Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
The distillery sat empty except for the ghosts and memories he couldn't outrun.
He turned Ash's poker chip between his fingers. The whiskey in front of him had gone warm. He hadn't touched it in over an hour, he just sat there staring at nothing while the meeting played on repeat behind his eyes.
But it wasn’t the evidence that plagued him. Nor the patterns he'd laid out in the case he'd built.
It was her face.
Particularly the moment when she’d realized what he was doing. The way her spine had gone rigid and the flush drained from her cheeks. She hadn't screamed. Hadn't thrown anything. She'd just looked at him, and something behind her eyes went dark and still.
That was so much worse than if she'd raged at him.
He shoved back from the bar and paced toward the windows. The stills caught what little light filtered through the glass, making odd shadows in the darkness. He should go home. Do something other than sit here alone replaying the moment he'd destroyed everything.
He’d built a stupid case against her out of fear because the alternative was admitting he wanted her and wanting had never ended well.
She was Iris's daughter. A crucial fact that had taken him a week to find out about after they met.
That alone made the pattern fit just well enough that he could pretend he believed it.
Almost.
The chip turned in his hand, clicking against his thumbnail. Click. Click. Click.
The door crashed open behind him.
He spun, body coiling to spring before his brain caught sight of the intruder. Lily stood in the doorway, moonlight carving sharp shadows across her face. Her pregnant belly barely visible under her coat. Her eyes were blazing with a fury he'd never seen directed at him before.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Her voice bounced off the stills. "Gray told me what you did. What were you thinking?"
He opened his mouth. Closed it. There was nothing to say that wouldn't make it worse.
Lily crossed the room in quick strides, her footsteps echoing in the empty space. She stopped close enough that he could see the tremor in her jaw, the way her hands had curled into fists at her sides.
"You know what she sacrificed for this pack.
She turned against her own mother despite the danger.
She stood there taking it while Iris screamed at her, calling her a traitor and worse, and she never flinched.
" Lily's voice cracked. "For me. For us.
And tonight you stood up and called her to be cast out? "
"She's Iris's daughter—"
"Everyone’s known that since October. The whole pack knows. And you are the only one with a problem with that." Lily's eyes bored into him. "It's time to let that shit go. What's the real reason you're doing this?"
"The disturbances started after they arrived. The magical signature—"
"Was found in an area you asked her to investigate. She told you something was out there. She tried to help." Lily stepped closer. "And you used her own findings against her."
His hand tightened on the chip.
"Gray says the evidence was thin at best. Cal agreed. So that means you knew it was thin too." She wasn't backing down. "So why'd you stand up there and present it like you believed it?"
"We have to consider the possibility—"
"Bullshit." The word cracked through the distillery before he could finish his sentence. "You wanted it to be true. Because if she's guilty, you don't have to deal with whatever's actually going on between you two."
He turned toward the window. Said nothing.
"Gray told me what you said to him. That wanting her feels like standing at the edge of a cliff. Even more so than it did with Cara." Her voice dropped. "Ash was his brother. He needed to talk about it with someone. So I know. I know all of it."
He nodded. ”You’re his mate. I would expect no less.”
"I understand why you're worried," Lily said. "What I don't understand is why you'd burn her down instead of dealing with it."
"You don't—" His throat closed. He tried again. "Cara—"
"Isn't Willow." Lily grabbed his arm and yanked him around. "She never was. You know the difference. You've known it the whole time."
He stared at her. The justifications he'd built, the case he'd laid out, it was all falling apart in his hands and he couldn't hold onto any of it.
"Her face when I—" The words got stuck again.
Lily's grip softened. "What if she's exactly what she seems, Ryker? What then?"
The memories of their time in her cabin flooded his mind.
Her face in the firelight, the way she'd looked at him like she couldn’t get enough.
Like she saw past the walls and wanted what was underneath anyway.
No one had looked at him like that in a long time.
And he'd taken that trust and trashed it like it meant nothing.
Fuck. He couldn't answer.
"You should go to her. Beg for another chance." She grabbed his arm harder. "Tonight. Right now. Before it's too late. Before she—"
Something snapped in his chest.
An actual physical sensation, like a cord pulled too tight finally giving way and tearing a path in its wake. He doubled over, the poker chip clattering to the floor as both hands clutched his sternum. The air vanished from his lungs.
"Ryker?" Lily's voice came from somewhere far away. "What's happening? What—"
His wolf.
His wolf.
Three years of near total silence shattered in a single heartbeat. The beast inside him, the one hiding away and refusing to deal with what happened, exploded awake with a force that drove him to his knees.
MATE.
The word slammed through him with physical force.
MATE. OURS. WHAT HAVE WE DONE. WHERE IS SHE.
"Ryker!" Lily grabbed his shoulders and gasped. Her hands jerked back like she'd touched a live wire. "Magic,” she cried. “Oh Goddess. So strong. Willow, what did you do?"
He couldn't answer. His bones were already grinding, reshaping. Fur erupted along his forearms as the shift ripped through him without permission, without control. This wasn't supposed to happen. He didn't shift involuntarily. Nor did he lose command of his own body.
His wolf didn't care. The beast was clawing toward the surface with years of desperate need behind it, and nothing human was going to stand in the way.
GO TO HER. NOW. GO.
"Something—" He forced the words through teeth that were already changing. "My wolf. Something happened to—"
The rest dissolved into a growl as his spine cracked and reformed.
He dropped to all fours, human thought scattering as instinct took over.
Lily shouting his name. Cold air against his muzzle as he burst through the open door.
The world exploding into scent and sound and the overwhelming pull dragging him north.
