Chapter 6 Losing Signal
When did it change.
I've asked myself that from enough different ceilings to know the answer doesn't vary. It always lands on the same day.
His twenty-second birthday.
He came early. That was the plan. He'd pick me up, we'd have the whole day. I was already in my jacket, standing in the front hall, when Isabella came from the garden side with a gift box held in both hands, the ribbon curled perfectly at the top.
"Cal." She caught his arm. "Happy birthday."
He pulled free. Didn't slow down. He crossed the hall and took my hand, his thumb pressing over my knuckles, slow and familiar, and something I hadn't known was tight in my chest came loose.
Behind us: a sound.
Short, involuntary. The specific sound of weight landing wrong on stone.
His hand went still before I turned. Then the smell hit — iron, faint but exact, the kind of thing that reaches an Alpha's nose before the mind has caught up.
Isabella was sitting at the base of the steps. Her knee was scraped, blood beading at the surface, her eyes bright with tears she hadn't let fall yet.
"I never wanted to compete with her." Her voice was soft, aimed at Callum but carrying to the whole room.
"She's the Alpha. She's going to lead this pack. She's beautiful and capable. I never wanted to take anything." A pause, small, exactly the right length. "I just wanted to give you a birthday gift. After what you did, helping me with those men. I'm sorry."
His hand dropped from mine.
He stood there for one second.
Then he turned. Walked back. Bent down and lifted Isabella off the floor, her weight settling against his chest, her arms finding his neck with the ease of someone who'd thought about where they'd fit.
He spoke to me over her shoulder. Not unkind. Almost practical. "She's bleeding. I'll take her to get it checked." A beat. "Better than having your father say you left her there."
The first time he hid what he wanted behind what was good for me.
Isabella's face appeared over his shoulder. The smile she gave me was so quick it might not have happened at all.
He carried her through the door. The door closed. The hall went quiet.
He didn't come back. Not that day.
I told myself, this was Isabella. She'd been taking things since she was ten. I knew that, I'd watched it happen. But some things couldn't be taken. A fated bond wasn't a violin. The Moon Goddess didn't make mistakes.
I held onto that.
For a while.
The days kept coming and the small things kept accumulating. The way his gaze drifted when I was speaking. The way he'd leave a room.
I asked about setting the marking date three times: once in September, once in November, once just before the new year. Each time he found a different direction for the conversation to go.
My wolf knew before I did. The bond didn't dim the way I expected. Not like a switch. More like a radio losing signal, still transmitting, but with more and more space between what I felt and what should have been there.
I told myself it was anxiety. I told myself I was projecting.
Then I stopped telling myself things and started making decisions.
If it was going to happen, it would happen faster.
I began pushing the timeline, quietly, practically, the way I'd pushed vendor schedules and seating charts. The marking ceremony would happen. After that, he'd be mine in a way nothing could undo.
That's what I believed. I chose to believe it. So I pushed, and arranged, and the ceremony date moved closer faster than it had any right to.
The night before the ceremony.
We were in my sitting room, everything finalized, the morning only one night away. I was watching him read something on his phone when his posture shifted.
He stood up.
I took his hand. His eyes came to mine.
"Her medication." His voice was quiet. "She says something's wrong. If something happens tonight, of all nights —" He stopped. Started again, lower. "I'll just go check on her. I'll be right back."
He broke free from my grasp.
The door closed.
What happened after that, my body holds more clearly than my memory does.
***
The notification sound is small in the dark room.
I don't know how long I've been lying here — the ceiling the same ceiling it was when I was eighteen, the house making its old house sounds around me. I reach for my phone without thinking.
[Lachlan]
My assistant says you scheduled something for tomorrow. Where?
I stare at the name. The chat history above that message is years of blank space, and then, two years back, a single entry. The day of the ceremony. He'd sent a location. Then a question mark. Then nothing.
I type a location. A time. Then, before I can stop myself, one more line:
My father spoke with you about this. The partnership, it's based on marriage? That's what you're agreeing to?
The phrasing is careful. It's the only way I know to ask are you sure without asking it.
Three dots appear.
Then: I know what it is. See you tomorrow.
I look at that for a long time. He's the kind of person who doesn't need anything. That's the part I can't make fit.
He could have declined, and had every reason not to.
Four years of overlapping university, adjacent pack events, and he never once held eye contact long enough to constitute a conversation. He didn't look at people who tried to talk to him. He looked past them.
Why.
I set the phone face-down on the bed. Then I pick it back up and type two words:
Tomorrow then.
The screen goes dark.
The house settles around me. I've spent two years not thinking about this room, about any of this, and now I'm in it and the strange thing is, I'm not thinking about the people down the hall.
I'm thinking about a man I barely know, standing at the edge of a photograph, turned slightly away, not looking at the lens.
I fall asleep like that, the question still open.