Chapter 11 - Zane
Something about this almost feels normal, and that’s what throws me off the most.
For a few minutes, longer than I want to admit, it’s like nothing changed. Like we’re back in Wraith Peak, sitting just outside the training grounds after a long day as she vents and I listen, while the outside world is nothing more than a backdrop.
I’d forgotten what that felt like. Or maybe I didn’t forget, and I just buried it instead to make my escape easier.
Naia stands a few feet away now, flexing her fingers like she’s silently communicating with the abilities inside her. There’s a different kind of focus in her expression that seems less like sharp-edged anger and more like concentration. It suits her, almost too well.
I get more comfortable on the sofa while I watch her. “You had decent control for someone who doesn’t have much experience with it.”
She huffs lightly, like she’s caught between doubting herself and wanting to believe it. “Barely.”
“I half expected you to burn the building down by now, so I’d say you’re not doing too badly.”
“That’s not saying much,” she says, corners of her lips pulling faintly.
“It’s still progress.”
She glances at me, like she doesn’t know what to do with that, but she gives me one decisive nod.
With a gentle breath, she sits back. “I guess it isn’t much different from controlling our inner wolf…
except it’s entirely unknown to me.” Then, her brows furrow slightly as a new thought hits her. “Why are you so accepting of magic?”
I shrug. “I’ve met a few magic-users recently, and they helped me see it doesn’t have to be unpredictable or destructive. It can be used to protect, rather than to wreak havoc just for the sake of it.”
At that, something closer to recognition crosses her features, and her voice reaches me quietly. “You mean Sera?”
My eyes narrow a bit at that, then it sinks in that Sera had spent some time in Wraith Peak against her will before she met Luke. They obviously have some kind of history. “She’s one of them, yes.”
The way her expression drops a bit is more telling than she likely realizes, and as curious as I am, I don’t push. Instead, I study her through another brief pocket of silence, wondering where she falls in all of this.
In a black-and-white context, Naia is supposed to be the enemy.
At least, she is so long as she follows her brother’s orders, as she once did for her father.
But from what I’ve gathered, she isn’t exactly the pack favorite, and now that she possesses magic, who knows the kind of target that would be put on her back if she returned.
The thought alone makes me bristle on the inside, even as I try to push it aside.
The quiet between us feels like the closest thing to a bridge we’ve had this whole time, but it’s fragile, and I mistake that understanding for an open mind from her.
“You don’t have to go back,” I say before I can hold the words back, and the shift is immediate.
I see it happen in real time…the way her shoulders stiffen, and that softer edge disappears like it was never there. Here we go.
Her gaze finds mine, narrowed like a predator’s. “What?”
With a breath, well aware of what I’ve just uncaged, I sit forward in my place a bit, hands clasped together. “You don’t have to go back to Wraith Peak.”
Her expression hardens, turning impassive all over again. “We’re not doing this again.”
“I’m not saying it to control you,” I continue, attempting to help her see things differently. “I’m saying it because you have an out now.”
“I don’t need an out.”
I scoff to myself. “Yeah, you do. You should take advantage of it while you still can.”
“Surprise, surprise,” she mutters, looking both disappointed and annoyed like I’ve missed the point entirely. “You weren’t listening at all.”
“I was listening. I am”
“Then you’d understand why I need to go back.”
“I understand why you think you need to go back,” I correct, feeling as my stubbornness matches hers without hesitation. “That doesn’t mean you’re right.”
Her jaw tightens, seeming closer to putting up a genuine fight now rather than seeing eye-to-eye after all. “Unbelievable.”
“Naia—”
“No,” she cuts in with more force now as the warmth from before completely vanishes. “You don’t get to stand there and tell me what I do or don’t need.”
“I’m not telling you what you need,” I say, even though that’s exactly what it sounds like. “I’m telling you what you don’t. It’s been right in front of you this whole time.”
“Because that’s so much better.”
I exhale slowly, trying to keep this from spiraling even if it’s a pointless endeavor now. Once we start, it seems impossible to stop until we’re both beyond frustrated with each other.
