"It's your fault, you know. Mated this long and you still don't know any restraint. You were so worked up that night you actually hurt me. Like some untested yearling on his first moon. Anyone would've thought it was your first time..."
My body went rigid.
My heart felt as though something thin and sharp had been driven into it. A quiet, spreading ache, threaded through with a desolation I couldn't put into words.
Between them, it truly had been the first time.
I stood there in silence, hollowed out, my thoughts dragging me back whether I wanted them to or not.
Five years of mating. He had been endlessly attentive in every other way. But in that kind of closeness, he had always been distant, detached. Every time felt like a duty performed without feeling, as if he were simply fulfilling an obligation.
I had told myself it was just his nature.
After all, I had never once seen him lose control in daily life.
Not until now. Not until he became "Caelan Nightfang."
Only now did I understand. When he was with the one he truly loved, he could lose himself too. He could burn that fiercely.
By the time I came back to myself, he had already hung up and walked into the kitchen.
He refused the household attendant's help and stood over the stove himself, preparing soup for Chloe Ashford.
I watched the scene for a moment, let out a quiet, self-mocking breath of laughter, and turned to leave.
Over the days that followed, I barely left my room. I stayed inside, waiting for the paperwork on the isle territory to finalize so I could leave the Nightfang estate for good.
Then Chloe was discharged from the Pack Infirmary, and she came tapping at my door, chirping like a finch that had never known a cage.
"Big sister, my mate has a pack race today. Come with us! I know you're heartbroken about Alaric's passing, but locking yourself inside like this will only make you sick."
The two Nightfang brothers had always drawn every eye in the territory.
Alaric was cold, controlled, the ruling Alpha of the Nightfang Pack. Caelan was wild and untethered, the only wolf in the world to compete on the continental storm-circuit as a pack scout racer. Opposite temperaments, opposite lives.
I didn't want to go. But then a thought turned over in my mind: I wanted to see how a wolf who had never once raced would keep up the act. So I followed them to the track.