring.
At the vampire standing in his family's sitting room surrounded by the things she'd broken.
"Elara," he said.
It was the first time he'd used her name.
Not vampire. Not said with the cheerful remove he applied to most things.
Her name.
She looked at him.
"Stay away from Shawn," he said quietly. "Yes."
She looked at him for a long moment.
At the not-smile.
At the face that had started a war and was currently sitting in the wreckage of his family's sitting room telling her something true.
"Why are you helping me," she said.
He looked at the fireplace.
At the remains of the crystal.
"Because my brother," he said quietly, "made the hardest choice he's ever made to keep you alive." He looked at her. "The least I can do is make sure it wasn't for nothing."
She stared at him.
At Max Ryder.
At the psychopath. The chaos. The smile that disconnected from everything.
At the brother who had nearly killed a wolf for touching Jace.
At the person who had started a war.
At someone who was, underneath all of it, a great deal more complicated than the story she'd been telling herself.
"He misses you," Max said. "I said it at your door and I'll say it here. Whatever he told you when he left — whatever he made you believe — he misses you."
She pressed her lips together.
Turned back to the window.
"Get out, Max," she said softly.
A pause.
"That's my house," he said.
"Get out of this room," she said. "Please."
A moment.
Then the sound of him standing.
Stepping over crystal.
Moving toward the door.
"Elara," he said from the doorway.
She didn't turn.
"The ring," he said. "Keep wearing it."
She heard him leave.
She stood at the window.
Victoria's garden in the dark.
The bond silent in her chest.
The gold ring on her finger.
Whatever he made you believe — he misses you.
She pressed her hand to the silence.
And for the first time in months —
The silence felt like it was pressing back.
- Writer
