The letter

SLOANE

Roan is standing just inside my gate when I round the corner, and every instinct I've spent two years building goes taut at once, because an Alpha doesn't wait at another Alpha's gate unless something has gone badly wrong.

He looks worse than he did at the mill. Thinner. Grey around the eyes in a way no amount of sleep is going to fix. Behind him, two of his elders stand rigid and silent, and I recognize the tall one immediately from the mill, the one who watched me the whole time like he was already deciding whether I was worth his trouble.

"You're on my land uninvited," I say, before he gets a single word out. "Twice now. I'm starting to think you enjoy being told no."

"Sloane—"

"Alpha," I correct, sharp enough that the tall elder's mouth twitches with something close to satisfaction, though I don't do it for him. I do it because Roan doesn't get to say my name like it still belongs to him.

Something flickers across his face, hurt, maybe, but it is quickly buried. "Alpha. I wouldn't have come without cause."

"Then state it."

"Not out here." His eyes flick, briefly, to Kieran at my shoulder, and something tightens in his jaw before he looks back at me. "Please."

I hate that word in his mouth. I hate how much of the old ache it drags up, unbidden, before I can stop it.

"Inside," I say. "Your elders wait in the yard. This isn't a council meeting."

The elder stiffens like I've slapped him, and for a moment I think he might actually argue it, but Roan's single glance silences whatever he was about to say. Small mercies.

I take him to the same bare room I examined him in before, because I don't trust myself to have this conversation anywhere softer, and because some petty, wounded part of me wants him to remember exactly what happened the last time he stood in it.

"Talk," I say, arms crossed.

"We found a body near the ridge. Close to where your scouts went missing." His voice is steady, but his hands aren't, and I watch him grip the edge of the table the same way he did the first time the sickness dropped him mid-sentence. "Killed the same way as one two years ago. There's a mark near it. Old. Not Ashborn's. Not Duskmoor's."

My stomach turns to ice. "Describe it."

He does. Every detail lands exactly where I feared it would — the same wrongness I felt in that clearing, the same absence of blood, the same precision that doesn't belong to any wolf I've ever heard of.

"There's something else." Roan's throat works before he says the rest. "Marcus thinks it's connected to whoever killed the man who saved your life two years ago. Callum."

Hearing that name in his mouth breaks something loose in my chest I've spent two years welding shut.

"You don't get to say his name," I say, low and furious. "He died getting me to safety. You don't get to reduce that to a detail in your report."

"I'm not trying to—"

"Then what are you trying to do, Roan?" My voice cracks on his name, the first real crack I've let show since the mill, and I hate myself for it instantly. "Because from where I'm standing, you show up on my land, twice, uninvited, dying by inches, dragging up the worst night of my life like it's a bargaining chip, and I still don't know what you actually want from me."

"I want you safe." It comes out rough, stripped of every careful political word he's used since the meeting. "I know I don't get to want that. I know I gave up that right two years ago, in front of everyone we both knew, in the worst way I could have possibly done it. I've had two years to think of a better way to say it, and I still don't have one. I just know it's true."

The room goes very quiet.

"Two years," I say, and my voice comes out sharper than I mean it to. "Two years of silence, and you show up now, sick and half-dead, and decide this is the moment to tell me you still care what happens to me."

"I never stopped."

"You had a wife within a year, Roan."

"I had an arrangement." Something in his face cracks, just slightly. "You know the difference. You examined me yourself. You felt exactly how little that bond ever took root."

"That's not the same as an apology."

"No," he says. "It isn't. I don't have one big enough for what I did. I've tried writing it in my head a hundred different ways and none of them survive actually standing in front of you."

"You don't get to say things like that to me," I say, quieter now, unsteady in a way I despise.

"I know." He doesn't look away. "I'm saying it anyway."

I want to hit him. I want, with a violence that frightens me, to close the last of the distance between us and either put my hands around his throat or my mouth against his, and the fact that I can't tell which impulse is stronger is the most honest thing I've felt in two years.

"Get out," I say instead.

"Sloane—"

"I said get out." My voice doesn't shake this time. "I'll send word about the alliance once I've decided. Until then, you don't get to show up at my gate like you have any claim left on how I spend my time."

He doesn't move for a long moment, and something in his face, grief, maybe, or the particular exhaustion of a man who's run out of easy things to say, makes me want to take it back before I've even finished meaning it.

"Alright," he says finally. "I'll go."

He's almost to the door when he stops, hand on the frame, not turning around.

"For what it's worth," he says, "I'd rather you hate me and stay alive than forgive me and end up in a ditch with a mark on a tree next to you."

Then he's gone, and I stand alone in the room where I've now watched him break twice, furious at him, furious at myself, and entirely unable to explain why my hands won't stop shaking.

Del finds me there a few minutes later, takes one look at my face, and doesn't ask a single question.

"Corvin wants to know if we're preparing for war," she says instead, careful. "Given the body. Given the marks."

"Tell him yes." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "Tell him to prepare for war either way. Whether I help Roan or not, whatever did this isn't going to wait for either of us to make up our minds."

Del nods, already turning to go, and stops at the door.

"And Roan?"

I don't answer right away.

"I don't know yet," I say, honestly, for the first time all day. "I don't know."

Del is nearly out the door when one of the younger wolves jogs up, breathless, a folded paper held out like it might bite her.

"Alpha. This came for you. No pack seal I recognize, and the messenger wouldn't say who sent him. Just said you'd want it."

I take it. The paper is heavier than it should be, expensive, the kind of stock nobody local bothers to use. I unfold it slowly, and the handwriting inside is sharp, confident and unhurried in a way that makes something in my chest go cold before I've even finished the first line.

Alpha of Ashborn, I imagine you have questions after our introduction. I have answers, and a proposal you'll want to hear in person. Name a time. I'll be waiting, whether you send word or not.”

There's no signature. There doesn't need to be one.

I already know exactly whose pale gold eyes are waiting behind those words.