Chosen By Ruin

Chapter 28 - Holding the Line

Dante's POV

I do not sleep.

My wolf does not sleep. My body does not sleep. Sleep is for men whose fated mate is not, at this moment, a forty-minute walk across the territory holding three kinds of pain in her chest, and sleep is not a thing I am able to give myself tonight.

I run instead.

I start at midnight. I come out of the Alpha house in my shorts and my training shoes and I run the perimeter at a pace I would not run in daylight because in daylight someone would notice and ask questions, and I do not have answers for questions. I run until my lungs are ragged and my calves are on fire and my wolf is still pacing inside me like an animal in a cage too small for him, and the pacing does not stop no matter how fast I go. I cannot outrun him. He is me. The cage is me. The animal I am in is me.

I run anyway.

I run the full perimeter twice. It takes me a little over two hours at the pace I am holding, and when I come back around to the Alpha house for the second time I do not go inside. I keep going. I take the eastern trail that climbs toward the ridge and I run it at a gradient that should hurt and does not — nothing hurts like the bond hurts, and compared to the bond a seventy-degree slope is a mercy — and I reach the ridge at an hour when the sky is starting to gray and I stop.

I stop because my wolf has pointed.

Not metaphorically. Literally. My body is turned, without my having chosen it, toward a specific compass bearing — southwest, toward the residential quarter, toward the apartment where I know without knowing how I know that she is awake or not-awake but holding the same ache I am holding. The pull is so specific it is almost audible. If I closed my eyes I could walk to her with my feet alone.

I do not close my eyes.

I stand on the ridge with the gray morning coming up around me and my chest doing the thing it has been doing for twenty-six hours, and I fight my wolf for the right to stay where I am. He wants to go down the mountain and through the town and up to her door and put himself between her and whatever is causing her the three-threaded pain I can feel through the bond even at this distance. He does not understand why we are not going. He does not understand that *we made a promise.* He does not understand that the promise was the right promise or that keeping it is the only way this ends in a version where she actually chooses us.

He does not care about promises. He cares about her.

I clench my fists until my knuckles go white and I hold my ground on the ridge and I tell him, not in words but in the manner I have been telling him things since I was fourteen, *not today. Not yet. Not me.* And he listens, like he always listens, grudgingly and with teeth, and he stays. But he stays with the same relentless bodyweight-pressure that a boulder stays at the edge of a cliff, which is to say he is stable but not happy and the smallest push in the wrong direction would send both of us over.

The sun comes up.

I run back down the mountain.

---

The training yard is empty when I get there. It is not yet five in the morning, which is early even for me — my usual schedule starts at five, and I do not break five, and this is the first morning in four years I have been on this field before five AM. The heavy bags hang motionless in their rack. The weight cages are chained and quiet. The earth of the sparring ring is smoothed flat from yesterday's last session, which means Caleb was the one who did the raking, which means Caleb knows I am going to be here before he is going to be here, which means Caleb is going to show up before five AM today whether he planned to or not.

I unwrap my hands and rewrap them. I bounce on the balls of my feet. I walk a slow circle around the sparring ring because standing still makes the wolf pace harder than moving does. My heart is doing a fast, uneven thing that is not related to the running — my heart rate should be down by now, I am in better shape than this — and I know what it is and I know there is nothing I can do about it.

Caleb shows up at four-fifty.

He does not say anything when he sees me. He sets his bag down by the bench. He pulls his jacket off. He rolls his shoulders once, checks the laces on his shoes, and steps into the ring across from me.

"Come on, then."

"I don't need —"

"Dante. Come on. Before the light comes up and you have to be normal about it."

I come on.

The first five minutes are bad. I do not mean the sparring — the sparring is the usual, me in a mode that is not subtle or elegant but is efficient and hard, Caleb in his perpetually disciplined Beta style that matches me move for move and never quite closes the gap between us. I mean the inside. I am inside a body that is at the edge of a wolf that does not want to be where I am putting it, and the wolf keeps surging when Caleb's fist comes in at the wrong angle — surges with protective aggression, with a spike of *mine* that has nothing to do with Caleb and everything to do with a bond that has not eaten in thirty hours — and I have to pull back on every counter by about fifteen percent because if I do not pull back my best friend is going to end up on the ground with a cracked rib.

Caleb notices. Of course he notices. Caleb has been in this ring with me since we were both eight years old and our fathers put us together because they thought it would be good for me to have a sparring partner who was not family. He knows my stances. He knows my openings. He knows the specific quality of my pulled punches and the specific quality of my unpulled ones, and after about three minutes of me pulling everything he steps back out of the ring and points at the bench.

"Sit down."

"I'm —"

"Sit. Down. Dante. Now."

I sit down.

