Grace of a Wolf-Chapter 91: Grace: Conflict Resolution

"Good night, Bun," I whisper, tucking the blanket around the toddler’s tiny shoulders. Her eyelids droop, but she still fights sleep like it’s her mortal enemy.

"Quack," she mumbles, her duck bill morphing back to human lips mid-yawn.

Sara rolls her eyes from her nest of blankets. "Just ignore her. She’ll be asleep in thirty seconds."

The feral baby protests with a grumpy babble, but it’s soft.

I smooth down a wayward curl on her forehead. "Sleep tight, baby."

True to Sara’s prediction, soft snores rise from her little bed of blankets before I’ve even made it five steps away. The rest of the makeshift bedroom settles into comfortable silence—Ron’s already asleep, Jer’s fighting it, and Sara’s watching me leave.

I linger in the main room, fluffing a pillow that doesn’t need fluffing, zipping and unzipping my hoodie. It’s strange how quickly these kids have wound themselves around my heart. It’s only been a few hours, but my heart’s all-in on their orphaned life.

When I finally glance up, I spot Caine sitting alone, one arm resting on his bent knee, his gaze fixed on nothing. The harsh angles of his face are shadowed in the dim light of the cave.

I ease down to the floor across from him. Not close enough to touch, but not so far that I have to raise my voice. My knee is only inches from his.

He doesn’t acknowledge me, but the slight tick in his jaw gives him away. He knows I’m here.

I watch him for a moment, gathering courage. "Earlier... Lyre said something about you tearing this city apart. What does that mean?"

His jaw ticks again. The silence stretches, punctuated only by the soft breathing of semi-sleeping children.

"Don’t—" I pause, searching for the right word, "—sugarcoat it for me."

His eyes flick toward me, then away.

"I don’t need the noble version. I’d like the real one." I pull my knees to my chest, hugging them close. "Lyre explained things to me. I already know you’re not some psychopathic serial killer or whatever."

Caine’s head snaps toward me, genuine surprise breaking through his stony expression. "You thought I was a serial killer?"

"Oh. No. Of course not." Yes, yes, I did. "Maybe a little bit." A lot.

Something shifts in his face—the tiniest twitch at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile, but close enough that for a second, the tension cracks.

He exhales, rubbing a hand over his face. The gesture is so unexpectedly vulnerable, it catches me off guard.

"I wouldn’t attack a pack without cause," he says finally. "Blue Mountain gave me one."

I raise an eyebrow, not bothering to hide my skepticism. Uh-huh. I was there.

Caine meets my gaze directly, and I resist the urge to look away from his storm-gray eyes. They’re too intense. Too probing.

Too... pretty.

"Brax has been a problem for years. Always smiling, always compliant. But he was never truly loyal. I had my eye on him for a long time. Not all packs are thrilled with having the Throne filled once again."

Asking for details would interrupt him, so I keep my mouth shut, even though I’m desperate to know more about what Brax did. My brain’s been avoiding the past, still struggling to reconcile the man I once saw as a father figure and the one who abandoned me without a second thought once I returned from the Mate Hunt, still... human. Because I am one.

Caine hesitates, the strong line of his jaw tightening as he glances away. "Still... maybe my reaction was a little extreme."

I scratch at my jaw with a laugh. "Well, you didn’t kill everyone." The kids seem to think he did, but after Lyre smacked me with a bit of reality, I now understand—it was proof of Caine’s restraint.

What little he has of it, anyway.

A soft, half-laugh escapes me, uncertain and slightly nervous. "I’m still getting used to... this. All of this."

"What?"

"Your idea of, er... conflict resolution?"

Caine leans forward, and my breath catches. The air between us shifts from cautious to charged, the energy of the moment crackling in my very bones.

His cologne-like smell grows stronger, and I force myself to exhale slowly instead of sucking it all down like a woman drowning for it.

"What do you mean by that?" he asks, his brows drawing together in genuine confusion.

I stare at him for a second too long, my brain switching from I like how he smells to whatever was happening in our conversation. Then my mouth drops open.

The realization hits me like a punch to the gut: Lyre wasn’t exaggerating when she said Caine has all the emotional intelligence of a rock. He’s actually, sincerely mystified about what I’m trying to say.

He has to be teasing me, right? He can’t possibly be confused.

"I mean..." I blink a few times. "It’s a little scary to watch someone order the deaths of a bunch of people who once took care of me. Don’t you think?"

His face darkens, but it isn’t directed at me. He’s looking over my shoulder with a frown, his left eyebrow twitching.

"That pack did not treat you well." His voice drops lower, the rumble of vibrating through the air and settling into my chest like a purring cat. "They don’t deserve your grief."

Something awful wedges in my throat. I clear it and rub the bridge of my nose, fighting a sudden, stupid prickling behind my eyes. It’s not as if I loved the Blue Mountain Pack with every fiber of my soul. Plenty of them made it their daily mission to remind me I didn’t belong in a world of wolves. But they were still my... something. My familiar. My history.

My place.

And now I understand. Caine isn’t playing dumb—he truly, genuinely doesn’t understand why I’d feel sympathy for people he considers trash. The disconnect is so profound, it’s fascinating.

Like I have a hint into his personality. How his strange, murderous brain works.

"You’re right," I admit, and my voice is stronger than I expect it to be. "Most of them didn’t really like me. And Brax..."

Once again, my avoidant personality rears its head and kicks me off the road leading down to hard memories. I give a one-shouldered shrug and end with a lame, "I just don’t see how killing people is... normal."

Caine grunts, his tattoos sliding over his neck. "Fenris seems to understand your weak human heart better than I do."

My shoulders stiffen. I can’t decide if I’m more offended by the "weak" or the "human" part.

Both are true.

But it doesn’t feel good to hear.

"It’s not weak to value life," I protest, digging my nails into my palms. "Even the lives of people who were cruel."

Caine’s expression shifts as he sits straight up, dropping his leg to the ground. "No—that isn’t why you’re weak..."

Somehow, his words only make it worse.

"Oh. Really?" I ask, even more offended by the bald truth he speaks, though I know it’s ridiculous to feel this way.

I am human. And weak.

It isn’t something to argue over, but it doesn’t make his words sting any less.

He hesitates, his jaw working like he’s chewing through what to say next. Then, without warning, his hand reaches across the space between us.