Third Person’s POV
The image on Freya’s WolfComm glowed faintly in the dim backstage light.
A photograph-grainy, taken days ago at the orphanage.
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In the picture, Aurora had been called on stage to speak, a teenage boy standing beside her as the young host. His frame-slender, sharp-edged-was painfully familiar. The same height, the same set of shoulders, the same restless energy as the masked kidnapper she had just seen on the broadcast.
Freya’s mind tightened like a snare.
The boy from the orphanage… and the one who had dragged Aurora into the firelit trap on camera… they were the same.
Which meant the orphan was their suspect.
Her wolf bristled as she pieced it together. Every thread led back to that orphanage-five years ago, the nd news leak, the staged ambush with reporters, and now this. Even the message to the media before onight’s broadcast. The stage was always the same. The orphanage.
And there was more.
She had researched the officer who perished in the Border Fire-Bluemoon Wing’s vice-captain. The man had been a widower, raising his only son alone. When he died screaming beneath the mes, his boy had been just eleven years old.
Eleven years old… which would ce the youth on that stage, and the kidnapper’s age now lined up perfectly.
Her chest grew tight.
The boy hadn’t vanished-he had grown up, carrying the fire of vengeance in his lungs.
Freya didn’t hesitate. She dialed the local enforcers, her tone clipped as she ryed her findings.
When she ended the call, Caelum’s voice cut across the space between them. His silver-grey eyes burned with confusion.
“Why help Aurora?” His words ground like stone. “You despise her. Why risk yourself?”
Freya turned her head, her stare cial.
“I don’t like Aurora,” she said, her voice low, her wolf’s growl simmering beneath each syble. “But I was a soldier once. And soldiers don’t choose who deserves protection. They act because it is their duty.”
The blunt conviction hir Caelum like a blow.
His heart stammered, and for a moment, he couldn’t look away from her.
Soldier.
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He had dismissed it before. To him, her years in the Iron Fang Recon Unit were nothing more than a footnote, a rugged past that gave her scars and grit, but no power Because she’s just a low-level Omega soldier. He had thought her talents ended there-that she was simply a woman who knew how to take orders, endure pain, and march.
He had even looked down on her once.
When they married, it wasn’t for her worth. It was because in his lowest moment-when Silverfang Pack had been crumbling, when his life felt like ash-Freya’s quiet steadiness made him believe he wasn’t entirely lost. She, an orphan of war herself, had seemed to him like a mirror of survival. They had both been broken. With her, he felt less ruined.
So he had married her. He had sworn he would treat her well, honor her as his mate, be faithful.
But things had shifted, hadn’t they? He couldn’t say when. Perhaps it was when work swallowed him. Perhaps when he first heard whispers Aurora would return from Bluemoon skies. Or perhaps the precise moment was when he saw Aurora in her pilot’s uniform, striding through the terminal, sharp-eyed and untouchable, while Freya stood small and ordinary at his side.
He had chosen wrong. That was what he had told himself.
And during the Lunar Severance Phase, he hadn’t regretted the divorce. He had told himself Freya would regret it instead-because he had the future, the empire, the rising power of SilverTech. And she was just a discarded soldier.
Yet now, standing in her presence, feeling the raw edge of her integrity cut through the air like a de, Caelum’s wolf stirred uneasily. He felt stripped, small, almost ashamed.
The crew ushered him away before the cameras, trying to soothe his frayed emotions. The broadcast had cut abruptly when the kidnapper had shut it down, and the show’s interviews carried on with forced normalcy. No one was listening anymore.
Later, when the lights dimmed and the hall emptied, Freya’s WolfComm chimed. It was the enforcers.
We have the suspect.”
Freya stiffened. “Already?”
He was waiting for us,” came the reply. “Just as you suggested-he’s the son of the fallen vice-captain. He offered no resistance. The liquid he poured on Aurora wasn’t gasoline-it was a simtedpound. If ignited, it would have produced only low-heat mes. Frightening, but not lethal.”
Freya’s throat tightened. “May I speak to him?”
“I’m afraid not. He’s under protective custody. Only legal counsel can see him. He has nowyer at
present,”
The line went dead.
Freya turned, her gaze falling on Ss. She hadn’t yet asked the question when he spoke.
“I’ll send awyer,” Ss said simply. “The boy will not face this alone.”
Her lips parted. “Thank you.”
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He met her eyes steadily. “You don’t owe me thanks. Whoever you choose to protect, I will protect too. Whatever you ask, Freya Thorne, I will see it done.”
Her chest ached. The boy hadn’t truly meant to kill Aurora. He only wanted the truth carved into the open, to force Aurora to confess what she had buried-that she had left his father to burn. He had chosen a cruel way, but his intent was never blood.
Atst, the tangled strands aligned in her mind.
Meanwhile, Caelum rushed to the infirmary the moment he heard Aurora had been rescued.
She was there, washed clean of soot, lying in the hospital bed dressed in a pale gown. Her body bore scratches and bruises, but no mortal harm.
She looked small, fragile. But in Caelum’s chest, there was only the heavy weight of what he had witnessed -that her pleading, her confession, her cowardice had been broadcast before every pack, every Alpha, every soldier of the realm.
The mate he had once defended… the hero he had sworn could never be a liar… had been stripped bare before his eyes.
And the woman he had abandoned-Freya-stood unyielding, soldier to the bone, unafraid of the truth.
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