The Human Among Wolves Chapter 190

Zayn

I looked at him, holding his gaze. “How do you do this?” I asked quietly. “How are you in my dreams? How were you in Aurora’s? Last time I checked, werewolves can’t do that.”

Zade’s lips curved into something sharp and pleased.

“You’re smarter than I thought, brother,” he said. “And you’re right.”

He pushed off the wall and began circling the room, his fingers trailing along the carved wood of the dresser like he owned the place. Like he had never left it.

“Werewolves can’t,” he continued casually. “Not on their own.”

I stiffened. “Then what are you?”

He laughed softly, shaking his head. “Still so dramatic. I’m exactly what I’ve always been.”

He stopped in front of the window, moonlight cutting across half his face. “But Father was never content with limits. You know that. He never believed power should be… inherited unchanged.”

My stomach twisted.

“You’re talking about magic,” I said.

Zade glanced over his shoulder, eyes glinting. “I’m talking about borrowing.”

He turned fully now. “About bargains. About bloodlines that don’t end where they’re supposed to. About witches who owed Father favors they could never fully repay.”

Cold spread through my chest.

“Aurora was easy,” he went on, almost lazily.

“Her mind doesn’t know how to lock itself yet. She feels too much. Thinks too openly.” His smile sharpened. “You, though? You were a challenge.”

I took a step forward. “You don’t get to talk about her like that.”

Zade’s amusement didn’t waver. “Protective to the end. Admirable. Predictable.”

He moved closer, lowering his voice. “This isn’t about hurting her. Not yet. It’s about finding you. And you’ve made yourself… very difficult to track.”

My hands clenched into fists. “You won’t touch her again.”

“Ah,” he said softly. “There it is.”

He leaned in just enough for me to feel the pressure, that subtle weight pressing against my thoughts. “You should know something, Zayn. I didn’t come here to interrogate you.”

“Then why are you here?”

His eyes darkened, satisfaction bleeding through.

“To warn you.”

The room seemed to dim, shadows stretching unnaturally along the walls.

“Father is done waiting,” Zade said. “And next time I enter her dreams, I won’t be so polite.”

I stared at him, disbelief hardening into anger. “I can’t believe he brainwashed you like this,” I snapped, my patience finally cracking. “He’s a monster, Zade. He—”

“I know!”

His voice thundered through the room, raw and uncontrolled, the sound slamming into the walls and echoing back at us. He turned away from me, his back rigid, shoulders tight as if he were holding himself together by force alone.

I froze.

That—that—was not the response I expected.

“What do you mean you know,” I said slowly, carefully now, “and you still help him?”

He dragged a hand down his face, fingers pressing hard into his eyes like he was trying to erase something burned behind them. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, rougher, stripped of its earlier mockery.

“Shut up and listen to me, Zayn.”

The command wasn’t cruel. It was desperate.

I didn’t interrupt.

Zade let out a breath that sounded more like a fracture than a sigh. “You think I don’t see what he is? You think I don’t know what he’s done?” He laughed bitterly, shaking his head. “I grew up in the same halls you did. I watched the same executions. Heard the same screams behind closed doors.”

He turned back to face me, and for the first time since he entered the room, the smug confidence was gone. What replaced it was something darker. Older. Tired.

“You got out,” he said quietly. “You fought him. You left. You found something—someone—worth burning bridges for.”

His jaw tightened. “I didn’t.”

I clenched my fists. “That doesn’t mean you become him.”

“I didn’t become him,” Zade shot back. “I survived him.”

The words hung between us.

“He doesn’t rule with loyalty,” Zade continued. “He rules with leverage. Fear. Blood. And if you think helping him is a choice, then you still don’t understand how this family works.”

My chest tightened. “Then explain it to me.”

He hesitated, just for a moment.

“There are things he’s done,” Zade said slowly, “things he’s bound into place that can’t just be walked away from. Debts written in blood. Oaths sealed before we were old enough to understand what they meant.”

My mind flashed to Aurora. To Cecilia. To erased memories and stolen years.

“You think I want this?” Zade asked, his voice sharp again, defensive. “You think I enjoy chasing you through dreams like some damn shadow?”

“You entered Aurora’s mind,” I said, cold now. “You don’t get to pretend that was necessity.”

His expression flickered. Guilt. Then resolve.

“I warned her,” he said. “That was mercy.”

My heart pounded. “That’s not your call.”

“No,” he agreed quietly. “It’s Father’s.”