Toward her.
He ran. Paws tearing into wet earth, breath clouding in the frigid air.
The main area of the island blurred past, pine and salt and old kelp, accompanied by the crash of waves against rock.
None of it mattered. Only the bond roaring to life in every cell of his body, a wildfire consuming everything in its path.
He was realizing now that It had been there all along.
The connection his damaged wolf had refused to acknowledge.
He'd felt echoes of it, the pull toward her, the way his body reacted before his mind could catch up, but this was the truth of it.
Raw and undeniable and screaming through every nerve.
And the other end of that bond was--silent.
Empty.
What did she do?
What did we make her do?
The cabin materialized through the mist. Small, weathered, warm light glowing behind the windows. He skidded to a stop at the tree line, chest heaving, and a sound escaped him that he barely recognized. A whine. High and desperate, the cry of an animal in pain.
His wolf wanted to charge forward, break down the door, find her. The beast didn't understand why the bond was silent on her end.
Movement shifted behind the glass. A shadow crossed in front of the light.
Then she was there at the window, her face pale against the darkness. He lifted his snout to the air and howled at the almost full moon above. Her eyes went wide. Her body tensed. She didn't know it was him. How could she recognize the wolf she'd never seen, the part of himself he'd been hiding.
He sat back on his haunches and forced himself still. The whine in his throat wouldn't stop. His wolf was howling at him to shift, to speak, to explain. To beg.
After several minutes of waiting, recognition finally flickered across her face. She stared at him through the glass for a long moment, and he watched the fear drain away.
She stepped away from the window and seconds later, the door opened.
Willow stepped out onto the porch, her arms wrapped around herself.
Soft sweater, loose pants, bare feet on the wooden boards.
He scented the blood before he saw it. A white cloth wrapped around her left palm, dark stains seeping through.
She was hurt.
He approached the porch steps and stopped. She looked down at him, this woman who should have been his, and her face held nothing. No flush of anger. No ache of longing in her eyes. No heat.
Nothing at all.
"So, this is what you look like." Her voice was soft. Curious. Like she was examining something mildly interesting in a shop window. "I wondered."
He pressed forward, tried to nose at her hand, and she stepped back. Not flinching. Just moving away the way you'd avoid a stranger's dog in the park.
"We could have had this." She said it like she was commenting on the weather. "You and me. Your wolf and my magic. I felt it for so long, you know. This pull toward you that wouldn't let me sleep. I kept hoping you'd feel it too."
He shifted.
The transformation tore through him with none of the usual grace. Bones grinding, muscles screaming, his body remembering how to be human only because his wolf had finally run out of reasons to hold on. He ended up on his knees at the base of her porch steps, naked and shaking in the cold.
"Willow—" Her name came out rough. He tried again. "I—"
The rest wouldn't come. His throat closed around the words the same way it had with Lily.
She waited until he stopped trying. Patient. Quiet. Her bandaged hand hung at her side, and even now, after everything, the only thing he wanted was to tend that wound. Find out what had hurt her. Fix it.
But his instincts told him it wasn’t that simple. He couldn't just snap his fingers and fix this.
"You'll have to live with what you did." She spoke without cruelty. Without satisfaction. Just the truth. "I don't have to anymore."
"What does that mean?"
She lifted her bandaged hand, turned it over in the faint light spilling from inside.
"I spent a long time burning for a man who thought I was a threat and made it abundantly clear I wasn’t wanted.
And yet I still harbored hope that if I tried hard enough, proved myself enough, you'd finally see me.
" A small, sad smile touched her lips. "Tonight was the last straw and I had to do something. So I ended it."
The emptiness on her end of the bond. The cold where warmth should have been.
"You severed it. How? That’s not possible."
"I had to set myself free. I deserved to be free. The how doesn’t really matter now.
It’s over." She met his eyes, and he saw peace there.
Genuine, hard-won, terrible peace. "Whatever we had, whatever we could have had, you killed it before I ever spoke a word of that spell. I just finished what you started."
"There was a woman. Cara—" He started. "Three years ago, she—"
"I don't need your explanations anymore." She interrupted, her voice unwavering. "I needed you to choose me. But you didn't. And now it’s too late."
He couldn't breathe. The cold air bit into his skin, but he barely felt it. Could only feel the howling absence where their connection should have been.
"The evidence—" He tried again. "The pattern—"
"I know what you told yourself." She cut him off.
"I've heard the rumors about Cara. About what happened to Ash.
" She tilted her head, studying him with those warm brown eyes that held no warmth for him anymore.
"I would have been patient, Ryker. I would have given you all the time you needed, if you'd shown me even once that you thought I was worth the risk. "
"You are. You're worth—"
"Not to you. Not when it mattered." She exhaled, and the sound was almost kind. "I don't blame you for being afraid. I blame you for choosing to burn it all down rather than face it."
"How do I—" His voice cracked. The sentence died.
"You learn to live with it." She turned toward the door, pausing with her hand on the frame. “Sorry isn't a magic word, Ryker, and you don't get to skip the consequences just because you finally woke up."
"Willow—"
She ignored him. "Goodnight, Ryker. Go home."
The door closed. Not slammed in his face. Just quietly closed, signaling the conversation was over.
He stayed on his knees in the cold, the wind biting into bare skin. His wolf howled inside him, awake now, but far too late, clawing at the emptiness where their bond should have been.
Mate, his wolf keened. Ours. Please.
There was no answer.
The cabin light stayed on. Through the window, he watched her shadow move through the room. Making tea. Settling onto the couch.
The kind of indifference cut deeper than anything before, and he let it.