Chapter 6: The Last Call
The line went quiet after my words.
Then came Tristan’s low chuckle, confident in all the wrong ways.
“Kiera, are you serious? After everything we planned for the mating ceremony? You’re really ending it over a tantrum?”
I exhaled slowly. “So you do remember how long this has been arranged.”
He still thought I was bluffing.
“Come on. You’re just upset. I said I’d make it up to you. Acting cold won’t change how I feel.”
I didn’t need to explain anymore. When
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I heard Rafe arguing with him in the background, I hung up. Then I blocked every number tied to the Ashveil Pack -Tristan included.
That night, I slept through the night for the first time in weeks. And I dreamed.
In the dream, I saw a young girl curled on the floor of a cold outpost barrack. Her uniform was too big, her hands covered in healing scrapes. She scribbled something into a journal–half numbers, half thoughts, never full sentences. A quiet record of everything she swallowed down.
Today, I covered someone else’s patrol again. No one said thanks, but I didn’t want trouble.
Today, I trained with a broken rib. No one noticed. Maybe they wouldn’t care even if
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they had.
Today, I was told to smile more. Be softer. Don’t make others uncomfortable with my silence.
The journal wasn’t a countdown–it was survival. Notes she left herself to remember
that it wasn’t her fault.
In the last entry, she wasn’t wearing a wedding dress or anything dramatic. Just her worn boots and a cloak that smelled of the wild. Wind in her hair. Her shoulders lighter.
“I should’ve walked away sooner,” she whispered.
I stood beside her, older and unflinching.
“But you’re walking now.”
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I didn’t leave the Outpost.
I stayed–through the cold, through the silence, through the rough edges of pack life on the border.
No one held my hand. No one asked if I was okay. But that was fine. I didn’t need them to.
While others gathered around bonfires or joked during downtime, I trained harder. Took extra shifts. Learned everything I could- territory lines, emergency signals, how to hold my ground when no one came to back me up.
I became someone useful. Someone who didn’t flinch when things got hard.
Not the overlooked daughter. Not the broken bond.
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Just a wolf doing her job–and doing it well.
One night, during a rare chat with a friend back in the pack, she messaged with a grin I could almost feel through the screen:
[Kiera, you won’t believe this. The Ashveil Pack are losing it without you. Even Tristan. Total meltdown.]
I blinked, then smiled faintly.
[Why would they care?]
[No clue. But they’re trying every trick to reach you. Guess they finally noticed the silence.]
A moment later, my phone buzzed with a call from an unknown number. I almost declined -but something told me to answer.
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My mother’s voice came through, tight with forced warmth.
“Kiera! Thank the Moon Goddess. We’ve been trying to reach you. Why did you block us? We thought something happened!”
A beat passed.
“We… we weren’t fair to you. I know that now. Come home. We’ll celebrate your birthday properly this time.”
I went still.
They found it.
Not the notebook, but what it meant. The record of everything I never said out loud.
All the moments they ignored. All the
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wounds they couldn’t see–or didn’t want to.
Too late.
“I don’t like birthdays,” I said calmly.
There was a long pause on the other end. A silence that sounded more like guilt than love.
She asked again.
“At least… come home.”
I looked around my small dorm room. The scent of coffee clung to my worn blanket. My boots were muddy from the last field run. A dog–eared book rested beside my pillow. All mine.
This was peace.
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This was mine.
“I am home,” I said, and hung up.
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