CHAPTER THREE — TRESPASS
1401 Words
CHAPTER THREE — TRESPASS
Isolde Rivenhart’s POV
I knew he’d come.
Not when. Not how. But I knew.
Ronan was not the kind of man who let go of what he once claimed, even when it slipped through his fingers like water. Especially then.
The forest around Silverpine had been quiet for days. Too quiet. The kind of silence that isn’t peace but warning — the hush before a storm.
And I’d lived through enough of Ronan’s storms to recognize the air.
That morning, I woke before the sun. My skin felt wrong. Prickling, tight. I dressed quickly, slid the black daggers Thorne gave me into the leather sheath at my thigh, and headed out to the eastern ridge.
The trees were mist-wrapped, ghostly. Branches arched like spines overhead. I moved quietly, keeping to the shadowline, steps soft on damp earth.
Then I smelled it.
Smoke. Cedar. Snow.
Ronan.
My lungs stilled. My body tensed so hard I forgot to breathe. That scent was carved into my memory like a brand — once comforting, now venom. Faint, but unmistakable.
He was here.
He hadn’t crossed the border. Not fully. But he was close enough to make sure I knew it.
And he wanted me to feel it.
I turned and ran.
---
Thorne found me before I reached the inner gate.
He caught my elbow without a word, his grip firm but not bruising. I looked up at him, breathing hard, and he didn’t ask. He just waited.
“He’s in the woods,” I said.
“How close?”
“Close enough to scare the trees.”
Thorne’s eyes went cold in that terrifying way he had — like someone turned off the heat behind them.
“Let me see,” he said, and we moved.
---
He tracked the scent easily. His wolf was better trained for that than mine — more disciplined, more deliberate.
We reached the ridge in silence. He crouched near a line of half-pressed prints in the mud, nose tilted toward the wind.
“Four men,” he said. “One holding back. The others scouting.”
“He’s watching,” I said.
“Yes. But not breaching. Yet.”
I hated how calm Thorne was. I hated how part of me needed that calm, because it helped me feel like I wasn’t unraveling.
And I hated most that Ronan knew I’d feel all of that.
---
We returned to the stronghold, and Thorne posted extra guards on the southern watch. No panic. No sirens. Just quiet reinforcement.
Silverpine didn’t rattle easily.
I spent the rest of the day in the lower hall, helping with weapons inventory to burn off the adrenaline still chewing through my limbs. Every clang of steel echoed like a warning.
That night, Thorne called for me.
---
I found him on the rooftop overlook, shoulders tense, arms crossed, his face lit by a brazier’s flickering light.
“You okay?” I asked.
He didn’t answer right away. Then: “He’ll push.”
“I know.”
“He wants a reaction.”
“He won’t get one.”
“You sure?”
I hesitated. Then nodded. “I didn’t leave to go backward.”
Thorne turned, met my eyes. There was something careful in his face — not guarded, just deliberate. Like he was measuring what I could take.
“He left something,” he said finally. “At the ridge.”
My stomach dropped. “What?”
He pulled a folded cloth from his coat and handed it to me.
I opened it slowly.
It was a pendant. Silver. Simple. The same one Ronan had placed around my neck the night I accepted his mark.
The chain was broken.
It wasn’t a threat.
It was a question.
Are you sure?
I closed my fingers around it.
“Yes,” I whispered.
---
Sleep didn’t come easy.
I lay awake, heart pounding, the pendant heavy beside me on the table.
I’d broken the bond. The mark. The title.
But rejection wasn’t an erasure.
It was an ending. And endings left ghosts.
I saw Ronan in dreams, but he didn’t speak. He just watched me from across the room, eyes dark and unreadable, as if he couldn’t decide if he wanted to pull me close or rip me apart.
When I woke, my cheeks were wet.
I didn’t cry for him.
I cried for the girl I used to be.
---
I needed air.
I dressed quickly, moving quietly through the hall so I wouldn’t draw attention. Silverpine slept in deep silence, but I couldn’t.
The training ring was empty. I crossed it and leaned against the far post, arms folded.
I didn’t hear Thorne approach until he was close.
“You sleep even less than I do,” he said.
“I wasn’t trying to be found.”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t looking. Just knew where you’d be.”
I didn’t answer. The silence between us didn’t feel heavy. Just full.
Then he said, “Do you still love him?”
The question wasn’t cruel.
It wasn’t even sharp.
It was soft. Curious.
Painful.
I closed my eyes. “No.”
A pause.
“But I did. Deeply. Desperately. Stupidly.”
“Is that what you regret?”
“No.” I opened my eyes and looked at him. “I regret how much of myself I gave away without asking if I’d get it back.”
He nodded.
“You ever do that?” I asked.
His jaw worked once. Twice.
“Yes,” he said. “But I took it back. Piece by piece.”
“How?”
“Time. Steel. War.”
I smiled faintly. “Sounds like a good title for a poem.”
Thorne stepped closer. Just a little. Not enough to startle.
“But you —” he said quietly, “— you don’t need to be at war to be whole again.”
“I don’t want to be whole yet,” I said. “I just want to know I’m still mine.”
“You are.”
It was the way he said it. No hesitation. No uncertainty. Like he’d seen enough of me to know the parts that were real.
I didn’t realize I was shaking until his hand brushed mine.
He didn’t pull.
He didn’t force.
He just offered warmth.
I took it.
---
Two days passed with no new movement.
But the tension didn’t ease. It sharpened.
Thorne’s scouts reported strange markings near the outer border — glyphs carved into bark, old Bloodvale language. A sign. A warning. A memory.
“He wants you to come back,” Thorne said when we examined the markings. “Or he wants you to feel what it costs not to.”
“I already paid.”
“You sure?”
I looked at him, steady. “Every night I spent pretending I was loved. That was the cost. I paid in silence and smiles and all the ways I bent myself to be enough.”
“You were always enough,” he said.
His voice was quiet, but not gentle.
Fierce.
Like it mattered.
I didn’t flinch. I just nodded.
“Then he can leave me be.”
---
That night, I sat by the fire in the common room, alone.
Most of the pack was out on hunt rotation. The halls were quiet. My fingers toyed with the broken pendant on the table.
Part of me wanted to throw it into the flames.
The other part wanted to bury it beneath the roots of a tree, let the earth swallow what I couldn’t.
Then footsteps approached.
Thorne.
He didn’t speak at first. Just sat beside me, gaze flicking to the pendant.
“You should destroy it,” he said.
“I will.”
“When?”
“When it stops hurting.”
Thorne didn’t press. He just leaned back, watching the fire.
And then, softly, “What do you feel when you think of him now?”
I didn’t answer right away.
“Pity,” I said. “And a little bit of rage.”
“Not love?”
“No. Not anymore. I don’t love what tried to keep me small.”
He nodded.
“I see you,” he said.
Three simple words.
But they hit like truth.
And for the first time in years, I believed it.
- Writer
