Chapter 12 - Heinrich
I blink open my eyes to the warm sunlight permeating through the curtains, stretching my arms over my head, and turning to the side where Annika’s scent still lingers. But as my hand touches the empty pillow, my eyes widen with realization that strikes me like a blade to my chest.
She’s gone. There isn’t even a dent in the pillow to imply that she was here at all, which only means that she left a long time ago. Probably when I was still asleep.
My heart sinks, and I gulp to hold it together, hold together how torn I feel inside, ripped to shreds as if a part of me left in Annika’s absence this morning, sliced open as if it were the vile claws of the demons doing the damage.
There’s a part of me that wants to throw myself off this bed and go track her down, but there’s also a part less impulsive—perhaps thanks to the remnants of her scent still lingering on my flesh—that stops me.
I know it’s space she needs, because I just told her that she’s a witch, and she’s still in denial.
It’s a lot to take in for someone who wasn’t exposed to my world all their life.
Twenty-seven years to be exact, and all this information must be too overwhelming to process.
Still, her denial and resistance to the truth about who she is and what it means for me—what she means to me—feels like a heavy blow to my heart.
I calm myself down with a few deep breaths, finding the will to get out of bed and risk washing away the traces of her in the shower.
We have a lot to do in terms of pack business today—tracking the demons’ portal in the mountains, and trying out the new ritual to bind our borders from the demons.
I can’t be wallowing in my sorrows too long and need to get my head back in the game.
After all, it is Annika’s safety that is now my main priority, and the display of her powers yesterday when she healed me means that her magic is awakening.
The demons will be on us in no time.
After I’m showered and dressed, I want to skip the part of making breakfast—not out of spite, but because I want to give her the space she needs—but she’s unavoidable when I find her rummaging through the fridge.
She doesn’t hear me coming into the kitchen immediately, but when she spots me, she stands ramrod straight and meets my eyes with an even expression.
“Good morning, Annika,” I greet, hesitating at the doorway, glancing over my shoulder because, truthfully, I don’t know where to put my face.
“Good morning,” she returns with a gulp, her fingers visibly tightening around the can of soda, knuckles paling from it.
“I have a few things to take care of today,” I inform her in a rigid tone. “Do you need anything?”
She takes a deep breath before responding, “I’d like to explore the valley.”
My heart does a strange little flip, hope igniting in my chest. Small steps, Heinrich. Small steps.
“That sounds like a good idea. I know you said you don’t need a babysitter, and that’s not what she is. But would you like to have Anastasia show you around the valley? I’d have offered to show you myself, but I have a meeting with the other pack members and some things to take care of.”
Annika blinks at me for a long while as if she’s considering the offer, and then she finally nods slowly. “Okay. She can show me around, sure.”
I nod in return. “I’ll ask her to come by.”
Annika doesn’t say more and swiftly turns toward the table, signaling that there isn’t anything else she wants to say. While my heart breaks at the thought that we’re just leaving what happened last night hanging between us like a dark and dismal cloud, I know this is what she needs.
Space.
And since she wants to explore the valley, it means she’s no longer hell-bent on leaving. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll have a fighting chance with her if I just give her the time and space she needs.
***
The tension on the border is palpable, the weight of a failed hunt hanging heavy on our shoulders even long after we returned from the mountains.
We stand at the eastern ridge now—my ridge—where Silver Stone meets the rest of the valley in a jagged spine of slate and pine. The earth here has always answered to us. It should feel steady beneath my boots. Instead, it feels as though it’s holding its breath.
Amos kneels in the dirt alongside two members of the research team, chalk and ash marking symbols into the soil in deliberate, interlocking spirals.
The ritual is new—untested beyond the north and the south—but it’s the best we have for now.
Damian stands to my right, silent and watchful, his presence a steady pressure at my shoulder.
Conan lingers a few feet away, arms folded, gaze sharp with skepticism he no longer bothers to hide.
