Kaelen’s POV

"Lyra! Valerius!"

The sight of them standing in the storm ripped every other thought from my mind. My children. My babies. Soaked through, trembling, their nightclothes plastered to their small bodies like second skins.

I released Elara and sprinted across the lawn. The grass was a swamp beneath my boots. Rain hammered my shoulders, my skull. None of it mattered. I dropped to my knees and pulled them both against my chest in one desperate motion.

"What are you doing out here?" My voice came out rougher than I intended. Fear did that. Made me sharp when I meant to be soft. "You’ll catch your death—both of you—"

Lyra was shaking. Not just from cold. Her whole body vibrated against mine like a frightened rabbit. Her braids were heavy with rainwater, dripping rivulets down my arms. I pressed my palm against the back of her skull, tucking her face into my neck.

Valerius didn’t burrow into me the way his sister did. He stood rigid in my arms, his jaw set, his fogged glasses hiding whatever storm raged behind his eyes. But he didn’t pull away. His fingers gripped the sleeve of my shirt. Tight. White-knuckled.

"Inside," I said. "We need to get inside right now—"

"Is Mommy leaving again?"

Lyra’s whisper cut through the roar of the rain. So small. So terrified.

My chest cracked open.

"No, sweetheart. No one is leaving—"

"We heard yelling." Valerius’s voice was flat. Controlled. But his lower lip trembled, just barely. "You were fighting. You were fighting like—" He swallowed hard. "Is it because of us? Did we do something wrong? Is that why she ran away before?"

Gods.

I pulled back enough to look at both of them. Lyra’s face was crumpled, tears indistinguishable from rain. Valerius stared past me toward where Elara stood. His expression was a battlefield. Want. Anger. Terror. All of it warring across features too young to carry that weight.

"Listen to me." I cupped Valerius’s face with one hand, kept Lyra pressed close with the other. "This is not your fault. None of this. Not then. Not now. Do you understand me?"

"But she left—"

"Not because of you." I said it with every ounce of certainty I possessed. "Never because of you."

"Then why?" His voice cracked. The composure shattered. Underneath was just a boy. A wounded, exhausted boy who missed his mother. "Why didn’t she want to be our mom anymore?"

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

I didn’t have the answer. I’d asked myself that question every night for three years. I’d screamed it into empty rooms. I’d whispered it into Lyra’s hair while she slept. I’d carved it into my own ribs with the blade of not knowing.

But the answer wasn’t mine to give.

Movement behind me. Soft footsteps on soaked grass.

Elara.

She moved past me. Not running. Not hesitating. Each step deliberate, as though she were walking toward something sacred. Or something she was terrified of breaking further.

She sank to her knees on the waterlogged lawn. Right there in the mud and rain. Her thin dress pooled around her, instantly brown at the hem. Her silver hair hung in heavy wet curtains around her face. She was shaking as badly as the children.

"My babies." The words came out broken. Ravaged. "My sweet, precious babies."

Lyra turned her head from my chest. Her eyes—wide, uncertain, desperate—fixed on her mother.

"I’m sorry," Elara whispered. Tears poured down her face, lost in the rain. "I’m so sorry. Mommy is so, so sorry."

Valerius didn’t move from my arms. His grip on my sleeve tightened.

"Why?" he asked. The single word carried the weight of three years. "Why did you go? Why didn’t you want us?"

Elara flinched as though struck. A sound escaped her—wounded, animal, terrible.

"I wanted you." Her voice broke apart on each syllable. "Every second. Every single second I was gone, I wanted you so much I thought it would kill me."

"Then WHY?" Valerius was shouting now. Crying. His glasses were completely fogged, useless. He ripped them off and threw them into the grass. His dark gold eyes—my eyes—blazed with hurt. "Why did you leave?"

Elara pressed her palms into the mud. Her shoulders heaved. When she lifted her head, her expression was the most naked, gutted thing I had ever witnessed.

"Because I lost my wolf."

Silence. Even the rain seemed to hold its breath.

"Three years ago," she continued, each word dragged from somewhere deep and bleeding, "something happened to me. My wolf soul... she was torn away from me. Gone. And without her, I was—" Her voice splintered. "I was nothing. Just a human. Weak. Powerless. Broken."

Valerius stared at her. Lyra had gone very still against my chest.

"I looked at you both," Elara whispered, "and all I could think was—how can I protect them? How can I be their mother if I can’t even shift? If I can’t fight for them? If I’m just..." She pressed her fist against her mouth. Muffled the sob. "I was so afraid you would grow up and be ashamed. That the other children would mock you for having a mother who was less than nothing in our world."

A mother who was less than nothing.

My heart stopped. All this time. All these years of wondering, of searching, of raging at the silence she left behind—and this was why. Not because she stopped loving them. Not because she found someone else. Not because she was cruel or selfish or any of the dark things I’d allowed myself to believe in my worst moments.

Because she thought she wasn’t enough.

"So I left," she breathed. "I left because I thought you deserved better than what I’d become. I left because I loved you too much to let you watch me be weak."

Lyra wiggled free of my arms. I reached for her instinctively, but she slipped through my fingers like water. She toddled across the grass on unsteady legs—three years old, barefoot in a storm, impossibly brave.

She stopped in front of her mother.

Her tiny hand reached up. Small fingers touched Elara’s cheek. Clumsily wiped at the tears there.

"I don’t care about wolf stuff," Lyra said. Her brow furrowed with fierce concentration. "I don’t want a wolf mommy. I just want MY mommy."

Elara’s composure disintegrated. She crumbled forward, pulling Lyra into her arms so tightly that the little girl squeaked. But Lyra didn’t protest. Her small arms wrapped around her mother’s neck. She buried her face in Elara’s silver hair.

"I won’t leave again," Elara sobbed into Lyra’s shoulder. "Never. I swear it. I swear on everything I am. Never again."

She shook her head violently, as though she could shake the past away. Her arms tightened around Lyra until they were one shape in the downpour.

I looked at Valerius.

He stood apart. His fists were clenched at his sides. His face was wet—rain, tears, I couldn’t tell anymore. His chest rose and fell rapidly. Everything in him was coiled tight. Fighting. Resisting.

Then his lower lip trembled.

"I missed you," he whispered. So quiet I almost didn’t hear it. "I missed you every day."

He pushed away from my side and ran toward Elara. He slammed into her embrace with such force that all three of them nearly toppled over. They clung tightly to each other. All three of them were crying. The heavy rain poured down, as if the sky were weeping alongside them.