Chapter 19

Emeric POV

I heard about the mate request the same way I heard about everything in this house,secondhand, through people who didn't know I was listening.

Two servants near the stables, one telling the other Wren had asked Damian to find her a match, something about wanting out of the pack entirely. The one talking sounded almost gleeful about it, the way people get over gossip that doesn't cost them anything.

I told myself it wasn't my business. That lasted about an hour.

I found her by the training yard fence that afternoon, watching a couple of younger warriors spar, arms crossed, unreadable as always.

"Heard something interesting today," I said, coming up beside her.

"Is that so?"

"You're looking for a mate." I kept my tone light. "Word travels fast in this place."

"It usually does." She didn't look at me, kept her eyes on the sparring match. "What of it?"

"Just surprised, I guess." I leaned against the fence post. "Didn't peg you as the type in a hurry to get matched off to a stranger."

"I'm not in a hurry to get matched off to a stranger for romantic reasons," she said. "I'm in a hurry to leave this pack. The mate part's just the mechanism."

"Practical."

"Very."

We stood there a minute, watching the two young wolves circle each other, all clumsy footwork and too much enthusiasm.

"So what are you looking for, then?" I asked, half-joking, testing the water a little. "In this practical arrangement of yours. Tall? Good with money? Owns land somewhere far away from here?"

She actually huffed something close to a laugh, quick and dry. "Didn't realize you were taking applications."

"Just curious." I shrugged. "Seems like a big decision to make with zero requirements."

She was quiet a second, considering the question more seriously than I expected her to.

"Someone who won't lie to me," she said finally.

It came out simple, almost offhand, like she wasn't even trying to make it land the way it landed. But something in her voice underneath the flatness, some old, worn-down weight, told me this wasn't a throwaway line. This was the whole list, distilled down to the one thing that actually mattered to her.

"That's it?" I asked. "No preference on looks? Territory? Whether he can hold a decent conversation?"

"Those things don't matter much if he's going to lie to me anyway." She finally glanced at me, something guarded but honest in her expression. "I've had enough people in my life smile at me while telling me exactly what I wanted to hear. Turns out that costs a lot more than an ugly truth ever would."

I didn't have a quick joke ready for that one. It sat there between us a second, heavier than either of us probably wanted it to be.

"Fair," I said finally.

"What about you?" she asked, surprising me by turning the question back around. "You're here to marry my sister. What were your requirements, going into that?"

"Honestly? Political ones, mostly. Good alliance, stable pack, favorable trade routes." I said it plain, no dressing it up. "I wasn't exactly looking for anything beyond that when I got here."

"And now?"

The question hung there, simple on the surface, not simple at all underneath it. I thought about the last few weeks. The garden shed. The dinner where she flatly refused to defend herself. Calla's face dropped the second Wren turned her back.

"Now I'm not so sure what I'm looking for anymore," I said honestly, more honest than I planned on being.

Something flickered across her face, brief, unreadable, gone before I could name it.

"That's a dangerous thing to say to someone you're courting my sister to marry," she said, echoing almost exactly what she told me back in that shed, careful and pointed.

"Noted. Again."

She almost smiled at that, gone as fast as it came.

"For what it's worth," I said, "whoever ends up being your someone who won't lie to you, they're gonna have to actually mean it. Not just say it during a courtship visit and then go quiet the second things get complicated."

"You say that like you know something about people saying things they don't mean."

"I've been to enough of these arranged visits to know exactly how much people are willing to lie when there's an alliance on the line." I looked out at the sparring match instead of at her, easier that way. "Your family's told me a version of your story since the second I walked through that gate. I don't think a single word of it holds up under any real pressure."

She went quiet at that, and when I glanced back at her, she was watching me with something different in her expression. Less guarded. Not trusting, exactly. Just less braced than usual.

"You're paying more attention than most people bother to," she said.

"Most people don't stick around long enough to notice the cracks." I shrugged. "I've got nothing but time for this visit, apparently."

"Lucky me."

"Could be." I said it lighter than I meant it, testing again, watching to see if she let that land or brush it off the way she brushed off everything else.

She didn't answer that one at all. Just looked back toward the sparring match, arms still crossed, something unreadable settling over her expression again like a door quietly closing.

But she didn't walk away either. And for someone who usually found a reason to leave the second a conversation got too close to something real, that felt like its own kind of answer.

I stood there beside her a while longer, neither of us saying much else, just watching two young wolves throw themselves at each other in the afternoon sun, and I couldn't quite shake the thought that what I came here looking for, it wasn't standing three feet to my left.

But something had started shifting anyway, whether I'd planned on it or not.