James and Dedrick fan out with the soldiers, forming a perimeter in case the demons choose this moment to test us again.
“They’re close,” Dedrick murmurs through the pack link.
I feel it, too. Not movement. Not scent. Just the dreadfulness that has become familiar, like rot beneath bark.
Amos rises slowly once the final mark is carved. “Alpha,” he says to me, extending the small ceremonial blade.
The steel glints in the late afternoon light with old law and old magic.
Blood binds what fear cannot, and I take the blade without hesitation and draw the edge across my palm.
The sting is sharp but grounding. I kneel and press my hand to the center of the sigil, letting my blood seep into the carved earth. For a moment, nothing happens.
Then, the ground hums.
It begins low, almost imperceptible, before rising into something deeper, more resonant. The markings ignite with a dull amber glow that pulses outward in thin veins through the soil, threading between tree roots and rock, weaving themselves into an invisible wall.
The air shifts subtly with a tightening, a sealing that can be felt more than it is seen, as if a door has been closed somewhere far beneath our feet.
Damian exhales beside me. “It’s holding.”
“For now,” Conan mutters.
He isn’t wrong.
We all feel it. This ritual is a brace, not a cure, like a splint on a broken limb of a werewolf who hasn’t regained his natural healing abilities.
The demons are not gone. The portal Sophie saw still exists somewhere beyond our reach, bleeding corruption into our world.
We are buying time with this ritual, nothing more.
Still, when the last of the glow fades into the ground and the forest returns to its natural hush, something inside my chest eases. Silver Stone’s border is bound. My wolves will sleep easier tonight.
If only I could say the same for myself…
***
The council convenes before sunset in the eastern hall—a structure of timber and stone built by my grandfather’s generation. My father stands at the head of the table when we enter, Mortimer Rudolph as immovable as the mountain itself. Age has silvered his hair, but not softened his presence.
Joel Hans, Damian’s uncle, is already seated, fingers steepled in front of his face, eyes thoughtful in that quiet way that makes one wonder how much he’s seeing that the other elders are not.
Elder Bernard leans heavily on his cane, the lines on his face cut deep with both time and worry.
Amos takes his place near the maps, parchment spread wide across the table—sketches of ley lines, recorded sightings, and a rough rendering of the portal Sophie described in her vision.
“We’ve completed the eastern binding,” I report. “The ritual held to the ground without any resistance.”
“For now,” Conan adds again.
My father’s gaze flickers to him briefly before returning to me. “And the hunt?”
“Empty,” I answer. “They’re retreating beyond the mountain spine. Testing the perimeter, but not breaching it.”
Joel nods slowly. “They’re conserving strength.”
“Or gathering it,” Bernard says, voice rough.
Amos clears his throat. “The ritual will hold if the energy source remains stable. But if the portal widens…if whatever anchors it strengthens…the bindings may fracture.”
Silence falls heavily over the table.
“The portal is the root,” Damian says at last, cutting into the silence. “We can reinforce every border in the valley, but until we find where they’re coming from, we’re just fighting symptoms. We need to find the source.”
My father’s gaze sharpens. “And how do you propose we locate something that may not exist fully in our realm?”
“Sophie saw it,” Damian replies evenly, full of conviction. “Which means it touches this world somewhere.”
There it is again—the quiet acknowledgment that our survival may hinge on magic we barely understand.
Bernard shifts in his seat. “The packs are already stretched thin. We cannot afford another failed hunt.”
My father’s eyes slide to me then, assessing. Measuring.
“And how fares your household, Heinrich?” he asks, tone deceptively mild. The question is layered. It is always layered.
“Stable,” I answer. “Annika remains.”
Remains. I flinch at my own words, hating that they left my lips as though she’s not a woman with her own will, but a fixture in my territory.
Conan watches me too closely. Damian, however, speaks before the silence can grow uncomfortable.
“Heinrich completed the binding. Silver Stone is secured for the moment. That is what matters tonight.”
It is a dismissal, subtle but firm. My father inclines his head once, accepting it for now.
