"He said my name, Sebastian."
Silence.
The kind of silence that isn't empty. The kind that's full, full of grief, full of guilt, and full of the terrible weight of things left unsaid and chances left untaken.
The fire popped. A log shifted.
And somewhere in the distance, an owl called out into the dark, asking a question no one knew how to answer.
Then Timothy turned.
His calm demeanor hadn't shattered. It had hardened into something sharper. Something lethal.
The patience in his eyes had been replaced by the kind of stillness that comes before a storm. The kind of quiet that means someone is about to die.
"You're certain it was the hollow table," Timothy said. Not a question.
Sebastian nodded.
"I didn't know what it was called. But yes. That's what I saw."
Timothy exhaled slowly—a long, measured breath, like a man counting to ten in a language only he understood. Then he looked at Shane and Lyla.
"You two knew where he was going."
It wasn't an accusation. Timothy never raised his voice.
He didn't need to.
The weight of those words pressed down on Shane's shoulders like a physical thing, like a hand, like a curse, like the ghost of every mistake he'd ever made.
Shane's jaw worked. His throat bobbed.
Lyla's eyes filled with tears—not the dramatic kind, not the kind that begged for forgiveness. The quiet kind. The kind that knew forgiveness might never come.
"He made us promise," Lyla whispered. Her voice was small. Smaller than Sebastian had ever heard it.
"He said if we told anyone, he'd leave and never come back. Not just the packlands. Everything. He said he needed to disappear. To become someone else. Someone who didn't wake up every morning feeling like his chest was caved in."
"Where?" Timothy asked.
Lyla looked at Shane.
Shane looked at the floor. At the cracks in the wood. At the spaces between things where truth lived.
"There's a town," Shane said quietly. "Two days' run from here. Maybe three, if the weather turns. Lucas heard rumors about a healer there. Someone who could sever an imprint bond without killing the wolf."
The room went cold.
Not the cold of winter. The cold of realization.
The cold of hearing a door close and knowing, somehow, that it will never open again.
Sebastian felt the words hit him like silver through the ribs. Like a blade that had been sharpened just for him.
Sever the bond. Lucas had tried to cut him out.
Tried to erase him completely.
He had decided, somewhere in the long, sleepless hours between motel rooms and silent breakfasts, that the only way to stop the pain was to remove the part of himself that felt it.
"He wasn't trying to run from us," Lucian said softly, realization dawning on his face like a slow sunrise over a battlefield.
"He was trying to run from you."
He looked at Sebastian.
Not with blame. Not with anger. Just sadness.
The deep, bone-tired sadness of someone who had watched a friend drown and hadn't known how to throw a rope.
Sebastian's knees nearly gave out.
He caught himself on the back of a chair—wood biting into his palms, grounding him and reminding him that he was still here, still breathing, and still failing.
"He didn't make it to the healer," Timothy said.
It wasn't a question.
"No," Sebastian agreed, his voice hollow as a drum. "Someone found him first. Someone who wanted the Hollow Table. Someone who needed a wolf to unmake."
Timothy turned to Max.
His voice was still calm, still steady, but beneath it was the rumble of something ancient. Something that had been sleeping and was now waking up.
"Wake the trackers. I want every wolf who can shift ready to move within the hour."
Then he looked at Sebastian. Really looked at him. The way a river looks at a stone before deciding whether to wear it down or carry it along.
"You're coming with us."
Sebastian blinked. "I—"
"You're his imprint. The bond will guide you where our noses can't reach, where our eyes can't see."
Timothy's voice was still calm and still collected, but there was something beneath it now. Something that sounded like hope. The smallest seed. The faintest light.
"You brought us this news when you could have run. When you could have let him die and freed yourself. When you could have walked away and told yourself it was better this way."
Sebastian shook his head. The motion felt loose. Unmoored.
"I never wanted to be free of him. I was just too much of a coward to choose him. Too afraid of what it would cost. Too afraid of what I'd have to give up."
Timothy nodded slowly. The kind of nod that doesn't agree. It just acknowledged it. It just says, "I hear you, and I don't forgive you, but I understand."
"Then don't be a coward now."
Shane stepped forward, Lyla beside him.
Both of them looked wrecked, guilty and grieving and desperate all at once, like people who had woken up from a dream to find the nightmare was real.
"We're coming too," Shane said.
His voice was rough. Scraped clean.
"We should have told someone. We should have stopped him. We should have loved him enough to break his heart if it meant keeping him safe."
He swallowed. "Let us help bring him home."
Timothy didn't argue.
He just looked at the window, where the first gray light of dawn was beginning to seep through the trees like water through cracks in a dam.
The world was waking up. Somewhere, Lucas was bleeding.
"We leave in ten minutes," he said. "Pack light, move fast, and pray to the moon that we're not already too late."
Sebastian pressed his hand to his chest one last time.
The bond was still there.
Fading. But still, there.
A thread.
A wire.
A whisper.
Something that had been fraying for months but had never quite broken.
Hold on, Lucas, he thought.
The words felt small. Inadequate. Like throwing a pebble into an ocean and expecting it to stop the tide. I'm coming. Even if you don't want me to. Even if you said no.
I'm coming, baby. I would do it right this time.