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JACE

T he Keep was quiet, too quiet, as he paced the perimeter of the old ward line—boots crunching across frost-stiff grass just past the east slope where the shimmer of the veil had once danced strong and sure.

Now it flickered.

Not broken, not yet, but thinning .

He could feel it in his bones. The tension in the air, the pressure behind his eyes like a storm was coming—not fast, not loud, but steady. Inevitable.

And it wasn’t just the wards.

It was him.

Inside, beneath skin and bone, his wolf was pacing, restless and pissed, snarling at every moment that passed without Lyra beside them.

Jace growled under his breath, palms fisting at his sides.

He’d told her. Finally.

Spit the truth between clenched teeth like it might kill him if he didn’t.

And it still hadn’t been enough.

Because knowing she was his mate didn’t stop the weight in his chest. Didn’t erase the fear that he’d screw this up the way his father had screwed up everything .

The world still remembered Kieran Montgomery as the greatest Alpha Celestial Pines had ever known. Strong. Brilliant. Strategic.

And then one night, without a fight, without a note—he vanished.

Just gone.

No battle. No farewell.

Just dust and silence and a son left with a legacy carved in stone and shadows.

Jace had only been twenty-three.

Old enough to be groomed. Young enough to still believe his father would always be there.

He remembered the cold shock of it.

The press of eyes on him in the first council meeting.

He remembered Logan pulling him aside after and whispering, “They’re already looking to you. Don’t give them a reason to doubt.”

And he hadn’t.

Not once.

Not until her.

He paused beside the old spellstone marker, fingers brushing the jagged runes that marked the last boundary his father had reinforced. The stone felt colder now. Like it knew its strength was slipping.

Jace clenched his jaw.

He couldn’t afford distractions. Not with the wards thinning. Not with Ezra circling like a wolf with blood on the wind.

And Lyra , bright, wild, chaos in bloom, she was the worst kind of distraction.

Because she made him want things. Soft things. Hopeful things.

The kind of dreams that didn’t come with war or weighted silence or the constant fear of failing everyone who looked to him like he carried the sky on his shoulders.

And stars help him, he wanted her anyway.

His wolf wanted her—no, claimed her. Had from the first moment her scent hit the air and lit up something ancient in his blood.

But he’d fought it. Was still fighting it. Because loving her felt like standing too close to the edge of a cliff in a storm.

One step too far, and it wouldn’t be just him who fell.

It would be her.

He sank to the ground beside the ward line, elbows resting on his knees, breath fogging in the crisp air.

“You didn’t get to run,” he muttered. “So why the hell do I still want to?”

The trees didn’t answer. But the wind shifted.

And he thought of Lyra’s voice the last time she spoke to him, brittle and furious and heartbroken all at once.

“If you keep standing there holding back, you’re going to lose me.”

And that… that scared him more than the wards ever could. Because he didn’t want to lose her. He never had.

He just didn’t know how to keep her without breaking the rest of himself wide open.

A low growl rumbled in his chest. His wolf was done pacing. It was waiting. Waiting for him to stop being a coward. Waiting for him to stop letting ghosts dictate his damn future.

He looked out over the valley, where the glow of the town shimmered faintly under twilight. Festival lanterns bobbed in the wind.

Somewhere out there, she was hurting. And it was his fault.

He stood slowly, brushing his hands off on his jeans.

He couldn’t fix what his father broke.

Couldn’t change the way Kieran Montgomery disappeared in the dead of night without a trace, without a goodbye, without so much as a whisper of warning to the pack that worshipped him—or the son who idolized him.

Couldn’t erase the shame of being the boy who had to step into the shoes of a man the whole town still spoke of like he’d been a god walking among wolves.

Jace had carried the silence of his father’s absence like a brand, a constant reminder that even the strongest could vanish. That legacies could rot from the inside. That trust was a blade that cut deeper than any enemy's claw.

He remembered the whispers, he wasn’t ready. Too young. Too raw.

The weight of having to prove them wrong over and over, every damn day.

He wasn’t afraid of claiming power. He’d already done that.

What terrified him was becoming just like the man who left it all behind.

Disappointing the people who looked to him to lead. Abandoning a mate the way his mother had been left. Loving someone so completely… then breaking them because he couldn’t stay.

That was the cycle he feared.

And maybe he could stop it. But only if he was brave enough to be more than what his father had been.

And the first step?

Stop letting fear do the talking.