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"The changelings needed power," Blaidd continued. "A bloodline strong enough to sire the next generation. But the Moon Warden would be too protected, with too many layers to go through to get to him. Unlike me."

His eyes lifted, bleak with hard earned understanding. "So, they picked me."

"They needed to fool my wolf," he said. "There is a pool in the centre of the great oak—a scrying pool. They knew who my mate would be."

Lisna's breath hitched. "Fae..."

"She was ten back then," Blaidd said, voice rough. "Just a child."

Maxen went very still.

"I don't know how they obtained her blood," Blaidd went on. "I still don't. But Isolde consumed it, somehow taking on some of my mate's qualities. And when the border patrol found her—half-dead and broken—and brought her back to the packland, my wolf recognised her."

Fooled.

"It thought she was my mate. I was overjoyed and relieved and..."

He laughed softly then, bitter and hollow. "I remember thinking the pull was...disappointing. Dull, not like how the elders had described. Like a vague memory of something rather than the thing itself."

He shook his head slowly.

"But my wolf would know," he had told himself then. "Wouldn't he? The wolf spirit would know, right?"

His shoulders sagged. "And I desperately wanted it to be true. I didn't want to be alone."

That admission sat heavier than any other.

"I was tired of waiting, tired of being left behind. I guess...I guess I saw what I wanted to see." His gaze dropped to his hands.

He swallowed past a dry throat and coughed before reaching for a glass of water. His wounds were healing fast.

"I knew immediately that she was pregnant. She smelt different," he said. "She couldn't lie to me. She told me her lover had abandoned her."

"I had waited for my mate," Blaidd said. "So, yes, I was disappointed—more than I care to admit."

He lifted his head again, eyes shadowed but clear. "But I was grateful to have found her."

He met their gazes one by one. "I promised I would see the children as my own."

The room fell silent as a slow, terrible understanding settled in—of the heavy toll it must have taken for Blaidd to raise those children.

"I was uneasy for some reason, right from the beginning," Blaidd went on after a long pause, though he would not look at any of them.

"She was nothing like what I had imagined. Nothing like what I had hoped for." His jaw was set like stone. "I told myself that the Goddess knew best. Maybe we would grow close with time. But I have never heard of a pair who didn't match immediately."

He swallowed.

"Years passed, and the disconnect grew. I didn't know how to bridge the gap. And then she became pregnant again."

Lisna inhaled sharply.

"I was...overjoyed," Blaidd admitted, shame threading the word. "I thought, perhaps this was it. Perhaps now the bond would feel right. Perhaps this was proof that I had been wrong to doubt it."

His fingers curled into the blanket.

"But then she started disappearing in the dead of the night," he said quietly. "I started following her, but she would always disappear into the forest before I could catch up. She was fast, even for a wolf."

"Once," Blaidd continued. "Just once, I kept up. I followed her into the forest…to the great oak."