“Everything you’re talking about…proving yourself, earning respect, going back to fix things…you’re still letting them define you. There’s more to life than trying to earn your place,” I tell her, wondering how I’m ever going to get through to her.
Her expression goes cold immediately. “You don’t get to say that.”
“I do if it’s true.”
“It’s not.”
“It is,” I push. “You’re tying your entire worth to what they think of you, but the system’s rigged against you. I’ve seen what happens when you stay in a place where everyone refuses to see you for what you are.”
“What am I then?” she challenges, practically salivating at the chance to correct me before I can even respond.
Still, I don’t hesitate. “More than what they made you believe.”
For a beat, just long enough for me to catch, something wavers in her gaze, then disappears just as quickly while she steels herself.
“You think I don’t know that?” Naia asks, quieter now but no less intense. “You think I haven’t been fighting my entire life to prove that?”
“I think you’ve been fighting the wrong battle, yet you keep fighting it again and again.”
Her anger spikes again, immediate and unwavering as she stands, forcing me to do the same. She shakes her head with a tight jaw. “No. You just don’t get it, and you never will.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“It’s my pack. I’m the Alpha’s sister,” she says, her voice steadier now, stronger. “That means something.”
“It means they expect more from you,” I counter. “It doesn’t mean they’ll give you anything in return.”
“Then I’ll take it.”
“You shouldn’t have to.”
“You don’t get to tell me how to live my life. Not when you left,” she repeats, quieter now.
“I do because I left,” I counter, unshaken by the way she throws it back at me. “I got to see another world out there, away from the island and away from Wraith Peak. My perspective changed the moment I did.”
“You left,” she continues, stepping closer now as her voice rises. “You walked away from it all, so of course it’s easy for you to stand there and judge it. You have no idea what I’ve been through or what I’ve done since you’ve been gone.”
My brows furrow. “I’m not judging you.”
“You are,” she snaps, close enough now for me to feel the heat radiating off her. “You’re standing there acting like you’re above it now, just because you got away.”
“I’m not above it,” I say, frustration creeping in. “I just see it for what it is, and I’m trying to help you see it, too.”
“And what is that?” she demands.
“A system that was never built for you to win.”
When she doesn’t say anything, there’s a split second where I think that might actually get through to her, until she comes back with even more conviction.
“Then I’ll break it.”
Everything about her right now is absolute, unshakable, and completely reckless in a way that I know will only spell further trouble for her.
I huff out a breath, feeling the frustration rising like it usually does when we clash. “You can’t fix something like that from the inside.”
“Watch me.”
“Naia—”
“I don’t have a choice!” she snaps, the words tearing out of her like they’ve been sitting there for years. Her chest rises and falls sharply, and her hands curl into fists at her sides. “I don’t have a choice. It’s all I’ve ever known.”
Finally. That’s the truth underneath everything else.
Before I can miss my opportunity, I soften my tone slightly. “You do have a choice. You always do.”
“No,” she says immediately, as if it’s a fact I refuse to look at. “I don’t.”
Even if I shouldn’t be wasting my breath, the words leave me unbidden. “You could stay and build something different. You don’t have to keep proving yourself to people who’ve already decided what you are and what your worth is to them.”
The laugh that slips from her is both bitter and venomous. “That’s far too easy for you to say.”
“It’s not easy,” I argue, easily recalling how hard a transition it was for me, especially with my biases. “I had to leave everything behind to get here. It didn’t happen overnight, but it’s possible, and it’s worth it.”
“And you’re proud of that…abandoning everything?” she challenges.
“No, I’m not. But I’d do it again for the chance to be something else,” I admit, watching as her eyes search mine.
For a second, something changes in her expression again, this time slipping into something more uncertain. Before long, it hardens protectively.
“I don’t want to be something else. I want to be seen for what I am.”
“Then why go back?”
“Because I need to make them see it,” Naia utters, wavering just enough to sound painfully vulnerable. “I need to prove that I’m more than an Omega. That I’m more than what they decided I was the moment my brother became Alpha.”
“You don’t need to prove that to anyone,” I try to explain. “You don’t owe your brother anything, and you sure as hell don’t owe that pack anything.”
