Chapter 2

By the time training ended, Lisa’s hands were raw.

She rinsed the dirt from her palms at the pump behind the healer’s den, rubbing until the cold water turned her skin red. Mud swirled away between the cracks of old stone, but it did nothing to wash off the heat still clinging to her from the sparring ring.

Or the memory of Adrian hand around her wrist.

She shut the pump off hard.

The yard beyond the den had nearly emptied. Most of the young wolves had already gone to breakfast, their voices fading into the larger hum of pack life. Smoke curled from the central kitchens. Somewhere deeper in camp, children were laughing. It should have felt ordinary. Safe, even.

Instead, Lisa felt watched.

She looked behind her .

No one was there.

Still, the back of her neck prickled.

“Lisa.”

She turned sharply.

Mia stood in the doorway of the healer’s den, arms full of folded cloth, one gray brow raised. She was small and wiry and at least sixty, though everyone in Black Moon knew better than to mistake age for weakness where Mia was concerned. She missed very little.

“Are you planning to drown yourself at the pump,” Mia asked, “or are you coming inside?”

Lisa forced her hands to unclench. “I’m coming.”

Mia held the door open with her hip. The den smelled of dried herbs, smoke, and the bitter edge of crushed roots left too long in a mortar. Shelves lined the walls, packed with jars and bundles tied with twine. Lisa had spent enough years here to know every creak in the floorboards and every stain on the worktable.

It was the closest thing she had to a refuge.

Mia set the cloth down and glanced at Isla’s scraped knuckles. “Training again?”

Lisa gave a short nod.

“And?”

Lisa crossed to the table and reached for the pestle, mostly so she would have something to do with her hands. “And nothing.”

Mia snorted softly. “That look on your face says otherwise.”

Lisa began grinding dried willow bark harder than necessary. “It was the same as usual.”

That part wasn’t a lie.

Adrian had mocked her. The others had laughed. She had ended up in the dirt.

What was not usual was the way her pulse still jumped every time she replayed that brief moment between them. The jolt. The locked stare. The fury that had come into his face afterward, sudden and violent as a storm rolling over the mountain.

Mia watched her for a long moment. “Did the Alpha’s son make trouble you again ?”

Lisa kept her eyes on the mortar. “When doesn’t he?”

Something in Mia’s expression sharpened. “He put hands on you?”

“No.” The answer came too fast. Isla slowed herself. “Not like that.”

Not like that. Yet even saying the words made her feel strange, as if she were standing too close to a truth she didn’t want named.

Mia said nothing.

That was one of the unsettling things about her. She knew how to wait. She would let silence do the work people thought questions had to do.

Lisa ground the bark until it was powder.

Finally Mia said, “Then what happened?”

Lisa almost brushed it off again. But the pressure in her chest had been building all morning, and some small part of her wanted to say it aloud just to hear how impossible it sounded.

“When we touched,” she said carefully, “something happened.”

Mia’s stillness changed.

Not dramatically. Just enough.

Lisa noticed.

“It was probably nothing,” she added quickly.

“Describe it.”

Lisa swallowed. “Like… a shock. Only warmer.” She hated how uncertain she sounded. “It happened twice. Once when we both reached for the same staff. Then again in the ring.”

Mia’s face gave nothing away now. “And he reacted?”

Lisa thought of Adrian’s expression — that raw flash of recognition, followed almost immediately by anger.

“Yes,” she said quietly.

Mia turned away first, busying herself with bundles that did not need sorting. “I see.”

A knot tightened in Lisa’s stomach. “You do?”

Mia did not answer right away.She looked away from her

When Mia finally looked back, her eyes were unreadable. “Sometimes wolves imagine meaning where there is none.”

Relief and disappointment hit Lisa at once, tangled together. “So it’s nothing.”

“I didn’t say that.”

Lisa set the pestle down. “Then what are you saying?”

Mia crossed the room and placed a small jar of salve on the table between them. “I’m saying you should be very careful.”

The answer irritated her more than it should have. “That tells me nothing.”

“It tells you enough for your own good .”

“No, it doesn’t.”Lisa heard the edge in her own voice and hated it, but she couldn’t stop. “If this is some pack thing everyone knows except me, then just say it.”

