Chapter 3

Odessa pov

The border between Vale and Ironhollow land wasn't marked by a fence or a wall. It was marked by silence.

One second the trees still felt like mine, still smelled like the campus I walked a thousand times. The next, the air went thick and different, heavier somehow, and every instinct I had screamed at me to turn around.

I had exactly one bag, exactly one guard escort who wouldn't meet my eyes, and exactly zero choice in the matter.

"This is as far as I go," the guard said, stopping dead at a line in the dirt that wasn't visible but felt very, very real. "They'll meet you from here."

"Comforting," I muttered.

He didn't laugh. He just turned around and walked back the way we came, fast enough that it looked a lot like fleeing.

I stood there alone at the edge of Ironhollow territory holding a bag with four days of clothes in it, feeling like I'd been dropped off at the mouth of something that was about to swallow me whole.

Then the trees moved, and they weren't trees.

Three of them came out first, big, broad-shouldered guys who didn't bother pretending they weren't sizing me up like a threat assessment. One of them actually sniffed the air in my direction, nose wrinkling like I smelled wrong. Rude, but at least honest.

"That's it?" one of them said. "One bag?"

"Didn't realize I was allowed to bring furniture."

He didn't smile.

Ronan Kade came out last, and something about the way the other three straightened up when he did tell me exactly who was actually in charge here, no introduction needed.

"You're late," he said.

"I was escorted here by someone who couldn't run away fast enough. Take it up with him."

That got a flicker of something from one of the guys behind him, not quite a laugh, quickly swallowed. Ronan's expression didn't move at all.

"Rules," he said, like I hadn't spoken. "You'll hear them once. I won't repeat myself."

"Straight to business. Fine by me."

"You don't leave the property without an escort. You don't go near the west treeline after dark, that's a pack training ground and it's not safe for you. You eat when we eat, where we eat, no exceptions. You don't touch anything that isn't yours." His eyes flicked to my hands. "And whatever that thing was you did with the glass back at the assembly, you're going to want to keep that under control while you're here."

My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't." He didn't push it, just filed it away, clearly, for later. "Anything else, you ask. Preferably not me."

"Great start," I said. "Really warm welcome."

"This isn't a welcome," he said. "It's containment." He said.

One of the guys behind him, younger, leaner, with a smirk he clearly hadn't earned yet spoke up before I could answer that. "Didn't realize we were running a daycare now."

"Didn't realize wolves needed permission to speak," I shot back, "but here we are."

His smirk dropped fast. Ronan's jaw ticked, just slightly, and I couldn't tell if it was at me or at him.

"Watch it, Micah," Ronan said.

"I'm just saying," Micah said, "her house killed one of ours last spring and we're supposed to just let her walk around free?"

"Nobody killed anybody last spring that had anything to do with me," I said, sharper than I meant to. "And in case you missed it, a woman from my house is dead right now too. So maybe save the speech."

Silence, the kind that has weight to it. Micah looked at Ronan like he expected backup and didn't get any.

"She's not wrong," Ronan said finally, and it clearly cost him something to say. "Enough."

Micah backed off, muttering something under his breath I didn't catch and didn't ask him to repeat.

Ronan turned and started walking without waiting to see if I'd follow, which, apparently, was also a rule nobody had bothered to tell me. I grabbed my bag and hurried after him, refusing to let it show how fast my heart was actually going.

The pack house came into view a few minutes later, big and old, more like something out of a mountain lodge than a dorm. Warm light in the windows. Smoke curling out of a chimney somewhere. It should have looked inviting. It didn't, not with every single set of eyes on the porch tracking me like I was something that had wandered too close to a fire.

"They're not going to like this," I said, mostly to myself.

"No," Ronan agreed. "They're not."

"Comforting." I said

"Wasn't trying to comfort you." He replied

"Yeah," I said. "I noticed."

He led me up the porch steps, past a girl who didn't even try to hide her glare, past two guys who stopped talking entirely the second I got close enough to hear, and into a front room that smelled like woodsmoke and something else underneath it, earthy, wild, not bad exactly, just not anything I recognized.

"This is where you'll be," he said, stopping outside a door near the end of a hallway. "The door doesn't lock from the inside. That's not me being difficult, that's the rule."

"Comforting doesn't even begin to cover it." I said.

"Wasn't trying to…"

"...comfort me, yeah, you mentioned." I pushed the door open and looked into a small, plain room. Bed. Window. Nothing on the walls. It looked like nobody had lived in it in a long time, or like whoever had, hadn't wanted to be remembered. "Cozy."

"You won't be here long enough to redecorate." He said

"Is that a threat or a promise?"

Something flickered across his face, there and gone too fast to name. "Neither. Just a fact. Semester ends, you go home."

"Assuming I survive it." I said

"You will," he said, and it came out almost annoyed, like the idea of me not surviving was somehow inconvenient for him personally. "Nobody here's going to touch you. That's not how this works."

"Could've fooled me, given the welcome party." I said

"Micah's mouth runs faster than his brain. Everyone else'll settle." He paused at the door, hand on the frame, and for a second he looked like he wanted to say something else and thought better of it. "Dinner's in an hour. You'll want to be there. Missing it doesn't go over well."

"I wouldn't dream of it." I said.

He turned to leave. Stopped. Turned back, and this time his eyes actually landed on mine and stayed there, steady, searching, like he was trying to read something written in a language he only half spoke.

"That thing with the glass," he said. "Back at the assembly."

"I told you, I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're lying." He said

"Wow. Straight to accusations. Really building trust here." I said.

"I can smell it when someone's lying," he said, flat, matter-of-fact, like he was telling me the weather. "You want to try that again?"

My mouth went dry. I hadn't thought about that…. that wolves could smell things like that, could read me without me saying a word and the fact that he already knew, that he caught it and just sat on it this whole time, made my skin crawl.

"I don't know what happened," I said, and this time it was true. "I don't know what that was. I've never… it's never happened before."

Something in his face shifted at that, some of the hard edge softening just slightly, like he was braced for a lie and got honesty instead and didn't quite know what to do with it.

"Keep it that way," he said. "Whatever it is. Don't let anyone else see it. Not here."

"Why do you care?"

The question came out before I could stop it, sharper than I meant, and for a second neither of us moved. He was close enough that I could see the exact shade of blue his eyes were, close enough that the room felt smaller than it had a minute ago, and something about the way he was looking at me made it very hard to remember all the reasons I was supposed to hate him on principle.

"I don't," he said, too fast.

"Liar," I said. "Isn't that supposed to be my line?"

His jaw tightened. Neither of us looked away, not for a long, stretched-out second that felt like it lasted far longer than it should have, the air between us gone tight and strange in a way that had nothing to do with him being a wolf and everything to do with something I didn't have a word for yet.

Then, from somewhere down the hallway, a voice cut through it.

"Ronan! Your father wants you. Now."

Something shut down behind his eyes, fast, like a door slamming.

"Dinner," he said again, stepping back like the last thirty seconds hadn't happened at all. "Don't be late."

He walked off without another word, and I stood there alone in that plain little room with my heart going too fast, staring at the space where he'd been standing, furious at myself for noticing exactly how long he looked at me before he finally made himself walk away.