Chapter 11: First Impressions

Emeric POV

The Voss estate looked exactly like every other pack house I'd been dragged to for one of these arranged courtship visits. Big stone buildings, banners hanging everywhere, staff running around like the world was ending because a guest of import was arriving.

I hated this part. The pageantry. The way everyone straightened up and started performing the second my carriage rolled through the gate.

"Alpha Vane." A man met me at the steps, broad-shouldered, golden-eyed, clearly the Beta or heir given how he carried himself. "Welcome to Voss Pack. I'm Damian."

"Thanks for having me." I stepped down, already scanning the crowd out of habit. Old instinct from years of not trusting rooms full of smiling strangers.

That's when I saw her.

A woman off to the side, lean, quiet, arms already reaching for the strap of one of my travel bags before anyone had asked her to. She moved like someone used to doing jobs nobody else wanted, efficient, no wasted motion.

"Here, let me…" She had the bag half off the carriage before Damian's voice cracked out sharp enough to make everyone nearby flinch.

"Wren."

She froze. So did half the staff standing around.

"I've got it," Damian said, quieter now, though something tight had crept into his voice. He crossed the distance fast and took the bag from her himself, color rising up his neck. "You don't need to be doing that."

"Somebody had to grab it." She said it flat, already stepping back like this was a completely normal exchange. "It wasn't a big deal."

"It's fine, Damian." She glanced at me, briefly, unreadable, then walked off toward the house without another word, like carrying a stranger's luggage and getting snapped at for it happening to her every single day.

Damian stood there a second too long, watching her go, jaw tight enough I could see the muscle working.

"My apologies, Alpha Vane," he said, turning back to me, forcing something that was supposed to pass for a smile. "The staff can get overeager when guests arrive."

Staff.

I filed that word away without saying anything about it. Because whoever that woman was, the way Damian looked at her walking off wasn't the way you look at hired help.

"No trouble," I said instead. "Looks like you run a tight house."

"We try." He gestured toward the entrance, already moving past it, eager to change the subject. "Come in, please. Calla's been looking forward to meeting you."

Calla, it turned out, was worth the buildup, in the way pack princesses always are. Pretty in a soft, careful way, dressed for the occasion, greeting me with exactly the right amount of warmth and nerves to seem genuine.

"Alpha Vane." She dipped a small curtsy, smiling wide. "Thank you so much for coming all this way. I hope the trip wasn't too exhausting."

"Wasn't bad." I studied her a beat, the way I study most new introductions, looking for whatever's underneath the polish. "Pleasure to finally meet you."

"The pleasure's mine." Her eyes flicked briefly toward the door the other woman had disappeared through. "I hope my sister wasn't a bother out there. She's been through a lot lately, so she's not always thinking clearly about what's appropriate."

"Sister?" I raised a brow. "The one carrying my bags?"

"Wren." Calla's smile softened into something that read as pity, careful and practiced. "She just got back from prison, actually. It's been a difficult adjustment for her."

"Prison." I kept my tone neutral. "That's a hell of a thing to just get back from."

"It really is." Calla's voice dropped a little, sympathetic. "She's been struggling since she came home. We're all trying to be patient with her."

I nodded slowly, filing that away too, alongside the way Damian had gone red-faced snapping at his own sister over a piece of luggage.

Dinner that night was a long, careful production. Rosalind, the Luna, asked polite questions about Duskmoor's territory and trade routes. Damian talked pack politics with the practiced ease of someone raised to inherit a title. Calla laughed at exactly the right moments, refilled my glass before I asked, made sure every conversation eventually looped back to something flattering about herself without ever seeming to try.

Wren wasn't at the table.

Nobody explained that. I'd been to enough of these dinners to know when someone was being kept out of the room on purpose.

"So," I said, halfway through the meal, deciding to test something, "your sister. Is she joining us tonight?"

The table went quiet for half a second, small but noticeable.

"She prefers to keep to herself lately," Rosalind said smoothly, dabbing her mouth with a napkin. "It's been a hard adjustment."

"I heard about the prison sentence," I said. "Must've been rough on the whole family."

"You have no idea," Damian muttered, and something bitter slipped into his voice before he caught himself and covered it with a tight smile. "It's been a long two years."

"What'd she do, if you don't mind me asking?"

The question landed heavier than I expected. Calla's fork paused halfway to her mouth. Rosalind's expression flickered, just barely.

"She was involved in something serious," Calla said finally, careful with every word. "I really don't like talking about it. It's painful for everyone."

"Fair enough." I let it drop, I noted the exact way nobody had actually answered the question.

After dinner, walking the halls back to my guest quarters, I passed an open doorway and caught sight of her again, Wren,sitting alone near a window with something in her hands, some kind of dried herb she was sorting, focused entirely on the task in front of her.

She didn't look up. Didn't seem to notice or care that I was standing there.

I thought about Damian's face in the courtyard, that sharp flash of something that wasn't embarrassing at his own guest seeing staff overstep. It was something closer to shame, and it hadn't been aimed at me at all.

It'd been aimed squarely at himself, for how he treated her.

That wasn't how you talked about someone who was actually a servant. That also wasn't how you talked about a convicted criminal you genuinely believed had wronged your family.

The real story was here, I had a strong feeling it wasn't the one anybody at that dinner table had bothered to tell me.