“We reconvene in three days,” he says finally. “Continue patrol rotations. No complacency.”
Chairs scrape against stone. The meeting dissolves into smaller conversations—strategy, supply checks, contingency plans whispered in low tones. The elders linger, their age making them slower to rise, slower to disperse.
I remain standing at the table a moment longer than necessary, staring at the rough outline of the portal on Amos’s parchment. A tear in the world. A wound that refuses to close. And somehow, even in the midst of this looming threat, my mind drifts.
To her…
To the way she left my bed before dawn.
To the silence this morning, heavy and deliberate, words unspoken forming a dark cloud over our heads.
I told myself that giving her space was the right thing to do, that pressing her now—when she’s already trapped in a marriage she did not choose—would only push her further away.
But restraint feels suspiciously like cowardice.
“Heinrich.”
My father’s voice pulls me back into the room.
He stands near the doorway, waiting, expression terse enough to serve as a reminder of what else needs to be taken care of today. I nod once and follow him out.
We walk in silence through the eastern paths as dusk settles, the forest turning indigo around us. The graveyard lies on a small rise overlooking Silver Stone’s river, a quiet place, shielded by ancient oaks.
Fifteen years.
Just the thought of the number lands heavier than it should.
My mother’s grave is simple, as she would have wanted.
A smooth slab of stone, her name carved cleanly into its face—Luna Dianna Rudolph.
Beside it rests another marker—smaller, but no less significant.
My former beta. The man who died protecting our border years ago, when the demons began their attacks. Alistair Clarke.
My father kneels first at Mother’s grave. I have seen Mortimer Rudolph command rooms full of alphas without so much as raising his voice. I have seen him stand unflinching in the face of blood and war. But here, before this stone, he bows his head.
I follow suit. The earth is cool beneath my fingers as I brush away fallen leaves from my mother’s name.
“I thought time would dull it,” my father says quietly. “I thought time would dull the ache I feel in my chest.”
“It doesn’t,” I answer, having heard many tales about how the remaining wolf feels after losing its mate.
My father nods, not chastising my interjection, because there’s no pretense between us here. No rank. No performance. He’s just my father, and I am his son.
“She would have liked her…” he says after a long pause, hand resting beneath Mother’s name.
The words catch me off guard because my father has only met her once. “Annika?”
He nods gently. “Your mother believed strength came in many forms. Not just claws and command. I’ve seen the girl, studied her enough to know that there is a quiet strength within her.”
The forest hums softly around us, as if Mother herself agrees with Father’s sentiment, his observation of Annika in that one, brief meeting.
“I don’t know if she’ll stay,” I admit before I can stop myself.
My father’s gaze shifts to me, sharp even in the fading light. “Do you want her to stay?”
The question feels more dangerous than any demon attacking our borders ever felt.
“Yes.” It is not a strategic answer. Not an alpha’s answer. It is simply the truth.
Mortimer studies me for a long moment, then places a hand briefly on my shoulder. “Then stop acting like a man preparing to lose her. Fight for what you want, son. Remember, you are the alpha.”
He rises, leaving me there with the graves and my own thoughts. I remain kneeling long after he walks back toward the path.
Fifteen years without my mother. Years without my beta. Years of holding Silver Stone together by force of will alone.
And now, for the first time, I feel something shifting inside me that has nothing to do with the war we’re in.
All I see is Annika…
Annika was in my backyard this morning, sunlight catching in her hair as she walked the perimeter, as if she belonged there. The way my chest tightened watching her from afar. The way my wolf quieted, not in possessiveness, but in recognition of its true mate.
The border is bound.
The ritual holds.
But I am beginning to understand that the more fragile thing is not the valley or the war.
It is the space between Annika and me that is most volatile.
And I don’t know how to fortify that with blood and rituals. No ritual could ever force her to accept me as her mate. It is something that must be done purely out of her own free will.
That’s the part that scares me—that she won’t want me at all.