Riven found in the library that afternoon. I didn’t hear him co in. That should have bothered more than it did — I’ve spent two years making sure nothing gets close without knowing — but the library had this quality where sound moved differently. Thick rugs, floor-to-ceiling shelves, the kind of quiet that felt intentional instead of empty.
I was sitting in one of the deep leather chairs near the east window with a book I wasn’t reading, just holding, staring at the sa paragraph for the third ti and not absorbing a single word of it.
My head was too full.
Four alphas. Four different approaches. Four versions of the sa impossible thing I wasn’t supposed to want and definitely wasn’t supposed to feel pulling at sothing low in my chest every ti one of them got close enough for my biology to notice.
"You’re thinking loud."
I looked up.
Riven was leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed and that unhurried quality he had, like he’d been standing there for a while and was in no rush to announce it. Dark hair, dark eyes, the kind of face that gave away exactly nothing unless he wanted it to.
Right now he looked faintly amused.
I closed the book. Set it on the side table. "How long have you been there."
"Long enough to feel you cycling through four different exit strategies." He pushed off the doorfra. Ca into the room proper. "You asked to teach you to wall the link. I’m here."
My chest tightened. I made myself breathe through it. "Now?"
"You’ve t all four of us. Your biology is awake. The link is going to keep getting louder until you learn to control it." He stopped a few feet away. Close enough to be in the conversation, far enough to let have space. "So yes. Now."
I looked at him for a long mont. Then I stood up, crossed my arms over my chest, and lifted my chin slightly. "What do I do."
Sothing shifted in his expression. Not quite a smile. Closer to approval.
"First, stop thinking of it as an invasion." He moved to the chair across from mine. Sat. Gestured for to do the sa. "The link isn’t breaking into your head. It’s a channel between us. Right now it’s open because your instincts don’t know how to close it yet."
I sat back down. Slowly. "And walling it ans what, exactly."
"Walling ans you decide what goes through and what doesn’t. Think of it like..." He paused. Considered. "A door with a lock. Right now the door is wide open and I can feel everything you’re broadcasting. Once you wall it, the door closes. You keep the key."
"And you?"
"I knock." His voice stayed even. "You decide if you want to answer."
I studied his face. Looking for the catch. The place where this turned into sothing else.
He just looked back. Patient.
"Walk through it," I finally said.
He leaned forward. Elbows on his knees. Hands loose between them. "Close your eyes."
I didn’t move.
"Selene." Quiet. No pressure in it. "I can’t walk you through this if you don’t trust enough to close your eyes for thirty seconds."
My jaw worked. He was right and I hated it. I closed my eyes.
"Good. Now feel for the heat." His voice dropped lower. Steadier. The kind of voice you could follow in the dark. "Not the heat that pulses when one of us gets close. The baseline. The thing that’s been humming under everything since your suppressants broke."
I breathed in slow. Felt for it. Found it low in my chest, warm and constant, like an ember that had been banked but not extinguished.
"I feel it."
"That’s your hybrid core. Your bloodline awake." A pause. "Now follow it outward. There’s a thread running from that core toward . You’ll know it when you find it."
I almost opened my eyes. Almost stopped. Instead I did what he said — followed the heat outward, tracing it like a map I’d never seen before but sohow knew.
And there it was.
A thread. Thin but present. Running from sowhere behind my ribs to... sowhere else. Sowhere him.
My breath caught.
"You found it." Not a question. He knew. "That’s the link. That’s what lets feel what you’re feeling when it’s open."
"It’s—" I didn’t have words for it. The thread felt like it was made of light and heat and sothing older than both. "I didn’t know it was there."
"Most wolves wall it so young they never rember learning. For you it’s new." His voice stayed low. Steady. "Now here’s the part that takes effort. Imagine a door at your end of that thread. Just a door. Any door. Doesn’t matter what it looks like."
I thought about the door to my room at the pack house. Heavy wood. Iron handle. The kind of door that closed with weight behind it.
"I have it."
"Close it."
I reached for the imagined door in my head and pulled it shut.
The thread dimd imdiately. Not gone — still there, still connecting us — but quieter. Contained. Like sound through thick glass instead of open air.
My eyes snapped open.
Riven was watching with sothing in his expression I couldn’t quite read. "How does that feel."
I pressed my hand to my sternum. The heat was still there. The thread was still there. But the constant awareness of him, the feeling of being observed from the inside out, had pulled back.
"Quieter." My voice ca out rough. I cleared my throat. "I can still feel it but it’s not—"
"Not invasive." He finished the sentence for . Then, softer: "That’s walling. You just did it on the first try. Most wolves take days."
Sothing in my chest loosened.
I’d been carrying the weight of his presence in my head for days without knowing how to put it down, and now I could. Now I had a door and a lock and the choice to open it or not.
I looked at him. Really looked. "Why did you wait until now to teach this."
His gaze held mine. Steady. Unflinching. "Because you weren’t ready to trust until now."
The honesty of it hit sideways.
He’d been in my head. He’d felt mapping exits, cycling through fears, filing things under later. He’d known exactly when I’d stopped seeing him as a threat and started seeing him as sothing else.
And he’d waited.
My throat tightened. I swallowed against it. "Riven—"
"You don’t have to say it." He leaned back in his chair. That unhurried quality settling over him again. "I know."
Of course he did.
The link thread between us pulsed once. Gentle. Like a knock on the door I’d just learned to close.
I looked at it in my mind. Considered.
Then I opened the door. Just a crack.
His presence flooded in — not invasive, not overwhelming, just there. Warm and patient and steady as everything else about him.
And underneath it, quiet but unmistakable, sothing that felt like relief.
He’d wanted to learn to wall it. But he’d also wanted to choose to open it again.
I closed the door softly. Kept the lock.
My voice ca out quieter than I ant it to. "Thank you."
He nodded once. Stood. Walked toward the library door and stopped in the fra, looking back at with dark eyes that saw too much and always had.
"Selene."
"Yeah."
"It’s not just the link you’re walling." He said it gently. Carefully. "It’s all of us. All four. You’re still deciding if we’re safe."
My chest did sothing complicated.
He didn’t wait for an answer. Just walked out, footsteps unhurried, leaving alone in the library with a book I wasn’t reading and a door in my mind I’d just learned to close.
And the uncomfortable realization that he was right.
I wasn’t walling the link.
I was walling them.
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