Chapter 12 #2
“I’m supervising,” I correct. I place a pot of water on the wood stove and light it, then settle into one of the mismatched chairs around the small table to wait.
When the fish is ready, he cooks two simply—one seasoned with herbs we found in the cabin’s stores and cooked over the fire, the other boiled in the water until it turns into a thick fatty stew. The smell makes my stomach growl audibly.
The fish is perfect—flaky and tender, seasoned just right. I make an embarrassing sound of appreciation around the first bite.
“Good?” Kier asks, amused.
“Amazing,” I manage around another mouthful. “Where did you learn to cook?”
“Twenty years of fending for yourself teaches you a few things.” He takes a bite of his own fish. “Trial and error, mostly. I’ve had some truly terrible meals.”
“I can’t cook at all,” I admit. “Pack life means there’s always someone else handling meals. I never learned.”
“I could teach you.”
The offer hangs between us, casual but somehow weighted. Teaching implies time together, a future beyond just surviving the next few days.
“I’d like that,” I say quietly.
We eat in comfortable silence, and I’m struck by how domestic this feels. Sharing a meal, talking about mundane things, the fire crackling softly in the background. It’s been so long since I’ve felt… peaceful.
Being Beta of the Shadowmist is a full-time job. There’s always someone needing my help, or some issue I need to solve. Rare are the days when I get to just be.
Which is why it’s even stranger that I’m in the middle of a life and death situation and feel the most peaceful I’ve been in years.
When we finish eating, Kier rummages through the cabin’s supplies and emerges with a deck of cards, worn but still intact.
“Go fish?” I ask, watching him pull the cards from their deck.
He snorts. “How about poker?”
“I don’t really know how to play. Never had much call for it in pack life.”
“I’ll teach you.” He shuffles the cards with practiced ease. “Fair warning though—I’m pretty good.”
“I’ll try to keep up.”
He starts with the basics—the different hands, how betting works, reading other players.
“So a flush beats a straight?” I ask, furrowing my brow as I stare at my cards.
“Yes, but a straight flush beats both.”
“This is complicated.”
He deals our first hand, patiently explaining each step. I play hesitantly, making obvious rookie mistakes—betting when I should fold, folding when I have decent hands. He wins easily, as expected.
“Not bad for a first try,” he says encouragingly. “You’ll get the hang of it.”
We play several more hands. I continue to ask him for guidance. He wins consistently, taking our small pot of dried raisins we’d plucked from a can of trail mix.
“You’re starting to catch on,” he says after I win a hand. “Natural instincts.”
“Really? I still feel like I’m just guessing.”
After about an hour of play, he’s won the vast majority of hands. I’m down to maybe a quarter of my original “chips”, but he’s looking pleased with his teaching skills.
“One more hand?” I suggest, looking at my dwindling stack. “Winner takes all?”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to clean you out completely.”
“Come on,” I niggle. “What’s the worst that could happen? Maybe I’ll get lucky.”
“All right.” He deals the cards, his hands flying. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I peek at my cards and have to hide a smile. Decent hand, but it doesn’t matter—I’m going to win this regardless.
He bets moderately, clearly not wanting to be too aggressive against his struggling student.
I look at my cards again, then at him, then push all my remaining chips forward. “All in.”
He blinks in surprise. “You sure?”
“Sometimes you have to take risks, right?”
He studies his cards. “All right, I’ll call. But Lithia, don’t feel bad if—”
“Let’s see what you’ve got,” I interrupt sweetly.
He flips his cards over with a slightly apologetic smile. “Sorry. Full house.”
It’s a very good hand. Any normal player would be devastated.
I look at his cards, then at mine, then let my expression shift from nervousness to something else entirely.
“That is a good hand,” I say, my voice completely different now—confident, amused. “But not good enough.”
I flip my cards over with a grin that’s pure shark.
Royal flush.
His jaw drops. He stares at the cards, then at me, then back at the cards. “That’s…”
“The best possible hand in poker,” I say sweetly, dropping the innocent act entirely. “Also known as unbeatable.”
“Wait…” His eyes narrow as understanding dawns. “You hustled me!”
“Yep,” I admit, unable to suppress my grin. “Dane and I used to clean out half the pack during the winter months.”
“You absolute—” He leans back in his chair. “You’ve been playing me this entire time.”
“Have I?”
He throws a raisin at me, which I catch easily. “I was being nice to you!”
“I know. It was very sweet.” I laugh, delighted by his outrage. “You have to admit—I had you completely fooled.”
“For a while,” he concedes grudgingly. “But I should have known. Nobody’s shuffling is that bad naturally.”
“That was a nice touch, wasn’t it?”
We sit there grinning at each other across the table.
“Your brother sounds like trouble,” Kier observes, shuffling the cards once more. “Teaching his sister to hustle the pack.”
“He is. Was. Still is, actually.” I laugh, watching those deft fingers work. “But he’s my trouble.”
“Family’s complicated.”
“Do you have siblings?” I realize I don’t know much about his life before becoming a nomad.
His expression shifts, becoming more guarded. “A younger sister. She didn’t make it out of the attack that killed my pack.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Long time ago.” But there’s old pain in his voice, carefully controlled. “She would have liked you, I think. She was fierce like you—never backed down from anything.”