Silence pressed in, thick and suffocating.

Zade met my eyes, really met them this time. “Listen to me, Zayn. You think you’re hiding. You think you’re planning. But everything you do moves pieces on his board.”

He took a step closer. “And Aurora?” His voice dropped. “She’s already on it.”

The room seemed to tilt.

“You tell me you’re done helping him,” I said. “You tell me now.”

Zade’s mouth curved into something that wasn’t a smile. “If it were that simple,” he murmured, “we wouldn’t be having this conversation in your dreams.”

“What about Zeke and Zakai?” I asked quietly.

The words came out softer than I intended, stripped of anger, stripped of accusation. Just worry. Real, aching worry.

Zade looked at me then—and something shifted across his face. It was subtle, gone almost as soon as it appeared, but I caught it. A flicker of something close to fear. Or maybe guilt.

“I’m trying to protect them as best as I can,” he said after a moment.

His voice was steady, but there was tension underneath it, like a wire pulled too tight.

“And it helps,” he continued, “that they’re both at the Lycan Institute Academy.”

I let out a slow breath, the name settling heavily in my chest.

Lycan Institute Academy. The best in the south. Prestigious. Powerful. Watched—by everyone who mattered.

Father had wanted me there once. Had pushed, insisted, framed it as an honor. A privilege. I remembered the way the offer had felt less like an opportunity and more like a leash. Too close to home. Too close to him.

I’d refused.

“So he doesn’t bother them,” I said, more a confirmation than a question. “Not yet.”

Zade shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Not yet.”

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was loaded, heavy with the kind of understanding that didn’t need to be spoken aloud. Not yet wasn’t reassurance. It was a warning. A temporary stay. A pause, not an ending.

I rubbed a hand over my face, exhaustion seeping deeper into my bones. “So that’s it?” I muttered. “We just hope he stays distracted?”

Zade didn’t answer right away. His gaze drifted past me, unfocused, like he was looking at something only he could see.

“He won’t touch them while they’re there,” he finally said. “Not openly. The Academy has rules. Eyes. Politics he doesn’t want to stir unless he has to.”

Unless he has to.

I hated how familiar that sounded.

“And you?” I asked, my voice rough. “Is this part of how you protect them? Staying close to him?”

His jaw tightened. “Someone has to be.”

The words landed hard. Not heroic. Not proud. Just… resigned.

I looked at him then—not the brother who taunted me, not the shadow slipping through dreams—but the one standing in front of me now. The one carrying weight he never asked for.

I drew in a breath, already preparing to tell him everything—about Cecilia, about Aurora, about the plan forming piece by fragile piece in our hands. The words were right there, pressing against my teeth, demanding to be let out.

But Zade stiffened.

It was sudden. Subtle, but unmistakable. His head tilted slightly, as if he were listening to something I couldn’t hear, something far beyond this room, beyond this place that already felt like it was slipping through my fingers.

“I—” he started, then stopped.

I frowned. “Zade—”

“I have to go,” he said quickly, cutting me off before I could say another word.

The urgency in his voice wasn’t panic, but it wasn’t calm either. It was controlled, measured, the kind of restraint that came from long practice. From survival.

“Go?” I stepped forward instinctively. “What do you mean, go? I was just about to—”

“I know,” he said, softer now, almost apologetic. His gaze held mine, sharp and intent. “And you will. Just not now.”

The room felt thinner somehow, like the walls were losing substance, like the air itself was starting to pull away from us.

“I’ll try to enter your dreams tomorrow,” he added. “Okay?”

Tomorrow.

The word echoed, heavy with implication. With risk.

“We’re not done talking,” he said, firmly this time, as if staking a claim. As if daring fate itself to interfere.

I studied his face, searching for cracks, for doubt. There was none. Only resolve. Only that same quiet burden he’d been carrying for far too long.

“I know,” I said at last. My voice came out steadier than I felt. “We’re not done.”

Something like relief flickered across his expression. He gave a short nod, already pulling away, already halfway gone.

And then the room dissolved.

I woke with a sharp inhale, my chest rising fast as reality snapped back into place. The academy ceiling stared down at me, solid and unyielding. My heart was still pounding, my mind racing, fragments of the dream clinging to me like smoke.

Beside me, Aurora slept on, her breathing slow and even, unaware of the storm that had just passed through my head.

And for the first time since he appeared, I understood something terrifyingly clear:

Zade wasn’t on Father’s side.

He was trapped on his board.