Reject me twice (Kira and Theron) novel Chapter 95

[Ciri’s POV]

The dead drop feels watched. Theron’s questions have sharpened beyond curiosity, and the way he looks at me has changed — not with anger, but with a sadness that confuses me more than hostility would.

I spend the night on my quarters floor, back against the wall, pocket knife turning in my hands.

Dull blade, nicked edge — found it as a child in the Ashenmoor armory, discarded and forgotten. Much like me. The only thing I own that wasn’t given as a tool for someone else’s purpose.

I think about who I am without the mission, without Cyrus, without the family that treated me as furniture. The answer is terrifying: I don’t know.

Theron remains. The thought surfaces unbidden. He remains as the first person who saw someone worth listening to and worth keeping close.

I have feelings for him.

The admission arrives quietly and settles into my chest beside the guilt and the fear — a warm thing in a cold space. I let it stay because I’m too tired to fight anymore.

I write one final report, two lines: Interior defenses remain as reported. No changes to recommend.

The thinnest intelligence I’ve ever produced. I know what it means, and I’m choosing.

The hollow oak stands where it always stands. I kneel, place the parchment inside, and press my palm against the bark. This is the last report I will ever write for my brother. Then I straighten, turn around, and everything stops.

Theron is standing between the trees.

Arms folded, body still with the stillness of a man who has been watching longer than the last few minutes. His face is set with the control of someone who has processed his emotions and arrived beyond them.

“You’ll tell me everything now,” he says. The quiet command of an Alpha who has finished waiting.

My hand moves toward my knife — reflex — and I force it back down.

“My name is Ciri of Ashenmoor,” I say. The forest goes silent.

“My brother Cyrus sent me here to infiltrate your pack and map your defenses, your weaknesses, to prepare the ground for an attack he’s been planning since the day you killed her.”

My voice cracks, but I don’t look away. “I cut my own arm to fake the injuries. I rehearsed every answer I gave you in the healers’ wing. Everything about my arrival was manufactured.”

Theron doesn’t move. The silence is so dense I can hear my own blood in my ears.

“When does he march?”

“Five weeks, maybe less. He expects me to open the gates.”

“How many wolves?”

“Ashenmoor’s full force — eighty, possibly a hundred if he’s been recruiting from the border packs. Cyrus doesn’t do surgical strikes, he does overwhelming force and fear.”

“What did you tell him about our defenses?”

“Patrol schedules from weeks ago. The keep’s layout before Senna’s modifications. Also, your personal routine from a month before you started varying it.”

I swallow hard. “I’ve been sending him stale intelligence, Theron. Everything in those reports was outdated by the time it reached his hands. I stopped giving him anything real weeks ago.”

“I know.” His voice is level, terrifyingly calm. “I decoded your reports and planted information to test whether you’d pass it along. You withheld all of it.”

He’s known. A counter-intelligence operation while I discussed winter provisions.

“How long have you known who I am?”

“Long enough. The paper carries Ashenmoor scent, and your name is in a census record — minor household member, no title, no rank… listed beneath your sister like an afterthought.”

Something moves across his expression. “Your brother weaponized your invisibility and pointed it at me.”

“Yes.”

The words land with a weight that thins the air. I didn’t say it. He read it — in my reports, in my behavior, in whatever he saw while watching me choose his pack over my brother.

“I know what my sister became. I’m not happy with what you did to her, but I see that you’re not the monster,” I whisper.

Theron unfolds his arms and steps forward. Twenty feet narrows to ten, and I can see his face clearly — the hard jaw, the dark eyes holding something I’m terrified to name, the tension of a man who is furious and relieved and devastated in measures he hasn’t sorted.

“Five weeks,” he says. “You’re going to tell me everything about Cyrus’s forces — numbers, weapons, strategy, every detail you know. And then we’re going to prepare Shadowpine for what’s coming.”

“And then?”

“You’ve given me honesty tonight — late, forced by circumstance rather than freely offered. I can work with that, but trust is a different architecture than honesty, and the one you demolished will take longer to rebuild than a single confession.”

“I know.”

“We start tomorrow. Go back to the keep and get whatever sleep you can.”

He holds my gaze, and beneath the Alpha’s control I see the man who told me about his worst fears in a firelit study — still present, still wounded, still refusing to let the wound dictate his response.

“And Ciri — the knife at your belt… Leave it in your quarters from now on. I need you to show me you don’t need it anymore.”

I wrap my hand around the handle — years of carrying, years of the only thing that was mine — and nod.

“Tomorrow,” I say.

He turns and walks into the trees. I stand alone beside the hollow oak, my brother’s empty report still inside it, and the forest settles around me with the indifference of a world that has witnessed confessions older than mine.

The knife sits heavy at my belt. Tomorrow I’ll set it down.