Chapter 213

Elara’s POV

“I’m not asking you to sit idle.”

Kaelen leaned back in his chair. His coffee had gone cold. He hadn’t touched it since I’d spoken. His dark gold eyes studied me with that particular brand of careful attention—like a man measuring the exact distance between himself and something dangerous.

“Then what are you asking?” I said.

“I’m asking you to lead.”

I blinked.

He set his forearms on the table. “I watched you in that pit, Ela. Before you knew I was there. Before the fever took you down.” His voice was low. Controlled. But something heated flickered beneath the surface. “You nearly killed a man twice your size. No shift. No claws. No wolf. Just your hands and whatever the hell they taught you down there.”

I said nothing. The memory rose unbidden—the roar of the crowd, the taste of blood in my mouth, the way my opponent’s eyes had widened when I’d locked his arm and twisted.

“The empire has female knights,” Kaelen continued. “Riley built that program from nothing. Trained them herself. But since Riley has had to pull back to take care of her child, they need a leader. Taking this role would prove to these women that they are not just weak caretakers.”

I turned my cup slowly between my palms.

“These women need someone who can show them what strength looks like without a wolf form,” he said. “Someone who’s fought without one and won.”

The words landed somewhere deep. Somewhere bruised.

Without a wolf form. Because mine was gone. Moonlight—my wolf, my other half—had been ripped from me the night Lyra was born. The silence inside my chest where she used to live was a wound that never stopped bleeding.

But he wasn’t saying it to hurt me. He was reshaping the absence into something useful. Turning my loss into a weapon I could wield.

Clever bastard.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

Something shifted in his expression. Not quite a smile. More like the ghost of one, quickly buried. He nodded once. “That’s all I’m asking.”

He reached for a slice of bread. Tore it. Chewed. Then, almost too casually: “Brenna’s been constantly sending messages to the palace since you disappeared. Riley too.”

My stomach dropped.

“Constantly?” My voice came out smaller than I intended.

“Without fail.” He didn’t look up from his plate. “Brenna’s messages got more frantic as time went on.”

I pressed my hand flat against the table. My fingers were trembling.

Three years. I’d vanished for three years without a word. Without a letter, a message, a sign. I’d walked away from everyone who loved me and disappeared into the filth and violence of the underground like a coward.

Not just from Kaelen. From them.

“I want to tell them you’re here,” he said quietly. “They deserve to know.”

I swallowed past the knot in my throat. “Yes. Tell them.”

He left the kitchen to send word. I sat alone with the silence and the cooling bread and the weight of what was coming.

—

Two hours later, I heard the front door crash open so hard the hinges screamed.

“WHERE IS SHE?”

Brenna’s voice could shatter glass. It always could. That hadn’t changed.

I stood from the kitchen table. My heart was hammering so hard my ribs ached. I smoothed the front of my shirt—still borrowed, still too large—and turned toward the doorway.

Brenna appeared like a storm front. Wild dark curls flying loose around her face. Bright eyes blazing red from crying. Cheeks flushed. Chest heaving. She’d clearly run from wherever the carriage had dropped her.

She saw me.

She stopped dead.

For one terrible, suspended moment, she just stared. Her gaze raked over me—the hollow cheeks, the jutting collarbones, the scars visible along my forearms. I watched her expression cycle through recognition, shock, fury, and something so raw it didn’t have a name.

Then she crossed the kitchen in three strides and hit me.

Not hard. Open-palmed smacks against my upper arm. Rapid. Frantic. Each one punctuated by a word.

“You—little—bastard—”

“Brenna—”

“Three YEARS!” Her voice cracked wide open. Tears were streaming down her face. She was still hitting me. “Three years, Ela! I thought you were DEAD! I thought they’d thrown your body in a ditch somewhere and I’d never—I’d never—”

Her hits lost their force. Her hands fisted in my shirt instead. She yanked me forward and crushed me against her chest. Her whole body was shaking. Violent, heaving sobs wracked through her.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Brenna, I’m so sorry.”

“Shut up.” She was crying so hard she could barely speak. “Shut your mouth. I hate you. I hate you so much, you little bastard. Don’t you ever—”

She couldn’t finish. She just held on tighter.

The guilt was a physical thing. A blade between my ribs, twisting. I had done this. I had taken her loyalty—years of it, unwavering—and repaid it with silence. With absence. With the kind of disappearance that lets the people who love you imagine the worst.

I held her back. Pressed my face into her wild curls and let her cry.

A softer presence appeared in the doorway.

Riley. Quiet. Steady. Her dark hair pulled back neatly, her gentle eyes already glistening. She held her three-year-old daughter, Thalia, on her hip—a girl with Riley’s wide brown eyes and a bright, mischievous grin that belonged entirely to Sir Cassian.

Riley didn’t rush. She crossed the kitchen at her own pace, shifted Thalia to one arm, and wrapped the other around both of us.

“Welcome home, Ela,” she murmured against my temple. No accusation. No demand for explanation. Just warmth.

I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper.

Brenna finally pulled back, swiping furiously at her face. “Don’t think you’re off the hook. We are going to have a very long conversation about what the hell—”

A tiny hand tugged the hem of my shirt.

I looked down.

Thalia peered up at me with enormous eyes. “You’re Auntie Elara?”

My chest split open.

“Yes, sweetheart.” My voice was barely there. “That’s me.”

“Papa said you got lost.” She tilted her head, studying me with the devastating earnestness of a small child. “I’m glad they found you.”

I knelt. Brought myself to her level. She smelled like soap and honey.

“I’m glad too,” I whispered.

Thalia smiled. Sir Cassian’s smile. Warm and fearless and utterly trusting.

Something I didn’t deserve cracked open inside my chest and flooded through.

Kaelen appeared in the doorway behind Riley. He leaned against the frame, arms crossed. Watching. Saying nothing. But when Brenna’s gaze snapped to him, her expression sharpened.

“How bad was it?” she demanded. “When you found her.”

Kaelen’s jaw tightened. He glanced at me. I gave the barest nod.

“She was fighting in the underground pits near the border,” he said. Flat. Matter-of-fact. As though reporting battlefield casualties. “When I found her, she was half-dead. Fever. Malnourished. Covered in wounds.”

The color drained from Brenna’s face.

Riley’s hand found mine and squeezed.

“But she’s here now,” Kaelen added. Quieter. Looking at me.

An hour later, after Riley had finished making sandwiches and the children—Valerius, Lyra, and Thalia—were playing upstairs, Brenna pulled me onto the kitchen bench and refused to let go of my hand. We sat together. Ate. Talked about small things—Brenna’s work, Riley’s garden, Thalia’s growing collection of imaginary friends. Nobody pressed me. Nobody asked about the pits. The scars. The years of silence.

Not yet.

Brenna was finishing her food when she said it casually.

“So,” Brenna said casually. “You and Kaelen. Back together? Happily ever after? All that?”

I choked on my water.

Riley’s gaze drifted between us. “Yeah, you two look… good.”

Kaelen and I looked at each other.

The room went very quiet. Very awkward.

Neither of us spoke.