He sits down next to me. He does not say anything for a minute. He pulls a water bottle out of his bag and uncaps it and takes a long drink and offers it to me. I take it. I drink. The water is cold. It is the first cold thing I have had in me in what feels like a week, and it is good.

"When did you sleep last."

"The night before last."

"You ran the perimeter."

"Twice. And up the ridge."

He nods. He is not surprised. He has been expecting some version of this, which is why he was raking the ring last night after I left.

"Talk to me," he says.

---

I do not know how to start.

I have known Caleb since I was eight years old. I have told Caleb things I have never told my brothers. I have told Caleb, once, in the dark of a camping trip when we were thirteen and our fathers were across the clearing at a pack elders' meeting we were not allowed into, that I had nightmares where my father looked at me and did not recognize me, and Caleb had said only *tell me about the nightmare* and I had told him about the nightmare and he had not repeated a word of it to anyone for the next five years. Caleb keeps what he is given. Caleb is the safest person I have ever put a secret in front of.

I still do not know how to start.

"It's worse," I say, finally.

"I know."

"It's worse because — Caleb."

"Yeah."

"It's not just me."

He looks at me. Carefully. The way he looks at things when he is putting two and two together in real time and watching where the answer lands.

"Define not just you."

"Rhett."

He goes still for a half-second. Not surprise. The internal beat of a man rearranging the picture he had of the last six weeks.

"How long have you known about Rhett."

"Three days. He felt it three days ago. The clearing. After their dawn run."

"And before that?"

"Before that the three of us had been — not talking about it. Circling. About two weeks. Maddox brought it up first. He thought he saw it. He didn't put a word on it."

Caleb absorbs that. He nods once. He takes the water bottle back from me. He drinks.

I say the next part without him having to ask.

"And Maddox."

Caleb stops mid-drink. Sets the water bottle down very carefully on the bench between us. Looks at the heavy bags on the rack. Looks at the sky that is starting to pink up over the eastern pines. Does not look at me.

"All three of you."

"All three."

"How do you know about Maddox."

"Yesterday. He — I don't know the details. I know he ran into her at Hearth and Hum. I know he touched her. I know when he came home last night his face was wrong."

"Wrong."

"Wrong, Caleb. Not-a-Maddox-face. Like he had been hit."

Caleb absorbs that too. He is still not looking at me. He is doing what Caleb does when something large lands in front of him, which is sitting with the size of it for a minute before he speaks.

"And you had the kitchen conversation this morning," he says. He is not guessing. He has been watching the three of us for fifteen days like he watches everything — from the edge of the frame, steady, taking notes — and he has the rhythm of us down so clean he can predict our movements before we make them.

"Yes. An hour ago. The three of us. Before sunrise."

"And."

"Rhett is going to go to her. When she's ready. I am going to stay out of his way. Maddox is going to stay out of his way. We all agreed."

"You agreed to that."

"Yeah."

"*You* agreed to that."

"Yeah, Caleb."

He looks at me for the first time since I said *Maddox*, and what is on his face is not disbelief but something closer to awe. Small, careful, witnessing. Caleb has been my friend for ten years and he has never, to my knowledge, been impressed by anything I have done that was not a physical feat, and he is looking at me now as if something has just happened that he needs to commit to memory for later.

"That's what is killing you."

"That's what is killing me."

"You wanted to be the one to go."

"I wanted — Caleb, my wolf is *screaming* at me. Right now, sitting on this bench, he is telling me to stand up and walk across this town and knock on her door and tell her she is not alone with this and that whatever she is holding is mine to hold too. He does not care about the plan. He does not understand the math. He understands her and he understands me and he understands that we are not where we are supposed to be. The rest is noise."

"And you're holding."

"I'm holding."

"How."

"I don't know how. I ran the perimeter twice. I ran up the ridge. I have been awake for thirty-something hours. Every time I stop moving, my body turns southwest. I mean that literally. I turn without deciding to. I have to walk circles around this sparring ring because standing still means letting my feet do what they want, and what they want is to walk to her."

"Dante."

"Yeah."

"That is not sustainable."

"I know."

"For how long. How long are you going to try to do this."

"Until Rhett goes to her. Until she chooses whatever she chooses. Until — I don't know. Until it stops being necessary."

Caleb exhales. He rubs his hand over his face. He looks tired, which is a thing Caleb almost never looks. He has been my steady point since we were eight years old and he rarely carries visible weight, and right now he is carrying visible weight.

"Okay. Okay. Listen to me. I am going to say some things and you are going to let me say them without interrupting, because I have been holding these things for about five minutes and if I do not get them out they are going to get stuck. Yes?"

"Yes."

"First. I love you. I love all three of you. I love Rhett the most because Rhett is the one I trust to not get any of us killed, but I love you too, and I love Maddox, and the three of you are the reason I get up in the morning most days whether I want to or not. So whatever I say, it is inside the context of that."