“I owe it to myself,” she fires back. “And I owe it to the wolves who think they can do whatever they want and get away with it.”
“That’s not your responsibility.”
“It is if I make it mine.”
Frustrated and feeling something dark curling in my gut at the thought, I grit my teeth. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“Then I’ll die proving something!”
Those words hit me harder than if she really did feel like punching me, and everything in me goes still. I know she’s being serious, but everything in me refuses to accept that.
“Or,” she continues, her voice shaking now with something deeper than anger. Something that comes from the farthest depths. “I’ll finally be more than what they think I am.”
My heart tightens, and I wish more than anything that she could understand how ridiculous that sounds, especially when I already see a powerful woman right in front of me.
“You already are,” I say, quieter now.
A flicker of surprise moves through her gaze, catching her off guard, but Naia shakes her head stubbornly. “You don’t get it.”
“Then make me get it.”
“I can’t,” she says, frustration bleeding through. “Because you’ve never been in my position. Because I don’t run.”
The words land exactly where she intends them to, and something in me staggers. My voice drops as I ask, “You think I ran?”
“I know you did. You ran from Wraith Peak, you ran from your responsibilities, you ran from—” she cuts herself off, but it’s too late. She has already gone too far to take it back now.
“From what?” I press, feeling beyond tense now. “Say it.”
Naia hesitates as she looks up at me, but she pulls in a breath and lifts her chin. The accusation burns as she murmurs, “From everything, including me.”
My stomach drops at the sound of it coming from her as I focus on that last part. Her. She thinks I wanted to leave her. The notion of her even confusing that makes the anger claw even harder at my chest.
I step closer, closing the distance between us. “That’s not what happened.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.”
“Then what?” she demands, eyes so full of disdain that I almost don’t recognize her now. “What do you call it when someone leaves everything behind without looking back?”
“I call it surviving, and choosing something better.”
Her expression falters just long enough for me to see it, but the deeply rooted pain gleams through.
“And what makes you think I don’t deserve that same choice?”
“You do,” I say immediately. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“Then stop trying to take it away from me!” she snaps.
The words echo in the space between us, and somehow, that’s the breaking point.
Because I really don’t understand. I don’t get how she can stand here, knowing everything she knows now, and still choose to go back. To still choose them, and choose a place that’s already failed her. Even if she finds her way back, they’ll never see her as anything more than a tool to be wielded.
“You’re unbelievable,” I mutter as I look her over, not knowing how much of this I still have left in me.
“And you’re insufferable,” she fires back.
When neither of us says anything, I realize we’re too close now. With barely a breath between us, I can see every shift in her expression, every flicker of anger, and every trace of something deeper buried underneath it. I see the real her trying so hard to get out.
“You’d rather go back there than take a chance on something different,” I say, not believing how she can grip this idea so tightly without seeing the errors in it.
“You’d rather run than fight for something that matters.”
“And what exactly matters to you?” I demand.
“Proving I belong.”
“You already belong.”
“Not yet.”
It hits something in me I wasn’t expecting…something too raw that I don’t have a name for yet.
This whole time, Naia has been describing herself as unworthy of basic decency and care from the people who have been around her since the day she was born.
When they look down at her, she assumes that means she needs to claw her way up to their level, rather than searching for another way and for other people who will genuinely care for her.
She doesn’t see that I’m right here, even while I’m shouting it at her.
Before I can stop myself, and before I can think it through, I close the distance completely and press my lips to hers.
The contact isn’t controlled or measured, and isn’t anything like how I usually handle things. It’s frustrated and demanding, and driven by everything neither of us has been able to say, but I can’t bring myself to stop.
For a split second, she goes completely still. Then, she responds in kind, just as fiercely and just as recklessly.
Naia’s hands grip my shirt, pulling me closer instead of pushing me away, and whatever line we’ve been dancing around disappears entirely as I thread my fingers through her hair and grip the nape of her neck.
The kiss is burning with anger and raw, repressed need, all the while, everything collides at once.
Every argument, every look, and every moment of tension all funnel into this, pulling us both under faster than we can even consider the potential consequences.
For the first time since she walked back into my life, we aren’t holding back.