Mate Me in Moonlight

Chapter 53

POV: Adeline

News spread through Willow Ridge like fire through dry timber.

By nightfall, everyone knew. The cursed survivor. The woman who had stumbled onto their territory with ash in her hair and grief in her bones. She wasn't just running from Ironclaw—she was connected to them. Personally. Intimately. The Alpha hunting their borders wasn't after territory or resources or dominance.

He was after her.

I felt the shift before I saw it. The warmth that had slowly grown around me over the past weeks—the nods of greeting, the softening glances, the tentative acceptance—curdled into something colder between one breath and the next. Conversations died when I passed. Eyes that had once met mine now slid away, or worse, fixed on me with something sharp and calculating.

Suspicion. Fear. Accusation.

I walked through the compound like a ghost wearing borrowed skin, and the whispers followed me like shadows I couldn't outrun.

"She brought him here."

The voice drifted from behind the supply cabin—two wolves I had shared meals with just days ago. I stopped without meaning to, my feet rooting themselves to the packed earth.

"He's hunting her. Has been this whole time. Every patrol, every threat, every sleepless night—that's because of her."

"The Alpha should never have let her stay. We all saw how he looked at her. Clouded his judgment."

"Give her up." A third voice now, harder than the others. "Give her up and maybe he'll leave us alone. One wolf for the safety of the whole pack? That's not even a choice."

My hands trembled at my sides. I forced myself to keep walking, to put distance between myself and words that confirmed every fear I had carried since crossing Willow Ridge's border.

They were right.

That was the worst part. They were right, and I couldn't even argue.

I had brought this danger to their door. I had let them shelter me while knowing exactly what hunted at my heels. Every moment of peace they had lost, every patrol that came back exhausted and afraid, every child who sensed their parents' tension—that was my fault. My silence. My selfishness dressed up as survival.

The meeting hall doors stood open when I passed, and voices spilled out—raised, urgent, fractured with disagreement.

"—exile is the only option that makes sense—"

"—can't just throw her to the wolves, she's done nothing—"

"—done nothing? She lied to the Alpha's face for months—"

"—Ronan won't stop at her. You think handing her over ends this?—"

I couldn't make myself go inside. Couldn't stand in that room and watch them debate my fate like I was a problem to be solved rather than a person who had made terrible choices for understandable reasons.

Instead, I found a shadow behind the woodshed and pressed my back against the rough planks, breathing through the tightness in my chest.

A figure appeared at the corner. Luca.

He stood there for a long moment, arms crossed, jaw tight. The suspicion I had spent weeks trying to soften was back in full force—but beneath it, I saw something else. Conflict. A war between instinct and duty that played out across his features like storm clouds racing across a sky.

"Half the pack wants you gone," he said finally. No preamble. No softening.

"I know."

"The other half thinks exile would be a death sentence. That Ronan would catch you before you made it ten miles, and we'd have your blood on our hands."

I said nothing. Both things were probably true.

Luca's nostrils flared. "I told him. The day you arrived, I told him something was wrong. That you were hiding something. That he was letting—" He stopped. Breathed. "He didn't listen. And now we're all paying for it."

"You were right."

The admission seemed to take him off guard. His eyes narrowed, searching my face for mockery or manipulation.

"I was hiding something," I continued, my voice flat. "I should have told him. Should have told all of you. You had a right to know what you were sheltering, and I took that choice away." I met his gaze without flinching. "So yes. You were right. And I'm sorry."

Something shifted in Luca's expression—not forgiveness, not acceptance, but perhaps the faintest crack in the wall of his contempt.

"Being sorry doesn't undo the damage."

"No. It doesn't."

He stared at me for another long moment. Then he turned and walked away without another word.

I stayed behind the woodshed until the voices in the meeting hall faded and the compound settled into an uneasy quiet. Then I made my way back to my cabin, keeping to the shadows, avoiding the paths where I might encounter anyone who would look at me with fear or hatred or worst of all, pity.

Freya was waiting on my doorstep.

She sat with her knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them, her dark braid falling over one shoulder. When she saw me approach, she didn't smile. Didn't rise to embrace me the way she had so many times before.

She just watched me with eyes that held something worse than anger.

Disappointment.

"Can I come in?" she asked quietly.

I nodded and opened the door.

The cabin felt smaller than usual. Colder. Freya stood near the window while I hovered by the bed, neither of us willing to bridge the distance that had opened between us.

"You should have told us," she said finally.

"I know."

"You should have told him."

"I know."

Freya turned to face me fully. In the dim light filtering through the window, I could see the strain around her eyes—the same sleepless shadows that marked everyone in Willow Ridge tonight.

"I defended you," she said. "When Luca had doubts, when others whispered, I told them they were wrong. That you were healing. That you deserved the chance this pack gave you." Her voice cracked slightly. "I believed in you, Adeline."

The words landed like blows. I absorbed them without flinching, because I deserved every one.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "Freya, I'm so sorry."

"I understand why you didn't tell us." She said it like it cost her something—an admission dragged from somewhere deep. "I understand being so afraid of rejection that you'd rather lie than risk it. I understand wanting something so badly that you convince yourself the secret is worth keeping."

Hope flickered in my chest, fragile and desperate.

"But understanding isn't the same as forgiving."

The flicker died.

Freya moved toward the door. I wanted to reach for her, to beg her to stay, to promise I would be better, do better, become someone worthy of the friendship she had offered me.

But I had already proven that my promises meant nothing.

She paused at the threshold, her hand on the frame.

"I hope you figure out how to fix this," she said without turning around. "For your sake. For his. For all of us."

Then she was gone.

The door closed with a soft click that echoed through the empty cabin like a thunderclap.

I stood in the silence, feeling the weight of it press against my chest. More alone than I had been the day I arrived at Willow Ridge's border, starving and desperate and hoping for nothing more than a locked door and a few weeks of safety.

At least then, I had only myself to disappoint.

I moved without thinking. My hands found the canvas bag in the corner—the one I had never fully unpacked, because some part of me had always known this moment would come. The old reflex, worn smooth by repetition: fold the clothes, gather the essentials, leave before they can throw you out.

Five packs had taught me this rhythm. My fingers knew the motions by heart.

I laid each item in the bag with mechanical precision. Shirt. Trousers. The knife Freya had given me, though holding it now felt like pressing on a bruise. Water flask. The small pouch of coins I had earned through odd jobs, barely enough to matter.

When the bag was packed, I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at it.

Run, the instinct whispered. Run now, while you still can. Before they decide for you. Before the exile vote passes. Before you have to see Aiden's face one more time and know that you did this to him.

My hand slipped beneath the pillow.

The cedar token was still there. Smooth. Worn. Smelling faintly of everything I was about to lose.

I pressed it against my chest and waited for morning.