Chapter 15
Caleb
Sleep rarely found me these days.
The Voss pack's renewed pressure justified the shortened nights and the doubled sweeps. That was the excuse.
I was accustomed to not resting when needed. The cost, however, was a split in my attention. Everything blurred together.
I hadn't spoken to Olivia properly in days.
I would catch her glances as I passed by her in the hallways. Sometimes she would approach to say something, then stop.
The disappointment in her face told me everything. I didn’t have the time to process it. Not now. All that mattered was keeping her safe.
This morning was different. I settled on a ridge overlooking the estate. I smelled it. Elias’s scent was stronger than ever.
I didn’t wait.
The ground came up fast under my paws. The trees rattled as I brushed past them.
As I cut through the woods, I looked toward a Douglas fir along the edges of Olivia’s jogging route. A silhouette leaned against the stump.
It was him.
All I could see was red.
My wolf surged forward. My claws and fangs bared. I wanted him dead. I wanted to tear him right then and there.
I flew through the air, ready to pounce.
The fates have a strange way of being merciful. I stopped short. Mid-air, my body shifted, and I landed only a foot from where Elias was standing.
Elias turned, but I gave him no time to respond. I grabbed him by the shirt and pushed him against the tree.
The Douglas fir shook violently.
Elias’s surprise lasted only for a second before his infuriating grin re-emerged.
“Goodness, I forgot how quiet you are,” Elias said. “A hello would have sufficed.”
“Why are you here?”
Depending on his answer, I’d kill him.
Elias moved, just enough to lift his chin.
"Getting some air," Elias said. He looked back up at the canopy, unhurried. "I like this stretch. Old growth goes quiet out here. You've probably noticed."
"You've been running her route."
His smile stayed steady when he met my eyes.
"She's a good runner," he said. "Remarkable, even. She doesn't slow down when something's bothering her — she pushes harder. Interesting habit for someone who insists she isn't running from anything."
My wolf wanted to close its jaws around something solid. Namely his neck.
"She's not yours to observe," I warned.
“True.” Elias shrugged as if he had nothing to carry on his conscience. "And she’s not yours to own."
He said it without venom. That was the thing about Elias, he never raised his voice. He didn’t need to.
I'd known this technique for years. It didn't make it less effective.
“You’re playing with her.”
“Playing?” Elias said. “God forbid I’m the only one who’s ever honest with her.”
I pressed him harder into the tree. The trunk briefly swung backward.
Elias’s smile flickered at the impact, but he then looked at me. He smiled even wider.
"Give me one reason why I shouldn’t throttle you here and now,” I said in a low growl. The heat of it hadn't left my voice. “If you ever come here again —"
"You'll what?" he asked. I sensed a laugh in his throat. "Caleb. Be honest with yourself, if not with me. I'm not the threat in this particular story, am I?"
Elias tilted his head.
"She still thinks you're withholding to protect her," he said, rolling his eyes.
Then something else happened.
His smile dropped. The airiness in his disposition vanished.
"You’re pathetic.” His voice was lower than it had ever been. “You tout this principle of letting her choose. Would she actually choose you if she knew everything about you?"
Something in me went very still.
What started as anger hardened into fury.
My grip tightened until I could feel my nails cutting into my palms through the fabric, a fistful of his jacket clenched in my hands.
Elias lifted higher and higher into the air. His body sagged as his jacket pressed against his neck like a noose.
I thought about what I could do to him — punish him, make sure he never came back. I loathed him for endangering Olivia. I loathed him for daring to come here, as if any of his own intentions were pure in the slightest.
Elias didn't struggle. He didn't even look frightened. He looked at me with the calm, patient expression of a man who had been proven right — and that was the thing that stopped me.
This was what he came for.
Loosening my grip, I threw Elias against the tree. He slammed against it and stumbled onto the grass.
"Leave,” I warned him. “And don’t you ever come back.”
I caught a glimpse of panic across Elias’s face before he stood up and composed himself.
He turned away from me, but didn’t move just yet.
"Say hi to Olivia for me, won’t you?" he said, not sounding threatened at all.
With a gust of wind, he was gone.
I thought about what Donovan had warned me about from the start. Elias wouldn’t keep his mouth shut for long.
Then, I thought about what Olivia told me, what felt like ages ago now. “The moment it matters… you tell me. Whatever it is. You don’t wait for the right time.”
I’d been a fool.
I hadn't been at the fireplace for a while now. It wasn't a decision I intentionally made. I told myself it was the patrols.
I was certain Olivia noticed. I was just as certain it was something she was bothered by.
I closed my eyes.
I didn't think I was ever as scared as I was right now. I could deal with her reaction, but I couldn’t bear to see the look on her face when she understood what it meant. I'd seen it twice. I didn't want to be the reason for a third.
I went in.
The fire roared in the corner of the room. Uneven piles of wood burned in it. Olivia must have been tending it herself. The room smelled like woodsmoke and the quiet of a house at night.
I found her in the chair by the coffee table.
No medical charts — Jake's condition wasn't a pressing concern anymore.
