By the time Ethan crossed back into Greystone land, the sun had dropped low, casting long grey shadows over the valley.
He ran until his muscles burned. It chased away the ache of putting distance between himself and her. Kelsey. The source of his breath and his unraveling.
He only let himself slow when the last line of trees came into view.
He didn't expect anyone to be waiting. He certainly hadn't expected to find Nell there.
She leaned against a pine tree, hands in her jacket pockets, hair pulled back, eyes fixed in his direction.
He huffed once, a warning, then let the change flow through him like water.
He crouched, breath still labored from the run. The ground sank below his knees, the great mass of his wolf form compressing into a denser, smaller human shape.
Nell didn't flinch. She simply tossed the bundle of clothes she'd been holding onto his shoulder, looking away.
He dragged jeans and a T-shirt on without a word, fingers fumbling with the zipper a second too long.
"Again," she said accusingly when he finally met her eyes. "You went over there again ."
He held her gaze. She held it just as hard. No one moved. Even the wind died down.
"You tracked me," he said after a while.
"Of course I have," she replied. "You weren't home when I got back. You're constantly looking toward Blackwell land. Did you think I can't put two and two together?"
A muscle in his jaw twitched.
"How close did you get?" she asked. "To the border?"
"I stayed outside the line," he replied.
Her jaw clenched.
"Do you honestly think that's what matters?" she asked. "You think anyone will care about technical border rules when they sense you lurking in and out of trees on the edge of Jack Blackwell's territory every other day?"
"It isn't like that," he said, heat edging his voice.
"Really?" she snapped. "Then enlighten me, please. Because from where I stand, the alpha's son keeps veering toward the Blackwell inner ring and a house a bloodkin girl lives in. It isn't just me. Do you seriously think the rest of the pack doesn't have eyes?"
Ethan paused. Looked away.
He thought of Matt in the hallway. Of Ryan. Of the way their attention slid from Kelsey to him and back like they were looking for cracks in the armor. He didn't see every single look, but he had certainly felt them. Probing. Testing.
"They already watch you wrong," Nell said, as if she'd pulled it straight out of his head. "You do realize, if you let this slide, they'll come after you. And then, if you fall, her."
He pressed his lips tight, fists clenching without conscious intent.
He saw it. Kelsey alone, surrounded, every unstable snout in Cold Creek turning her way once his claim no longer stood between her and them.
Something bottomless and cold opened in his chest.
A growl, quiet yet deep, vibrated from him without conscious thought. He cut himself off. "Let them try," he said instead, squaring his shoulders and lifting his chin.
Nell's eyes widened, and a shudder went through her. She swallowed; he watched her throat bob.
"I went to the library," she said finally, her voice lowering as her posture softened. "Like I told you."
He studied her properly then.
She looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. A fine, fixed line between her brows carved by worry.
"You found something," he said.
"Oh, I found more than I wanted," she muttered. "Old chronicles. Blackwell. Winters. Greystone. The years before Cold Creek. Before the valley looked like this."
His fingers curled in his pockets.
"What did you find about bloodkin?" he asked.
She shut her eyes for a moment, then opened them.
"Well, we knew this isn't new," she said. She swallowed, her face crumpling like she was getting sick just remembering. "In 1875 the Blackwell pack had a girl like Kelsey. Born from a bond between a lupine mother and a human father. They called her bloodkin. Her scent did exactly what Kelsey's is doing now. Young males went crazy. Inversion in some males. It led to fighting, then escalated. Eventually it pushed the pack into tearing itself apart." She let out a tired exhale. "We knew it was bad from the stories. The reality… the reality was worse."
Ethan looked away. He didn't ask for details, and she didn't offer them.
"The other pack, our pack, was collapsing on the other side," Nell went on, clipped. "For different reasons. Famine. To survive, they started hunting humans. Back then it was ruled by a Winters alpha who opposed it, and Flint Greystone stepped in, challenged him. Won, but the pack was decimated by then. To survive, the two ruined packs formed joint leadership as a temporary measure. Lodging camp, my ass. That's the cleaned-up version they feed us in class. The reality is that Cold Creek was basically born as damage control." She let out a humorless chuckle as he met her eyes once more, his jaw set tight.
"Afterwards, to prevent history from repeating, they wrote rules. No humans in the pack. No more bloodkin. Hunting humans allowed within the outer joint forest territory."
She let out a breath. Ethan's eyes narrowed a fraction.
"And now, here we are," she finished. "Bloodkin in the middle of a joint town that was explicitly designed never to have one again. History already laid out the pattern, and we are all walking straight into it." She paused. "Starting with you."
There was no accusation in her voice, only truth.