The comparison warms me. “What was her name?”
“Natalie.” A small smile touches his lips. “She had this laugh—completely infectious. Could make anyone smile, even when everything was going to hell.”
We’re quiet for a moment, both sunk in memories of people we’ve lost. The fire pops, sending sparks up the chimney.
“She would have been a better poker player than both of us,” he adds, breaking the somber mood. “Do you wanna go another round?”
We play for another hour, the conversation flowing as easily as the card games.
This time he doesn’t hold back. He reads me like an open book, calling my bluffs and folding when I have good hands. Within twenty minutes, I’m down to my last few raisins.
“You have to be cheating,” I mutter, glaring at my terrible cards.
“You’re a sore loser,” he corrects.
I throw my cards down in defeat. “I fold. You win. Again.”
“Good game,” he says solemnly, then grins. “Better luck next time.”
“There won’t be a next time.”
He laughs. “You just need to stop giving away your cards. You have a very expressive face.”
“No, it’s not.”
“You sure about that?” He leans forward slightly, studying my face with those impossibly golden eyes. “Right now, for instance, you’re frustrated but trying to hide it. Your jaw is tight, and you’re pressing your lips together to keep from saying something you think might be too harsh.”
My breath catches. He’s right—completely, perfectly right.
“How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“See so much.”
His expression grows serious. “I’ve been forced to learn how to read people quickly. Survival depends on knowing who you can trust and who you can’t.”
“And what do you see when you look at me?” The question slips out before I can stop it, more vulnerable than I intended. But I genuinely want to know. What does he see? The broken Beta who failed to protect her Alpha Female? The damaged wolf who can’t let anyone close? Or something else entirely?
He’s quiet for a long moment, his gaze moving over my face like he’s memorizing every detail.
“I see someone who’s been carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders for so long, she’s forgotten how to set it down,” he says finally. “Someone who thinks she has to be perfect, untouchable, because if she shows any weakness, the people she protects might get hurt.”
His voice is gentle, but his eyes are knowing. “I see someone who cares so deeply it scares her. Someone who would rather suffer alone than risk letting anyone else carry even the smallest part of her burden.”
“Stop.” The word comes out rougher than I intended.
“I see someone beautiful,” he continues, ignoring my protest. “Not just physically, though you are. But beautiful in the way you refuse to break, no matter what they do to you. Beautiful in your loyalty, your strength, your absolute refusal to give up.”
I can’t breathe. No one has ever seen me like this—not the role I play, but the person underneath. The broken, scared person I keep hidden from everyone, even myself sometimes.
“Kier…” I don’t know what I’m going to say. Don’t know how to respond to such raw honesty.
He leans back in his chair, completely relaxed, a small smile playing at his lips as he watches me process his words. There’s nothing but warm affection in his expression—no recognition, no sudden awareness, just the same easy companionship we’ve been building over these past days.
“You’re staring again,” he observes, that familiar teasing note in his voice.
But I can barely hear him over the roaring in my ears. Something is happening—something fundamental shifting inside me as I look at his face in the firelight.
My wolf lifts her head, suddenly alert. She tastes the air, her attention sharpening with laser focus.
What is it? I ask her silently.
She doesn’t answer in words. Instead, she sends me an image, a feeling, a bone-deep certainty that makes my blood sing.
Mine.
The thought doesn’t come from me. It comes from her, from some primal part of myself that recognizes truth when it sees it.
Ours.
The realization hits me like a physical blow.
I stare at Kier—really look at him—and everything suddenly makes sense.
The way I felt safe with him from the very beginning.
The electric current that runs between us whenever we touch.
The way my wolf has been calling for him, trying to tell me something I was too stubborn to hear.
Mate.
The word echoes through my mind, not thought but known. Ancient, primal, undeniable.
Kier is my mate.
“Lithia?” His voice seems to come from very far away. “You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I can’t speak. Can’t breathe. Can barely think past the overwhelming certainty flooding through me.
He’s completely oblivious. Still leaning back in his chair, still wearing that easy smile, completely unaware that my entire world just tilted off its axis.
My wolf is singing, practically vibrating with joy and certainty. She’s known, I realize. Maybe not from the beginning, but she’s been trying to tell me.
“No,” I breathe, the word barely audible.
“No what?” Kier asks, leaning forward with concern. “Lithia, what’s wrong?”
He doesn’t know. The thought is both relief and terror. He doesn’t feel it.
But my wolf is insistent, pressing at me—Kier’s scent, the way he’s cared for me, the rightness of being near him. She’s absolutely certain, and wolves don’t make mistakes about these things.
The knowledge sits in my chest like a stone, heavy and undeniable. Kier is my mate. This complicated, infuriating, wonderful man is the other half of my soul.
And he has absolutely no idea.
“I need air,” I say abruptly, standing so fast my chair topples backward.
I flee the cabin like something is chasing me, bursting out into the cool night air. But I can’t outrun the truth burning in my chest.
Mate. Mine. Ours.
My wolf’s certainty echoes through me, and for the first time since our parents died, she’s completely, utterly, joyfully sure of something.
I just wish I could say the same.