She had a listless look about her as she went over an old fiction book, the kind of settled, unhurried stillness she only had when she thought no one was going to walk through the door.
When she saw me, that listlessness melted away.
"Hey." She put the book down. Her voice brightened. "It's been a while."
"It has," I said.
I moved toward my seat. The chair was exactly where I'd left it. I didn't know why I'd expected anything different.
Olivia straightened up, slowed herself, and then relaxed back into her chair. She was giving me room.
"You've been out more," she murmured. "Every night this week. Some mornings, too."
I rubbed my temples and nodded. "Sorry about that."
Olivia looked back at her book. "It's not like you have an obligation to be here or anything. And if it's important…"
I caught a glance from her. I said nothing.
She refrained from committing to a sigh. "I'm just saying, I get it. And I'm here to help. At least in the ways I can."
I managed a small smile. "That's just like you," I said. "But you don't have to worry about this specific thing. We're just taking note of activity in the area."
"Did something happen?" she asked. Her brows furrowed.
I shook my head. "Nothing eventful."
Olivia nodded.
After a moment, she decided to pick up her book again.
"Well," she said. "Welcome back for tonight."
I could only give her a nod.
I looked around the fireplace area. Even if nothing had changed in the slightest, it felt like the walls were closing in. The fire crackled. The chairs sat at their usual angle.
Everything was exactly as it had been on every other night we'd spent here, and it felt nothing like those nights at all. I'd let something erode in my absence and I was only now feeling the full measurement of it.
I knew I had to tell her. She deserved a better life than this. One with parents. One without me.
But, the other side of me spoke then.
I don't want to lose her.
I'd been away from Olivia for so long. Whether or not it was the best of situations, it didn't change the fact that having her here — speaking with her, being in her presence — was something I'd stopped being able to imagine the absence of.
I hadn't let myself name that for a long time.
I was naming it now, in the quiet, with the fire going low and her just across from me turning pages she wasn't really reading.
I loved her.
And I'd sworn I wouldn't let that become the thing that trapped her.
I drew my chair closer. The scrape of it against the floor was the loudest thing in the room.
"I promised you something," I said. "When we first fought."
She chuckled. It eased the tension in the air ever so slightly.
"I don't think it was a fight so much as me shouting at you."
It was my turn to grin, though it didn't last long.
"I told you that I would inform you if something really mattered," I said. "That I didn't need to wait for the right time or place."
Olivia regarded the words slowly. "You did."
She straightened up in her chair. "So what's this about?"
A chill moved slowly from my feet toward my chest. My heart pounded.
"There's something about the night your parents died…" The words were barely above a whisper.
Olivia's expression changed.
I expected fear. I expected hurt.
Instead it was softness. The same openness she'd shown me time and again — patient, trusting, without condition. The expression of someone who had already decided, before I'd said another word, that whatever came next was something she could hold.
Every part of me seized.
I'd prepared for this. I'd told myself there was no more time. That Elias was going to say it if I didn't, and she deserved to hear it from me first, in my own words, with whatever explanation I could give.
But I couldn't do this to her. Not to that expression.
I opened my mouth once more and tried.
"I…"
I stared at her face again. I didn't want to see what happened to it when the words finally landed. I didn't know if I could watch that and stay in the room.
"I didn't go into much detail about how I resuscitated you," I finally said.
Olivia blinked. "Oh?"
I nodded.
Guilt seeped out of me and seemed to surround me. It burned. Like an acid you couldn't wash off.
"I kept the details sparse because of how violent that night had been," I said. "I wanted to give you a full picture for a while, but I haven't found the right way to do it yet."
The words came out easy. I hated it. I hated how easy it was.
Olivia was quiet for a moment. I watched her measure the answer against the space where the substance of it should have been.
"Okay," she said. Careful. "And when did you want to do that?"
"Soon. When I can give it to you cleanly."
She nodded — slow, deliberate, not satisfied, but choosing again to extend something I hadn't earned. She turned the page of her book without ceremony.
I stood up.
"I need to go on patrol again," I said.
Olivia merely nodded. She offered a small smile. "It was nice to see you. At least a little."
I didn't know how I was still standing.
The room was the same. The fire was the same. She was the same — patient and warm and entirely unaware of how close I'd just come, and how far I'd still fallen short.
"Good night, Caleb," she said.
"Good night."
I ran the perimeter again.
The motion was familiar. The same ground, the same entry points, the same quality of cold air moving through the same stands of fir.
I knew every scent marker on the line. This time, no new scent.
The Voss pack had pulled back.
I stopped at the far end of the eastern sweep where the trees broke into a shallow creek bed, the water running low after weeks without rain.
The fog was thick enough to blur the tree line into shapes without edges. I stood in it and let the cold settle into my lungs, and for a moment there was just the sound of the water and the dark.
Olivia’s face replayed in my mind. So did Elias’s remark.
I was running out of time.
I’m selfish. I wanted to squeeze every second, every grain of sand I could with Olivia. But this wasn’t just a matter of pushing something back. Every moment I borrowed from the future only made it crumble faster.
The lie was spreading.