"Yes."

"Second. What you are doing is the right thing. I am saying this as your friend and as your Beta. The three of you made the right call in that kitchen this morning. Sending Rhett is the right move. Staying away is the right move. Letting her set the pace is the right move. All three of those are correct, and if anyone tells you otherwise they are wrong."

He pauses.

"Third. The right thing is going to cost you. It is going to cost you badly. I have known you ten years and I have watched you hold the line on a lot of things, but I have never watched you hold the line on a thing this big. And I am telling you — looking at you right now — you are going to break before Rhett gets there if you do not get help holding it."

"I don't know what that looks like."

"I know you don't. That's why I am telling you. Hold it means you do not do this alone. Hold it means every morning you come here and you spar with me until the worst of it is out of your body. Hold it means when the wolf starts pointing southwest you tell me he is pointing and I put you back on the ground. Hold it means you eat food even when your body is not asking for it, because a wolf who is not eating is a wolf who makes bad decisions. Hold it means you call me — from wherever you are, in whatever state you are in — when it gets to the edge of what you can do alone, and you let me come get you."

"Caleb —"

"I am not asking you, Dante. I am telling you. You do this with me or you do not do this. Those are the options. Yes?"

I look at him.

I look at my best friend in the gray morning light with the training yard empty around us and the heavy bags motionless on their rack, and I think about the fact that Caleb has been the person who shows up for me for ten years, and I think about the fact that I have not, until this morning, fully registered how much that has cost him, and I think about the fact that he is now asking to keep doing it under harder terms because he has decided he is not going to let me go under on his watch.

"Yes. Yes, Caleb. With you. I do it with you."

"Good." He picks up the water bottle and takes another drink. "Now tell me the rest. You said Rhett is going to her. When."

"Tomorrow, probably. Maybe the day after. Maddox wants him to let the dust settle a day."

"Reasonable. And in the meantime."

"In the meantime I stay away from her. I don't show up on her patrol routes. I don't linger where she might see me. I don't let him do what he wants. I train. I eat. I sit with the bond until it figures out that sitting with it is the only option it has."

"And what if she comes to you first."

I stop.

I had not considered this.

The three of us built our kitchen plan around the assumption that Sera would either come to us or not come to us, and that the not-coming-to-us would last long enough for Rhett to go to her. We did not plan for the version where she changes her mind at three in the morning and ends up at the Alpha house door.

"She won't. Sera doesn't — she doesn't do that. She is holding it. She will hold it longer than we will."

"I agree with you. I am asking you anyway."

I think.

"If she comes to me first, I call Rhett. Before I open the door. Before I say a word. I call Rhett and I tell him she is here and he decides whether he comes or whether I handle it."

"Good."

"It's going to hurt to call him."

"It is."

"I'll do it anyway."

"I know you will."

He stands up. He stretches. He picks up his jacket from the bench and shakes it out and puts it on. The gray of early morning is starting to pink into proper sunrise, and somewhere in the residential quarter a dog is barking, and the training yard is starting to be the training yard that other people come to rather than the training yard that two people sit on a bench in at five in the morning.

"Go home."

"I'm not going home."

"Yes you are. You are going home and you are eating food and you are lying down even if you do not sleep. You do not have to sleep. You have to horizontal. Two hours, Dante. You give your body two hours flat on its back and I will meet you here at eleven and we will train until you can stand up without your wolf trying to walk you across the territory. Yes?"

"Two hours."

"Two. Hours."

"Okay."

"And Dante."

"Yeah."

"The thing you are doing. The holding. It is the right thing. Do not let your wolf convince you otherwise just because it hurts. You will, fifty times between now and whenever Rhett goes to her. That is why I am here. To remind you. Every time you start to convince yourself that the hurt means you are doing it wrong — call me. I will tell you you are doing it right. I will tell you as many times as you need to hear it."

"Okay."

"Go home. Eat. Horizontal. Yes?"

"Yes."

---

I go home.

I eat a bowl of whatever our house cook left on the kitchen counter — something with rice and eggs, I do not taste it, I put it in my body because Caleb told me to and because I have agreed to do what Caleb tells me. I go upstairs. I pass Rhett's study and the door is closed and I do not knock. I pass Maddox's room and the door is closed and I do not knock. I go into my own room and I close my own door and I stand for a minute in the middle of the floor without moving, and my wolf turns southwest, and I put my hand on the back of my neck and I tell him *no,* quietly, and he does not listen exactly but he subsides.

I lie down.

I lie on my back on top of the covers with my hands flat on my stomach and I close my eyes and I do not sleep, but I do what Caleb asked, which is *horizontal.* I am horizontal. My body is receiving the signal of rest even if my brain is not cooperating. The ache in my chest is the same three-threaded pressure it has been since yesterday morning, and the wolf is still pointing, and my feet want to move, and I stay still.

