< 255 A Private Wat
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255 A Private War
Lucian
We crossed the street, my impatience bleeding into each step. I knocked on the door, firm and quick.
Mara touched my arm. “Relax,” she murmured.
I forced myself to ease up, but I didn’t stop. Someone was inside, I could feel it, a quiet certainty in my gut.
I was about to reach out and link them when the door opened.
A middle-aged woman stood there, dark-skinned, her eyes widening in surprise.
“Alpha Nighthorn?” she asked, voice a little shaky.
I smiled politely, cutting straight to the point before shock turned into small talk. “Please, I need to know the last time you saw Denis Stormborn.”
Her gaze shifted past me to Mara, and her expression softened.
“Luna Mara, nice to meet you. Please, come in.”
Every instinct told me to keep this quick, but refusing would be rude. We stepped inside, the air faintly smelling of varnish and fresh paint. She led us into the sitting room, offering the couch.
“Would you like tea?” she asked brightly.
“We’re actually on duty, ma’am,” Mara said.
“Gale,” the woman corrected with a small smile. “Gale Stormborn. I’m Denis’s aunt. I moved here from
BravaGoldenpeak about two months ago.”
Of all the doors to knock on, it had to be family. Most of the street belonged to the Stormborns, but Denis had been the only one living here, until now.
“Please, do you know where Denis is?” I asked, my voice low but pressing.
The smile faded. Her eyes clouded with something heavier.
“Keisha’s in the hospital,” she said softly. “She’s been battling an illness that’s keeping her from activating her wolf genes to heal, and then her mental health started to degenerate. When Denis went on a trip and was missing for three weeks, Keisha… unravelled. Slowly at first, asking me if he’d called, wanting to come to the Mansion to ask Luna Mara herself, but feeling she wasn’t welcome. By the third week, she was talking to herself, rambling about some pretend secret mission in a kitchen. None of it made sense.”
Gale’s voice dipped lower. “She’s had psychosis before. It runs in her family. The stress and anxiety of Denis’s absence broke something in her mind again. She started to improve when he finally came back, he stayed indoors with her to make sure she was stable. But two days ago, he left for a meeting. She tried to stop him, screaming that he wouldn’t come back this time. He convinced her, eventually. She seemed fine when she asked to return to her house, so I let her go. I didn’t think much of it… until Denis came home to
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€255 A Private War
find she’d harmed herself. She believed he was leaving on another mission.”
The room seemed smaller as she finished. “He rushed her to the clinic that night. He hasn’t left her side
since.”
I sat there, stunned. The woman wasn’t lying, I could feel it. And in that moment, I felt like a selfish bastard. I’d been ready to strip Denis of his rank, to punish him, while he was living through hell. If he’d told me the truth that day, I would’ve granted him leave without hesitation. But he’d only said she was ill and
refused the mission.
I stood abruptly. “Thank you, Gale. I appreciate you telling me.”
She gave me a small, knowing smile. Mara stepped forward and hugged her before we left the house.
“Poor Denis,” were the first words out of Mara’s mouth once we slid into the Jeep.
“I suspected something was off with the way she spoke to me on the phone,” she continued, fastening her seatbelt. “She was trying to find out if Denis was at the Mansion, but the way she asked…” Mara shook her head. “She said they were going to catch the bad guy in the kitchen. I thought she was being cryptic, but now I know, her mind wasn’t steady. I can see why she’d break, especially with a family history of mental illness. I know how I felt when I couldn’t reach you, not knowing what to do… it can crush anyone. And the fact that she’s pregnant again? That can’t help.”
I didn’t answer.
I drove in silence, shame sitting heavy on my chest. I’d been angry, furious, that Denis wasn’t around to help my wife and father. I’d thought he’d abandoned his post. Instead, he’d been fighting a private war, trying to keep his wife from shattering completely. If anyone had reached him to dismiss him, it would have been a betrayal he might never have forgiven.
The uneasiness I’d read as disloyalty now made sense.
When we pulled up to the facility, the reception area fell silent for a beat. Staff glanced up, eyes widening
at the sight of Mara and me.
“I’m here to see the Stormborns,” I told the nurse.
She greeted us both with the kind of deference that made the air feel heavier, then quickly led us down a narrow hall. The smell of antiseptic clung to the walls.
She opened the door to a small room. Denis was there, hunched forward on a couch, his elbows resting on his knees, chin buried in his hands. His gaze was locked on the bed where Keisha lay, asleep, her wrists strapped lightly to the rails.
“Denis,” I said quietly.
His head lifted. His eyes were red and swollen, ringed in exhaustion.
I crossed the room without thinking. He stood to meet me. The sadness in his eyes was raw, unmasked,
unfiltered.
€ 255 A Private War
“You should have told me,” was all I could manage.
The tears slid down his cheeks before he could blink them away. And in that moment, I saw him for what he was, another life Alaric’s chaos had scorched and left in ruins.
