15. Chapter 15
He gave her three hours.
Sat on the porch in the cold with snow soaking through his jeans and his wolf howling beneath his skin. He knew she was still inside. Still breathing. Still alive, even if the woman who’d been beside him that morning might not survive what she’d found.
He’d almost gone back twice. The first time when her grief hit the bond so hard he staggered off the step. The second when the grief went quiet and he couldn’t tell if the silence meant peace or the numbness that preceded collapse.
Both times he stayed on the porch and let her have the space she’d demanded.
When the door finally opened, he didn’t turn around.
“Tell me everything.” Her voice was scraped clean. Nothing left except the need to know. “Right now. All of it.”
He stood slowly. She stood in the doorway with red eyes and Mason’s photo still in her hand, and the sight of her nearly broke him.
He stepped inside. Closed the door. Moved to the fireplace because looking at her directly hurt too much.
“You read the report.” Not a question.
“Every word.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “His name was Chester. The rogue.” He said it like confessing a separate sin. “He’d degraded six months earlier. Started with livestock. Then pets. I tracked him for three weeks thinking I could bring him back.”
His hands fisted at his sides. “I should have stopped him sooner. Should have seen how far gone he was? But I kept waiting. Kept telling myself he just needed time.”
“And my brother?”
“Was braver than anyone I’ve ever known?” The words tasted like ash. He closed his eyes. “The report gives you the sequence. What it doesn’t say is that I knew, standing there watching Chester fight, that I’d waited too long? That my hesitation put your brother in that clearing.”
Sage made a sound. Small. Broken.
The fire crackled. Wind rattled the glass in the window frame.
“I covered it up.” He met her eyes. “You read what I did. Bear attack. Cleaned evidence. Protected the secret. That’s what wolves like me do. We clean up the things we couldn’t prevent.”
Tears tracked down her face. Silent. Devastating.
“And I’ve regretted it every day since.”
She stood slowly. Mason’s photo slipped from her lap and hit the floor.
“Years.” Her voice cracked. “I gave up everything. My job. My friends. My life. All to find the monster who killed him.”
“I know.”
“And you’re not a monster.” Her voice broke. “You’re just someone who tried and failed and carried that failure the same way I did.”
“Sage.”
“Don’t.” She held up a hand. “Don’t apologize. Don’t tell me it wasn’t my fault. Don’t try to make this easier.”
He stood very still. Throat too tight for words.
She crossed to him. Each step deliberate. When she stopped, they stood close enough that he could feel her breath, smell the salt of her tears.
“Tell me what he said.” She pressed the words out carefully, like they cost her. “His last words. Tell me.”
Declan’s chest constricted. “He said your name. Three times. That was all he had left.”
He kept his eyes on the fire. “The rest is something I found afterward, when I investigated his life. I need you to know where it comes from before I say it.”
She waited.
“His thesis advisor. His supervisor at the ranger station. The wildlife biologist he drove three hours to interview on a Saturday morning because she knew things he needed for his research. I found them all.”
His voice roughened. “None of them knew each other. But every one of them told her the same thing about him.”
“Stop.” But her voice had lost its edge.
“He talked about his sister. Told people you were going to figure out how the world worked before anyone else did.” He finally looked at her. “I can’t give you his last words because there weren’t enough of them. But I can give you years of evidence that you were everything to him.”
She broke. Collapsed against his chest with a sound that tore through him like claws. He caught her automatically, arms coming around her as she shook with years of grief finally released.
“I’m sorry.” The words poured out of him. “I’m so sorry. For not getting there sooner. For making you fall for the man who let him die.”
“You didn’t fail him.” She gripped his shirt. “You were there. You held him. You made sure he wasn’t alone.”
“It wasn’t enough.”
“Nothing would have been enough.” She drew back to see his face. Her eyes were red, swollen, devastated. “He was already dying when you arrived. There was nothing you could have done.”
“I could have tracked Chester sooner. Could have stopped him before he ever got near Mason?”
“Could have what?” Her voice rose. “Predicted the future? Known exactly where a rogue wolf would hunt? Saved every single person in Montana from every possible threat?”
She shook her head. “You’re not a god, Declan. You’re just a man who tried his best and couldn’t save everyone.”
“It wasn’t enough.”
“It never is.” She touched his face. “Don’t you think I know that? I was a crime scene analyst. Watched families grieve. Felt every case I couldn’t close.”
Her thumb traced his cheekbone. “The guilt doesn’t go away. But it’s not the same as being responsible.”
