Lyra’s POV

The rose stayed with me all night.

I couldn’t sleep. I held Kairo to my chest, his small breaths steady, unaware of the shift in the air. The black rose sat on the nightstand like a warning... or a promise.

By morning, it had withered slightly. Still beautiful, still unnatural. I burned it in the fireplace before sunrise.

I told myself it meant nothing.

That night claw marks didn’t mean he’d found me.

That the dreams the ones where I saw red eyes in the trees were just the ghosts I hadn’t buried deep enough.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling.

He knows.

Three years passed. And I rebuilt myself with trembling hands.

In Wolhurst, I became someone else again. I no longer stitched in the back of the tailor shop. I owned it now. "Thread & Thorn" stood near the market square, a modest fashion house with mannequins in the window and clean white tiles inside. I designed dresses by candlelight, skirts that moved like wind, and cloaks that hid secrets. I sewed like I was trying to mend something inside me.

Maybe I was.

Kairo turned three with a smudge of cake on his cheek and eyes too old for a child. Silver eyes. Draven’s eyes. He asked about his father sometimes.

“Why don’t I have one?”

“You do,” I said. “He couldn’t stay.”

And that was all. It was the only truth I could live with.

I kept our scents masked with herb blends. I warded the cottage at the edge of Wolhurst with sigils no one questioned. I stayed far from pack territory. I didn’t even run in my wolf form anymore.

We were safe.

Until the river bled.

It was late summer when it happened. The trees had started to turn golden at the tips. Kairo had fallen asleep in his favorite spot in the garden, curled up like a pup. I went to the riverbank alone, basket in hand, collecting valerian root.

I smelled it before I saw it—blood. Metallic, sharp. Too much of it.

I stopped, heart stammering.

A wolf lay half-submerged in the shallows. Large. Black. Bleeding from his flank. His breathing was ragged. One paw twitched.

My body moved before my brain did.

I didn’t stop to ask who he was. My wolf didn’t growl. She whimpered.

The wolf let me touch him.

Let me bind the wound.

Let me save him.

It wasn’t until two days later, when he opened his eyes, that I saw the truth in them.

Those eyes weren’t red like Draven’s.

They were gold. A molten, eerie gold I recognized from stories whispered in Blackthorn corridors.

Lucien Blackthorn.

Draven’s cousin.

And once, his heir.

He blinked slowly as I spooned broth to his lips, groggy with pain and fever. “You helped me,” he rasped.

Just looked at me too long, like he was searching for something I hadn’t offered.

The next day, I found his pack mark burned, blackened, and half-gone. He was no longer bound to the Blackthorn Alpha line.

A rogue.

Just like I had been.

He stayed for weeks. I didn’t ask why. Kairo took to him with quiet fascination. Lucien had a gentleness I didn’t expect; he taught Kairo how to stack stones, how to listen for owls, and how to draw wolves in the dirt with sticks.

And Lucien… looked at me like I was a riddle he wanted to solve.

I caught him staring sometimes.

Not with hunger.

With sorrow.

As if he could sense the things I’d buried. As if he knew I had once loved his cousin, and it had shattered me.

But he didn’t push.

He fixed the fence. Chopped wood. Cooked once burned everything, but still.

At night, he sat near the fire and read the old tales I kept on the shelf. He listened to Kairo’s babble, never flinching when the boy’s voice echoed with something strange. Something old. Power slept beneath my son’s skin.

He reminded me of Draven in flashes tilts of the head, the way he gritted his jaw but it wasn’t the same. Lucien didn’t command a room. He asked for space in it.

Slowly, I stopped watching the door.

One night, after Kairo fell asleep in his lap, Lucien spoke without looking at me.

“Draven sent me away.”

I didn’t respond. I didn’t trust my voice.

“I told the council he was going too far. Making enemies with witches. Breaking treaties. He said I was soft. That I’d forgotten what it meant to rule.”

Lucien’s fingers curled gently in Kairo’s hair. “I didn’t forget. I just didn’t want to rule like him.”

I stared at the fire.

"I didn't know you carried his baby, I would have..."

“What?” I snapped. “Stopped him? Told him to choose me?”

He didn’t answer.

“You’re here now,” I said, standing. “But nothing changes.”

“Doesn’t it?” His voice followed me like a thread. “You saved me.”

I turned to him, arms folded tight. “Don’t read into that. I save things all the time. Birds. Stray cats.”

He smiled faintly. “You saved me. That’s different.”

I didn’t reply. My walls were high. I couldn’t afford cracks.

But the next night, he stayed longer at the table. The next morning, he brought wildflowers in a bundle, awkward and too large.

Kairo laughed. Really laughed. I hadn’t heard that sound in months.

And I let Lucien stay.

Longer.

He never touched me. Not without permission. Not even when I leaned against him on cold nights. Not even when I broke down one day after sewing a velvet cloak that reminded me of the palace halls.

But he was there.

And that presence, quiet and steady began to weave itself around my ribs like thread.

Until one afternoon, something shattered.

Kairo had been playing outside while I swept the porch. Lucien crouched nearby, showing him how to shape mud into wolves.

Kairo stopped suddenly.

He stood, his small hand reaching toward Lucien’s chest. His fingers brushed against his shirt, resting over his heart.

Lucien froze.

Kairo tilted his head. Then said in a whisper:

“Why do you smell like the man in my dreams?”

The broom dropped from my hands.

Lucien looked at me slowly.

Kairo blinked, unfazed, and walked back to the flowers. As if he hadn’t just cracked the world open.