Mia’s expression softened for only a second. “Child, there are some things better understood slowly.”

“I’m tired of things happening around me and I’m the last one meant to know.”

Mia sighed, old weariness moving through her face. “The mate bond doesn’t always arrive gently.”

The room went silent.

Lisa stared at her.

No. It’s can’t be .

The word echoed through her mind before her mouth could shape it.

Mia continued, more cautiously now, “Sometimes it starts as instinct. A pull. Recognition. Skin knowing before the mind catches up.”

Lisa felt suddenly cold, though the den was warm. “You think Adrian is my mate?”

“I think,” Mia said, “that you felt something real.”

Lisa gave a breathless, disbelieving laugh. “That’s impossible.”

Mia said nothing.

“It has to be impossible.” Lisa pushed away from the table. “He hates me too much to be my mate.”

“Hate and fear wear similar faces in young wolves.”

“He humiliates me in front of everyone all the time .”

Mia’s gaze held hers. “Yes that am aware of .”

Lisa folded her arms tightly over herself. “That is not how mates are supposed to act.”

“No,” Mia agreed. “It isn’t.”

The quiet that followed was different now. Heavier. More dangerous.

Lisa turned away and crossed to the small window, staring out at the frost still clinging to the shadowed side of the yard. A pair of younger wolves ran past, shoving each other and laughing, unaware that the world had just tilted.

Mate.

The word felt unreal attached to Adrian Thorne. To his cold smile, his cutting voice, the contempt in his eyes whenever he looked at her. Mates were supposed to be stories told by the fire in winter — rare, sacred, once-in-a-lifetime. Not this. Not humiliation in the dirt while half the pack watched.

“If anyone finds out…” she began.

Mia’s tone sharpened. “Has anyone said anything?”

Lisa thought of the whispers from yesterday. The girls in the yard. The half-heard word that had sounded like a joke.

Her stomach dropped. “I’m not sure .”

Mia was beside her in an instant. “Maybe is not good enough.”

“I don’t know,” Lisa said. “I heard people whispering. I didn’t think—”

“No.” Mia gripped her chin lightly, forcing Isla to meet her eyes. “Listen to me. If this is what I think it is, you tell no one. Promise me .”

Lisa pulled back. “Why?”

“Because if he rejects the bond publicly, you’ll carry the shame of it for the rest of your life.”

The words hit hard.

Rejects the bond.

Of course he would.

The certainty of it came so fast it hurt. Adrian , future Alpha, adored by the pack, cruel even before this—why would he ever accept a mate like her? A half-forgotten girl raised in the healer’s den, useful only when she was quiet and out of the way.

Her throat tightened.

Mia saw it. Her voice gentled. “I’m not saying he will.”

“Then what are you saying ?”

Mia hesitated.

That was answer enough.

Before Lisa could speak again, the door to the den swung open.

One of the younger apprentices stumbled in, breathless. “Mia—Alpha Thomas wants the salves brought to the south barracks immediately .”

Mia straightened at once, the moment broken.

“I’ll come,” Lisa said quickly, grateful for anything to do.

Mia studied her, then nodded once. “Fine. Take the blue basket.”

Lisa moved automatically, collecting jars and bandages with careful hands. But inside, everything felt ragged. Too sharp. Too close to breaking.

She left the den through the back path, hoping to avoid the training grounds.

The path curved through the pines before opening near the lower barracks. Needles crackled beneath her boots. Her breath fogged white in the air. She kept her eyes down, focused on the basket in her arms.

That was why she didn’t see him until she nearly walked straight into his chest.

Adrian caught her by the elbows to steady her.

The basket tipped. A jar rolled free and shattered on the ground.

And the bond hit her like fire.

Not a spark this time. Not a question.

A violent rush of heat tore through her chest, stealing the air from her lungs. Lisa gasped and stumbled backward, but Adrian hands tightened instinctively before he let go as if burned.

For one raw moment, neither of them moved.

His face had gone white.

He knew.

There was no mistaking it now. No denial. No uncertainty. He looked at her the way a man looks at the blade already sliding between his ribs—shocked, furious, disbelieving.

Then his mouth curled with something cruel.

“Well,” he said softly, “that’s unfortunate.”