SHES MARRIED TO ME

CHAPTER 23

Freya's POV

“Did you hear?” Nina texted me that morning. “The midpoint evaluation is out.

I had been awake since five, which was not unusual for me, sitting at my desk with notes I had already memorized spread in front of me as something to do with my hands while I waited. When the notification came through on my tablet I opened it slowly, like taking my time would change what was there.

Second overall.

Second, out of forty-three candidates who had started this program and the twenty-something who remained after the midpoint cut. Second overall in every combined metric — strategy, leadership, problem-solving, physical assessment, all of it weighted and calculated and resulting in my name second from the top of the list.

I scrolled down.

Aurora made the cut comfortably, ranked eighth, which made me exhale with a relief I hadn't even known I was carrying.

Rowan was in the middle of the qualifying group, which was about where his actual ability landed him when he couldn't use someone else's work to prop it up.

And then, at the very bottom of the qualifying names, one mark above the cutoff line…

Selene Ravenshade.

She had arrived at this compound with an audience and a title and the certainty that she was going to prove something here. She had stood in the entrance hall on the first morning and looked at me like I was something she had accidentally stepped on.

And she had barely passed the midpoint evaluation.

The gap between us wasn't close. It wasn't something that a strong performance in the advanced trials could plausibly close. It was the kind of gap that told a story about two candidates and what they each actually had behind the presentation, and that story was going to follow her out of this compound regardless of what happened next.

I thought about how that must feel and I almost felt something like sympathy.

The celebration that evening was held in the main hall with the furniture pushed back. We were given actual foods instead of dining hall trays. I wasn't really in the mood to party. My initial plan for the day was to call Caelan and maybe spend the entire day with him if his schedule would allow but I couldn't skip it.

If I missed it, people would say I was feeling too proud because of my rank, and that was the last thing I wanted anyone to think about me.

The atmosphere was celebratory.

These were people who had survived something difficult and were now calculating what came next.

Candidates mingled in clusters, congratulations circulated, and underneath all of it you could feel the reassessment happening in real time — alliances forming, reputations being upgraded or downgraded based on midpoint performance, everyone doing the arithmetic of who was worth knowing in the advanced phase.

Several people approached me over the course of the first hour, which was new in the sense that it was now happening openly and with confidence rather than the careful, tentative way it had happened in the early weeks when approaching me still felt like a social risk.

A candidate from the southern pack alliance wanted to discuss potential study collaboration. Two wolves from the central territories asked if I would be interested in a formal mentorship arrangement.

An alpha from the northeastern pack said very directly that she had been watching my approach to the leadership trial and wanted to understand my decision-making process better.

I was polite and genuine with all of them and made no firm commitments, because I had learned enough about navigating council politics. And over three years of doing it invisibly made me know that the midpoint of a program was not the moment to lock yourself into arrangements you didn't fully understand yet.

Then a guy named Kieran appeared.

He walked like someone who always expected to be welcomed, and he probably was, because he had significant council connections and the specific social confidence of a man who had been important in rooms for long enough that it had become his natural state.

"Freya Valenwood." He stopped beside me with a glass in his hand and a warm and practiced smile. "I've been meaning to introduce myself for two weeks. Your performance in this program has been—” he paused as his eyes trailed over my body. I watched a light of satisfaction flashed in his blue eyes. “— remarkable."

His eyes stayed on mine with deliberate attention. "I'd love to discuss what comes after this program. Your abilities combined with the right connections could take you very far." He let a pause sit there. "I think we'd work very well together."

The word together had a certain intensity to it but I pretended not to notice, instead I just smiled softly at him. If I had to admit, Kieran was easy on the eyes.

Broad shoulders, height that towers over June with about 5 inches. He was handsome, but certainly not my type.

I opened my mouth to respond to him, but just then I felt a cold chill run down my spine.

My body went still immediately it recognized the feeling.

And it looked like I wasn't the only one. Every wolf within ten feet of me went still.

Caelan.

This was the effect he had on people, even when there was no announcement, no sound, just a pressure change in the air that made my chest recognize him before my eyes did.

But this time it was different. This time the pressure didn't feel like his usual steady warmth.

This time it felt like a warning.

I watched as Kieran's smile faltered. His eyes moved slowly to a point just behind my right shoulder, and whatever he saw there made something careful come into his expression.

I slowly turned around.

Caelan was standing close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off him, and he was looking at Kieran with the most unpleasant, most absolutely lethal expression I had ever seen on a human face.

His hands were in his pockets. His posture was relaxed. And everything else about him radiated something so clearly territorial that three people nearby had already taken a quiet step back.

He didn't say anything. He just looked at Kieran with a dark dangerous cold look.

Kieran, to his credit, was a perceptive man. He read the room in about two seconds flat.

"I — wasn't aware you were with someone," he said to me, carefully.

"She's not with someone," Caelan said, and his voice was very quiet and very even. "She's married. To me."