His head turned back eastward, toward Blackwell land he couldn't see from here. He thought of Kelsey at the barn, and something behind his sternum did a painful twitch.
"Ethan," Nell called, bracing herself. "We're out of options. We have to tell Dad the cycle is repeating itself."
Ethan's head snapped back. "We can't! We agreed… you said it could provoke conflict with the Blackwells. Dad would want to send them away. We can't let that happen." His eyes were too wide, too glassy.
She drew a breath.
"Ethan," she whispered, as calmly as she could muster. "Did you hear a word I've said? This is so much more dangerous than we thought." She squared her shoulders, bracing herself. "Bloodkin can't stay inside pack territory indefinitely," she said. "You do understand that, Ethan?"
The words hit like a whip.
Bloodkin cannot stay.
Kelsey, gone.
Inside Ethan's brain, a void cracked open. His body answered before the rest of him could think.
"No!"
It came out rough and too loud, with a vibration under it that was anything but human. The air between them rippled.
Nell's pupils jumped wide. Her nostrils flared.
Ethan saw his own hands in the corner of his vision, fingers curled into white-knuckled fists.
He stepped back.
"Do you hear yourself?" she gasped, horrified. "Do you even realize what's happening to you?"
He did. That was the worst part.
"You want to send her away," he said, forcing the words out. "You know what that would do to her dad. To the balance between Blackwell and Greystone."
"And you." Nell's tone was an accusation. He didn't flinch.
"And me," he admitted, quiet but unashamed.
The silence stretched.
"Nell, you don't understand," he continued, barely audible now. "When you say bloodkin has to be removed, everything in me screams no before I can think. Not because I want to own her. Not because I like what this is doing to me. But because if she's gone somewhere I cannot reach, I'm afraid I'll fall off whatever ledge I'm hanging from, and I'm not sure there'll be anything left of me worth putting back together afterwards." He let her see it, just for a second, the crack he had been holding shut for days.
"And yet, all I want is to keep her from being hurt," he said. "I don't want to pull her under with me. All I want is to hold the line until we find some way through this."
A snowflake drifted from the dark grey sky and melted on his cheek.
"I know," Nell replied, her voice firm. "Don't talk to me like I enjoy this. It's not about what I want. It's about taking the road that inflicts the least damage. I just read what happened the last time a pack tried to ignore a bloodkin under its roof. They all ended up in pieces. She first."
His head snapped up, pupils blowing wide.
"I'm not going to let that happen," he shot back, too fast. Something hot and feral kicked under his ribs.
Nell's eyes narrowed to slits. She inclined her head slightly, observing. "How? By fighting every male in Cold Creek if they decide to go after her?"
His nostrils flared. "If need be. Yes."
Nell shook her head and briefly lifted a hand to her eyes. He could see and smell her distress.
"Nell," he called her name, calmer now. "It hasn't come to that yet. No one has challenged me. I'm keeping the façade with Lara." He exhaled. "I'm managing it."
Something small moved in the bushes, a squirrel perhaps. Leaves rattled, then stilled.
Nell sighed, her hand falling away from her face. The line between her eyebrows seemed deeper now.
"Eth," she said. "You don't see your face each morning when she pulls into the lot. You two smile at each other like idiots. Not for long, but long enough. If I've noticed, so have the others, especially Lara. We do not need a political problem on top of raging hormonal males."
He dragged his hand down his face.
"You don't need to worry about Lara. I'm handling it. Like I'm handling everything else."
She stared at him a moment longer, then nodded once, slow and exhausted. Some of the rigidity left her shoulders.
Ethan thought of Kelsey at the barn, her hand on the wood, her voice low as she reminded her father who he had been.
"Nell, all I ask is that you trust me a little. I can hold this together a little longer."
"You better," she said, eyes sceptical. "Because if you don't, all of this is for nothing."
He almost smiled. Almost.
"Go home," she said, jerking her chin toward the house. "Shower. Try to sleep. And tomorrow we'll pretend it's a normal school week and that the bloodkin girl is not a lit match in a dry forest."
He nodded. He took a few steps, then glanced once toward the east.
Blackwell land sent a thin echo of scent on the wind, almost nothing. His body leaned for one second before he forced himself straight again.
Instinct is not me , he repeated to himself. Truth and a lie at once.
He walked toward the house, leaving the ridge and the scent and the old bones under the valley behind. And still, before he went to bed, before his brain could talk him out of it, he took out his phone, typed a quick message, and hit send.
And somewhere in the east, a girl who had just finished brushing her teeth saw the message and smiled. She typed a reply, set her alarm, turned off her lamp, and went to sleep.