Chapter Three: "I Told Myself It Was Gratitude. I Was a Liar.

CAIUS POV --- In the dark, you learn things about yourself that the light was politely hiding. For instance: I am not as patient as I believed myself to be. I am not as strong as my pack believes me to be. And I am significantly less resolved than I need to be, because every time Neva Aris walks into a room I cannot see, I know exactly where she is, and I have started to find that more comforting than I have any business finding it. --- I was twenty-five when the rogue attack took my sight. Three wolves. Silver-laced claws — a violation of every treaty this region had spent forty years building, which meant it was political, which meant somebody had ordered it, which meant the blindness was not an accident. It was a message. The message was: *You are weak now. The Vrel lands are open.* I received that message. I understood it. I chose, with every remaining functional piece of my self, not to believe it. This was harder on some days than others. The worst days are the ones where I can feel my wolf straining against the dark — that animal part of me that was built to lead, to protect, to see threats coming and cut them off before they land. In the dark, my wolf goes quiet in a way I've never felt before. Not calm. Not resting. *Muted.* Like something was turned down but not off. On those days I sit very still and I breathe and I remind myself of what I still have: My hearing, which is extraordinary. My memory, which is complete. My authority, which nobody has been brave enough to openly challenge yet. My mother, Bena, who comes every third evening and talks to me in the particular way she has — very practical, not sentimental, which is exactly what I need. And, since roughly four months ago: Neva. I did not expect Neva. When they told me a caregiver was coming from the Aris pack, I expected someone efficient and deferential and ultimately forgettable — the kind of person packs send when they want to appear helpful without actually risking anything valuable. I expected to endure them for a week and then send them home. Then she walked in and I threw a glass at her. She didn't scream. She didn't flee. She said *I'm here about the lamp* from behind the door in a voice so dry it took me a full second to realize she was afraid and hiding it extraordinarily well, and something in me that had been clenched for weeks went: *Oh. There you are.* I didn't understand what that meant. I filed it away. --- There are things I know about her without ever having been told: She grew up being overlooked. Not cruelly — she's not wounded the way cruelty wounds people. More quietly than that. Like a plant that learned to grow toward whatever small amount of light it could find instead of requiring a full sun. She is funnier than she knows. She drops humor the way other people drop things by accident — casually, without warning, and then immediately looks unsure whether it landed. It always lands. I never tell her. She is afraid of being asked to leave. I know this because she makes herself indispensable in small constant ways — the tea angle, the lamp placement, the way she narrates her movements so I'm never startled. She is preemptively justifying her presence, which means she has been told, somewhere, some time, that her presence requires justification. I find this irritating on her behalf. She would tell me I'm reading into it. She would be wrong. --- Today my mother came. Bena Vrel does not knock. She walks into rooms she's decided she has access to and arranges herself in whatever chair makes her feel most authoritative, and then she speaks. "Lera Aris is on her way," she said. I said nothing. "She arrives before nightfall," my mother continued. "She's been corresponding with the pack council. Your father's old allies, primarily." A pause sharp as a new blade. "She's been positioning, Caius." "I'm aware." "You're aware she's been building social capital in three territories while you've been—" "Recovering," I said. "While I've been recovering." My mother made the sound she makes when she wants to say something she's decided not to say. It's a very specific sound. I've known it my whole life. "She's a strong choice," Bena said finally. "Politically. Her bloodline is clean, her standing is good, and she has been very deliberate about making herself visible in all the right places while you have been—" "Recovering." "I was going to say *here.*" Silence. "She's not who I would choose," my mother said quietly. "For what that's worth." I asked her what she would choose instead. She left without answering. --- Here is the thing about my sight returning that I have not told anyone: It already has. Partially. Twice. The first time was three weeks ago — a flash, thirty seconds, like a curtain lifting. I saw my own hands and the window and the grey sky beyond it. And then it was gone. The second time was last week. Neva was in the room. She was by the window — her spot, the one she always picks, as if she's chosen the least intrusive place in every room by some private calculation. And for thirty seconds I could see her. She was not looking at me. She was looking out the window with her knees pulled up and her chin resting on them, and there was something in her face — something unguarded, quiet, a little sad — that looked like someone trying very hard to be okay and almost, almost succeeding. She is smaller than I expected. Dark-haired, slight, unremarkable in the way that means nothing is obviously, loudly beautiful about her — but I found I could not stop looking for the thirty seconds I had. And then the dark came back. And I thought: *Oh. There you are.* The same thing I thought the first day. And I still didn't understand what it meant. --- Tonight, after the tea, after she left, after I said her name in that particular quiet way I said it — *look at you,* I said, and I meant it, and I knew as soon as it left my mouth that I meant more than she heard — I sat with the dark for a long time. I thought about Lera. About the expectations. About the territory. About what a good Alpha does and what a good Alpha wants and whether those have ever, for anyone, been the same thing. I thought about the road my mother's voice took when she said *not who I would choose.* I thought about Neva's hands and the angle she turns the tea cup. I am going to get my sight back. Hew told me today — days, he said. Not weeks. The number was supposed to feel like relief. It felt like a countdown. And I found myself sitting very still in the dark, doing something I haven't done since before the attack: Listening for her footsteps. Waiting for her to come back. Telling myself it was gratitude. Being, as I said, a very convincing liar. --- I am in my chair by the window when I hear the car. My hearing has always been exceptional. Now it is extraordinary. I hear the crunch of gravel under tires, the engine, the door, the step onto the pack grounds. I hear my mother's voice greeting someone at the main entrance — clipped, courteous, cool in the particular way Bena Vrel is cool when she has reservations she's declined to voice. And then I hear the voice that answers her. Low, musical, precisely the kind of beautiful that knows exactly what it's doing. Lera Aris. Here. Now. A week earlier than the council letter indicated. And below me, somewhere in the kitchen, I hear the quiet sound of a spoon going still. And I understand, with sudden and terrible clarity, that the next few days are going to ask me to be a better man than I'm currently managing.