I think about her. I try not to. I fail. There is no version of this morning where I do not think about her. I think about her face in the training yard yesterday when she let go of my hand — the specific composure she pulls down over whatever is happening underneath, how her eyes went unreadable in the space of a single heartbeat. I think about the fact that she knew, as she walked away from me, what had just happened between us. I think about her walking home with the bond already at work on her and not telling me, not telling anyone except maybe Brielle, carrying it the way she has carried everything since the morning she got to this pack.

I think about her in the apartment last night with Brielle on the other side of the door. I think about her in the apartment right now. I think about the fact that having Brielle there is not the same as not being alone with the bond — Brielle does not feel what Sera feels, and Sera will not put what she feels onto Brielle, because Sera does not put weight on people.

I think about the fact that she is forty minutes' walk from me and that forty minutes' walk is the longest forty minutes' walk in the world, because every inch of it is a decision I have to keep making not to take, and the decision does not get easier the more times I make it. It gets harder. It gets harder because my wolf is running a counter in the back of my head that says *every minute you do not go to her is a minute she is alone with this,* and the counter is not wrong, and the only way I can hold against the counter is to trust that the person who is going to go to her is going to do a better job of it than I would.

I trust Rhett.

I trust Rhett more than I trust myself with this, which is the truth underneath the math in the kitchen this morning, and the truth is bitter to swallow because it means my brother is better suited to the most important conversation of my life than I am, and I have to be grown enough to accept that.

I am not grown enough. I am grown enough to act like I am. That's the same thing, for today.

I lie on my back and I stare at the ceiling and I breathe. I count in for four and hold for four and out for eight, the breathing pattern Caleb taught me when I was fifteen and had to stand through my first formal pack council meeting without breaking someone's jaw. In for four. Hold for four. Out for eight. The wolf subsides, a fraction, at each exhale. He is not calm. He is never going to be calm until she chooses something. But he is, for ten or twelve breaths at a time, willing to stay on the bed with me.

It is not sleep. It is as close to sleep as I am going to get today.

I take it.

---

Two hours later I get up.

I wash my face. I change into clean training clothes. I go downstairs and I drink a glass of water and I go out the front door without knocking on either of my brothers' doors, because if I knock I am going to have to talk and if I talk I am going to have to say out loud how bad the night was, and saying it out loud to them is not a thing I am going to do this morning. They have enough. Rhett has enough. Maddox has enough. My bad night is mine to manage.

I walk to the training yard. I walk because running would attract the kind of attention I am not interested in attracting and because walking is what Caleb would want me to do. Every two hundred feet the wolf points. Every two hundred feet I pull him back. The residential paths are starting to fill up with morning pack traffic — a patrol returning from night shift, two older wolves doing their walk together, a mother with two small children whose faces I nod at without being fully present behind the nod.

I do not walk past the apartment.

I take the long way. I take the route that does not go anywhere near where I know Sera is waking up or not waking up or lying still like I just lay still, and the long way adds fifteen minutes, and the fifteen minutes is the price, and I pay it.

Caleb is already at the yard when I get there. He looks at me. He does the small thing he does, the thing that is not a smile but is the Caleb version of a smile — a slight lift at one corner of his mouth that says *still with me?*

"Still with you."

"Good. Get in the ring."

I get in the ring.

We train. He does not pull his punches. I do not pull mine. He takes me to the edge of what I can do physically and then takes me one step past it, because the thing he understands about me — the thing he has understood about me since we were eight — is that my body is the tool I use to empty my head, and my head is full of something right now that will not empty unless my body is used harder than it has been used in weeks.

After an hour my wolf stops pointing.

He does not calm. He does not relax. But the compass needle that has been fixed on southwest for thirty hours finally, briefly, wobbles — because my body has given him enough other things to pay attention to that he cannot hold the fix, and the wobble is the first relief I have felt since yesterday morning, and I almost laugh.

I do not laugh. I throw another combination. Caleb slips it. Throws one of his own. We go.

She is forty minutes away. I cannot see her. I cannot touch her. I cannot tell her that she is not holding this alone, that three of us have been holding it with her since the moment she walked through our gates, that my wolf is standing at attention at the southwest edge of every waking breath I take because that is where she is.

I cannot do any of that.

I can do this. I can stand in this ring with my best friend and I can make my body work hard enough that my wolf gives me a few minutes off. I can hold the line. I can eat food and lie down and wash my face and walk the long way. I can trust my brother to do the thing I want to do more than I have wanted anything in my life.

I can, apparently, love someone by staying away from her.

That is a kind of love I did not know was in me.

I throw another strike. Caleb catches my forearm, steps inside my guard, taps me twice on the ribs. A correction. A quiet one. *Your elbow dropped.*

I reset my stance.

I go again.