POV: Isaac
The crown felt like a collar.
Isaac stood at the edge of the compound, watching the sun bleed into the horizon, and wondered for the hundredth time why the moon had chosen him. He wasn't strong like Anthony. Wasn't fierce like their father. Wasn't anything except the brother who'd been standing in the wrong place when the light fell.
The moon doesn't make mistakes.
His mother's voice was gentle but firm. She'd said it a thousand times since the Binding. Isaac wanted to believe her. He really did.
But every time he closed his eyes, he saw Anthony's face in the grove—the moment the light passed over him. The way his expression had crumbled from triumph to shock to something so wounded it looked like death. Isaac had carried that image with him every day since. It was heavier than any crown.
"Alpha."
Kael appeared at his elbow, silent as his namesake. His arm was still in its sling, but his eyes were sharp, scanning the tree line with the constant vigilance of a scout who trusted nothing.
"He's agreed to meet tonight at the standing stones."
Isaac nodded slowly. He'd expected refusal, or worse, a challenge. That Anthony had agreed at all was... something. He didn't know what.
"Alone?"
"He didn't specify." Kael's voice was careful. "But you know he won't come alone. Dax and Kieran will be in the shadows. Probably more."
"And if I bring guards?"
"Then it's not a meeting. It's a battle."
Isaac laughed—a short, humorless sound. "So I walk into the dark and hope my brother doesn't kill me. Wonderful."
Kael said nothing. There was nothing to say.
Elara found him an hour later, standing before the small shrine he'd built for their father. A few stones, a carved bone, a lock of Vilkas's fur. It wasn't much, but it was something. A place to remember.
"You're going to meet him." It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
She moved beside him, her hand finding his. Warm. Solid. The same hand that had held him when he took his first steps, when he lost his first fight, when the moon's light had turned his world inside out.
"Be careful," she said. "He's still angry."
"I know."
"But he's also your brother. And somewhere under all that rage, he's still the boy who taught you to track rabbits in the snow."
Isaac closed his eyes. He remembered those days—Anthony, barely more than a cub himself, patient and proud, showing Isaac which twigs to avoid and which scents meant prey. They'd been inseparable once. Before the weight of succession. Before their father's expectations had driven a wedge between them.
"What if he can't find his way back?" Isaac whispered.
Elara was quiet for a long moment. Then: "Then you have to be the one who keeps the door open. Even if he never walks through."
He looked at her—this woman who had lost her mate, watched her sons tear each other apart, and still stood strong. Still believed.
"How do you do it?" he asked. "How do you keep hoping?"
She smiled, and it was the saddest thing he'd ever seen. "Because I'm your mother. That's what we do."
The walk to the standing stones took an hour.
Isaac made it alone, as promised. No guards. No scouts. Just him and the weight of everything he carried. The forest was quiet—too quiet—but he felt eyes on him. Anthony's people, watching from the shadows. Waiting to see if he'd break.
He didn't.
The stones rose from the earth like ancient sentinels, their surfaces carved with the names of every Alpha who'd come before. Vilkas's name was still fresh, still raw. Isaac traced it with his fingers, feeling the roughness of the stone, the weight of generations.
"You came."
Anthony's voice emerged from the darkness between two stones. He stepped into the moonlight, his face hard, his eyes unreadable. Behind him, movement—Dax and Kieran, visible but distant. A show of force, but not an attack.
"You asked," Isaac said. "I'm here."
A long silence. The wind whispered through the stones. Somewhere in the forest, an owl called.
"You look like shit," Anthony said finally.
Isaac almost laughed. "You're one to talk. How's the wound?"
"Healing."
"Good."
Another silence. Different this time—less hostile, more... awkward. Two brothers who'd forgotten how to talk to each other.
"I didn't come here to fight," Anthony said. "Not tonight."
"Then why?"
Anthony's jaw tightened. He looked away, at the stones, at the sky, anywhere but at Isaac. "Because she asked me to."
Isaac blinked. "She?"
"Sylva," the name came out rough, like it cost him something to say it. "She said... she said I'd lost everything. And she was right. I have. But watching you hold the line against the Shadowpine... I don't know what I felt. It wasn't hate."
Isaac's heart fluttered. "What was it?"
"I don't have a word for it." Anthony finally met his eyes. "But I know I didn't want you to die. And that's more than I've felt for you in years."
The confession hung between them, raw and fragile. Isaac could have pushed. Could have demanded more. He could have used this moment to cement his authority.
Instead, he did something braver.
He stepped forward and embraced his brother.
Anthony went rigid. For a heartbeat, Isaac thought he'd made a terrible mistake. Then, slowly, stiffly, Anthony's arms came up. He didn't return the embrace—not really. But he didn't pull away either.
"I'm sorry," Isaac whispered. "I never wanted this. Any of it."
Anthony's voice, when it came, was rough with something that might have been tears. "I know."
They stood like that for a long moment—two brothers, broken and healing, holding onto each other in the dark.
When they finally pulled apart, neither mentioned the wetness on their cheeks.
"Come back," Isaac said. "To the compound. To the pack. Not as a challenger—as my brother. As our brother."
Anthony stared at him. "The pack will never accept that."
"Let me worry about the pack." Isaac met his gaze steadily. "Just tell me you'll try."
For a long, agonizing moment, Anthony said nothing. Then, slowly, he nodded.
"I'll try."
It wasn't peace. It wasn't forgiveness. But it was a start.
And in a world of broken moons and bleeding curses, a start was enough.