The bond carried the full weight of her grief mixing with his.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” The question came out soft. Broken. “When you realized who I was? When you knew I’d come here hunting answers? Why didn’t you just tell me?”
He closed his eyes. “Because I’m a coward. Because I knew once you learned what happened, you’d look at me differently. Because I wanted—” His breath shuddered. “I wanted to be someone other than the man who failed Mason. Just for a little while.”
“You are someone else.” She cupped his face. “You’re the man who honored his memory. Who kept his photo? Who investigated his life to make sure his death meant something? Who let me into your territory, your home, your life, knowing I’d come to destroy you?”
“That doesn’t change what I did.”
“No.” She pressed her forehead to his. “It doesn’t. And I don’t know yet if I can forgive you for not telling me sooner. Don’t know if I can forgive myself for falling for you.”
She pulled back slightly. Not away. Just enough to breathe.
“But I know Mason died covering people. Died the way he would have wanted to. And I know you honored that.”
His arms tightened around her. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Probably not.” She pulled back enough to meet his eyes. “But you’re stuck with me anyway.”
“Even after this?”
“I’m furious you waited this long. That you let me fall for you before I knew. That’s going to take time.”
His face worked.
“But I understand why.” Her smile was small. Sad. “You’d been carrying it alone for three years. Mason would have understood that — the way grief makes you keep things in silence.”
She held his gaze. Hard. Direct. “You’re not the monster I came to kill. You’re the man who tried to save him and has been mourning him alongside me ever since.”
Relief moved through the bond so hard he staggered. She steadied him, her strength surprising.
“There’s more.” The words escaped before he could stop them. “Things I need to tell you. About Chester. About why he degraded. About where the rest of those murders lead.”
“Tomorrow.” She pressed a finger to his lips. “Tell me tomorrow. Tonight, just let me have this.”
He caught her hand. Pressed his lips to her knuckles. “You’re sure?”
“No.” Her laugh was broken. “I’m not sure about anything. But I know I don’t want to be alone. And I know I don’t want you to be alone. So for tonight, can we just—” She gestured helplessly. “Can we just be two people who loved someone and lost him? Can we grieve together instead of separately?”
He couldn’t speak. He moved to the couch, drew her down beside him. She curled against his chest with her head over his heart, her hand resting on his ribs. He wrapped around her and let himself feel everything he’d been pushing down.
And beneath it all, the fragile hope that maybe, somehow, they could heal each other.
“Tell me about him.” She pressed closer against his chest. “Not about how he died. About who he was. What you found?”
Declan’s hand moved slowly along her arm. “He was a researcher. Dedicated. His supervisor at the ranger station called him the most thorough field analyst they’d worked with in years.”
“He was.” Pride threaded through her voice. “He taught me how to track. How to read sign? How to see what everyone else walked past without noticing?”
“His thesis advisor believed Mason would have changed how the field thought about territorial behavior. That the work he was doing was years ahead of the standard approach.”
“He coached me too.” Her palm settled over his heart. “After our parents died. He was only twenty-three. Could have put me in foster care? But he didn’t. He raised me himself.”
“Every person I found told her the same thing about him.” Declan’s voice roughened. “That you were the point of everything he did. That he talked about his sister. That whatever he built, it was for you.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Is that what happened to Chester? The grief destroyed him?”
“Part of it.” He pressed a kiss to her hair. “I’ll explain everything tomorrow.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
She tilted her chin up. Her eyes were still red, still swollen, but something in them had changed.
The hatred was gone. The rage had burned itself out.
What remained was grief and exhaustion and something fragile that looked like the possibility of hope, held at a distance that would take time to close.
She was still angry. He could feel it, quiet but present, a live wire running just below the surface. She wasn’t past it. She was living inside it, choosing to stay despite it.
“I’m still angry with you.” She pressed her palm against him. “For not telling me sooner. For letting me spend weeks investigating when you knew.”
“I know.”
“And I’m angry with myself. For falling for you. For choosing you over the mission. For wanting you even now.”
“I know.”
“But I’m not leaving.” She met his eyes. “Because Mason wouldn’t want me to. He’d want me to live. To heal. To find something worth fighting for besides vengeance.”
His jaw locked. “And have you? Found something worth fighting for?”
She kissed him. Slow. Careful. Her lips tasted like salt and grief and something that wasn’t forgiveness yet, but was reaching toward it.
“I’m starting to.” She pulled back just enough to speak. “Ask me when morning comes.”
Wind pressed against the cabin outside. Inside, two people who’d spent years mourning the same man held each other in the dark.