Mira’s POV

The bond pulsed like a heartbeat I couldn’t silence. Kael’s collapse had opened something worse than fear; his pain bled through the link, and I felt every throb. I left before dawn and went to the western tower where Cyrus waited, quiet, steady, the one constant I could lean on without falling apart.

He looked up as I entered the chamber. His face was plain but, to some extent, suspicious. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said softly.

“I couldn’t stay silent,” I answered. “Not after everything.” I just smiled and shook my head.

He gestured to the chair. I didn’t sit. “This isn’t about Kael,” I said. “It’s about before. About what I never told anyone. The night I left Blackridge, I wasn’t alone. I had a daughter.”

He did not react. “Go on,” he said.

“We hid in the borderlands. The rogues came. I fought, but they took her. I searched until I couldn’t anymore. No trail, just blood and a mark, Windermere’s sigil.”

He exhaled slowly. “I suspected,” he admitted.

The word hit me harder than denial. “Suspected?” I demanded. “You had me. You could’ve asked.”

“And if I had?” he asked. “Would you have told me then?” His question cut because it had truth in it. I had not been ready to see his face then. I had not wanted to break him. He said he’d chosen what the pack could survive, Kael barely keeping the borders together, and that the truth might have toppled everything.

“You let me carry it,” I said. “You let me believe I was alone.”

“You weren’t ready,” he said. “Neither was Kael. Telling the truth then would’ve done more harm than good.”

We discussed and argued in small groups. We were doing that until the bond flared and Kael’s heartbeat slammed through me. I staggered, clutching the desk. “He’s weakening,” I said. “I can feel it.”

Cyrus’s face hardened. “Then stay out of the link. If you push now, you’ll pull both of you under.”

“I’m not abandoning him.”

“You already did,” he said quietly.

Those words cut deeper than any accusation. I steadied myself. “I’m done hiding from him, from this.”

“What you are is a threat to everything he’s built,” Cyrus said. “Seraphine will use your child’s existence as proof of Windermere ties. If she convinces the council, Kael’s claim won’t survive the vote.”

“So you protect the title, not the man,” I snapped. He did not answer, and that silence felt like complicity. The mark on my arm pulsed, stronger now; Kael’s energy faltered, pain, confusion, then a dangerous stillness. Panic knotted my gut.

“You need to let the bond rest,” Cyrus urged. “If you push again, you’ll both.”

“Stop telling me what to do,” I cut him off. “You’ve done enough.”

He hesitated, then softened. “If you tell Kael everything, he’ll stop at nothing to find her. And if she’s gone.”

“She’s not,” I interrupted. “I’d feel it.” He did not argue; his silence felt like pity.

At the threshold, I stopped. “If you want to protect the pack, start by protecting him, from Seraphina, from the council, from whatever’s coming.”

He nodded. “And you?”

“I’ll find what they took,” I said. “If she’s alive, I’ll bring her home.”

He watched me go, guilt shadowing his eyes. The bond hit again, Kael’s voice a raw spool of grief, rage, and something darker. I pressed my palm to the mark. “Hold on,” I whispered.

The air shifted. I felt Seraphine’s presence like a chill before a blade; she always sensed when the bond surged. The council would meet by noon, and she would use my confession as proof. I moved faster, toward the east courtyard, the dawn brittle and colorless.

At the outer gate, the bond steadied. Kael was alive, faint, but there. That was enough for now. Cyrus’s voice came from the shadows. “If you go after this, you won’t come back the same.”

“I wasn’t the same the day they took her,” I said.

He did not follow. Some distances demand a cost I was already willing to pay. Smoke and steel drifted on the wind; Seraphine had begun moving her pieces. The truth was out, and the lies were done. Fear had slipped away, and something colder took its place: resolve.

If Kael lived, I would find him. If our daughter lived, I would bring her home. And if the council stood in the way, then Blackridge would burn.

I pressed my palm to the mark once more, feeling its slow, steadier beat. My skin let the rage that had sat coiled in my chest unfurl into a plan. I would not wait for permission or for the council’s conscience to wake. I would take what they refused to give me. Cyrus could guard the edges. Kael would have to be kept from charging blindly. And I would move like a shadow through the places they thought I’d left behind. Each step from here was deliberate, and a promise carved into bone.

By dawn, I was on the eastern road. The cloak cinched, pack at my back. And a single, terrible certainty ahead. I would burn the world that hid her if I had to. If finding her meant becoming what they whispered, then I don’t mind. And let their whispers sharpen into warnings. I tightened my fingers around the trinket I’d kept since Blackridge. I set my face to the wind; the hunt had begun. Nothing would stand between me and the child I’d loved in secret.