KIERAN’S POV
The memory hit so far out of left field, I might have stumbled if I hadn’t been sitting.
A park in the neutral zone came into focus—mid-morning after a night of rain. The air was cool and bright, and dew clung to the grass, silvering the blades like frost.
I remembered how it had soaked through my pants as I sat there, my knees scraped and bleeding from a fall that had hurt less than the sting of my father’s words.
He’d yelled again—something about control, discipline, appearances. I was barely seven years old; I didn’t care about any of that, didn’t understand what it meant for my small shoulders to carry the weight of being an Alpha’s heir.
So I’d run away.
I ran until my lungs burned, wanting to prove that I didn’t care, that I could disappear from his world entirely.
