Chapter 9
Valen
The lodge common room hasn’t changed since I walked into it.
Same woodsmoke, herbs by the hearth, three marks laid out on the table like something that could be read if you knew how to look at it.
What’s changed is everyone in it now knows what those marks are, and half of them have decided that’s my fault.
The window light’s moved since I first crossed this floor, warmer now, later in the morning, though nobody in this room has stepped outside to notice it. We’ve been at this a while.
Dane stands where he’s been since I got here, near the hearth, hands hooked in his belt, the kind of stillness that means he’s already decided most of what he thinks and is waiting to hear the rest. Rafe hasn’t stopped watching me since I walked past him.
Wyatt, near the door, holds the same stillness as Dane, though nothing behind his eyes is half as settled.
Ben sits at the far end of the table, quiet so far, the kind of quiet that isn’t the same as having nothing to say.
Callum leans against the wall by the window, arms loose, eyes on the door and windows more than on me.
Evren’s near the door too, younger than the rest, restless in a way that has nothing to do with me.
Nyxiana stands closest to the table. Silver-white hair pulled back off her face, the violet of her eyes catching the window light every time she turns her head toward whoever’s speaking.
She’s shorter than almost every wolf in this room and she’s the one they’ve all angled toward. I still can’t read her.
“It answers to Valen’s signature.” She says to the room, not to me. “Wherever it leads, he’s the one it answers to. Without him there’s no trail to follow.”
Every face in the room turns to look at me instead of her. The pull sharpens the same way it always does when she’s this close and working. My arms cross tighter over my chest, an inch more than they were a moment ago.
“Once we’re on hostile ground, I’ll keep her alive,” I say. “I’ve walked more of it than anyone in this room has been alive to see. I’ll bring her home safe, every time.”
The room goes quiet at that. Even the ones who want me gone.
Ben speaks for the first time since I walked in.
“The marks answering to you are the same marks tied to the night Harper died.” His voice doesn’t rise.
It doesn’t need to. Every person in this room knows what that night took from him.
“And the plan is sending you off alone with one of our own. So how do we know you’re not Faelan’s? What does an outsider even care?”
I don’t answer right away. Ben isn’t the only one who wants to ask it. He’s the only one who said it out loud.
“You don’t know I’m not.” I hold his eyes on that one. “If I were, I’d say exactly what I just said. That’s not proof. That’s just where we start.”
Ben pauses before he answers, like it isn’t the response he expected. “If we can’t be sure of him, someone goes with them. One of ours, watching.”
Heads nod around the table before he’s even finished saying it.
“Rhonan’s at Briarstone.” Evren, from the door, quiet until now. “She won’t be landing among strangers. My brother’s already there.”
Nyxiana lets them run the argument out before she says anything.
“A third person is one more risk, not less.” She doesn’t raise her voice either.
“I read a realm by moving quiet, not by dragging a guard through it. I’m not going to be minded like I can’t hold my own ground.
For Drakoria, we have Rhonan. That’s enough. ”
Nobody here loves it but they don’t move to override her. Rafe looks like he wants to say something else and doesn’t, which tells me more about how this pack runs than anything Dane’s said all morning: she doesn’t answer to a vote here. Not on this.
There’s one more thing I want them to hear.
“To work, the trail needs me. I heard her say so myself, same as everyone else in this room.” I stop there deliberately.
“But it’s not the only reason I’m going.
” I hold Dane’s eyes now, not Ben’s. “I could walk away and let someone else deal with Faelan. I don’t want to be the kind of man who could have helped stop this and chose not to. ”
Dane hasn’t said a word since he stopped straightening off the hearth. When he finally does, everyone stops to listen, because he’s the one they listen to.
“Can you take her into a realm that wants her dead and bring her back alive?” He asks.
Every face in the room turns to me and waits.
This is exactly what I’ve always stayed away from.
People who need something from me, watching me decide whether to give it.
Every other time this has happened I’ve made myself unavailable enough that nobody thought to ask for more than the least I was willing to give, then let someone else carry the rest. It’s worked since before any of them were born.
My first instinct is to do it again now, give them the smallest true thing I can and let somebody else carry what comes after.
I start to do it, already halfway to the door in my own head, the exit already mapped like it is in every room I stand in.
I stop myself before I do. Nobody in this room is going to hand me a reason to leave this time. If I go, it’s because I chose to walk out of the one room in my life that ever actually needed me to stay.
“I’ll go wherever the trail leads, however far it runs.” I hold Dane’s eyes. “I’ll bring her back every time. Past Drakoria, it’s dark. None of us knows what’s there.” I let that land before I finish it. “I’m telling you I’ll walk into that blind. I’ll still bring her home.”
Nobody argues me down. Ben looks away first. It isn’t agreement.
“Then it’s Drakoria.” Dane looks between the two of us. “How soon?”
“Dawn.” Nyxiana doesn’t hesitate. “That gives us enough time to prepare properly and gets us there in daylight.”
Dane nods once. “Then that’s the plan.”
The meeting breaks up around that decision. Chairs scrape back. People who spent most of the last hour deciding whether I’m a threat go back to whatever they were doing before I walked in. The decision that mattered to them is made. Nothing else about this room holds their attention.
Nyxiana holds where she’s standing a moment longer than the rest, her attention on me, the same steady, unhurried look she’s had on me since I stopped at her word six feet from that table.
Her chin is up. I hold her gaze longer than I need to before she moves off to see to the others.
The pull follows her the whole way across the room, quiet and constant.
My attention stays on her. She’s the only one coming with me past that door, wherever the trail actually leads.
Every other room I’ve ever stood in, I’d have been the first one out of it. Gone before staying could turn into something anyone counted on.
Half of them still don’t trust me. I doubt most of them ever will.
Rafe will keep watching me, same as he has since I walked in, and Ben will keep his distance until I’ve proven something that can’t be proven in one afternoon, and that’s fine.
It doesn’t change what I just did, which is the opposite of every instinct that’s kept me alive this long.
I put myself at the center of a room that would rather I weren’t in it. I meant every word of it.
I’m still here when the last of them goes.