Chapter 3

Lisa stood frozen, the shattered jar at her feet leaking thick blue salve into the dirt

Adrian was still in front of her, close enough that she could see the tension in his jaw, the slight flare of his nostrils, the unnatural stillness in his shoulders. He looked as if every part of him had locked into place by force.

“Well,” he had said, voice cold and cutting, “that’s unfortunate.”

The word sliced through the shock still burning in Lisa’s chest.

For one wild second, she could only stare at him. Not because she did not understand what he meant, but because she understood it too clearly. He knew. The same way she knew now. The same way her body had known before her mind could catch up.

Mate.

The bond pulsed faintly beneath her skin, an unwanted awareness that made the air between them feel charged. She hated it instantly. Hated the heat in her body . Hated the trembling in her hands. Hated most of all that it connected her to him.

Adrian glanced at the broken jar, then back at her face.

“Clean that up,” he said.

Lisa blinked. “You bumped into me.”

His expression hardened . “Did I?”

The question was soft, almost lazy, but his eyes were not. They were bright with something harsh and dangerous, something that looked too much like panic dressed up as contempt.

Lisa dropped her gaze, not out of submission but to keep herself from saying something reckless. She crouched and began gathering the largest shards of glass with numb fingers.

Adrian did not help.

He stood above her for another moment, as if making sure she understood exactly where she belonged . Then he stepped back.

“This never happened,” he said.

Lisa looked up and said nothing .

He was already turning away.

The words struck harder than they should have, perhaps because they confirmed what Mia had warned her of. Rejection. Not formal, not yet, but something close to it. A denial before the truth had even had time to breathe.

“Coward,” she said before she could stop herself.

Adrian halted.

The forest seemed to go still with him.

Slowly, he looked back over his shoulder. “What did you say?”

Lisa rose to her feet, the basket clutched tightly in one hand. She could feel her pulse in her throat, but anger was stronger now than fear. “You heard me.”

His eyes narrowed. “Be careful.”

“No,” she said, surprising herself with the steadiness of her voice. “You be careful. You don’t get to act like this is somehow my fault.”

A dark laugh escaped him. “You think this is what I wanted?”

“I know it isn’t.”

For a brief moment, something real cracked through his expression. Not softness. Never that. But something raw enough to make her wish she had not seen it.

Then it vanished.

Adrian took one step toward her. “Good. Then we understand each other.”

He walked away without another word, leaving Lisa in the pines with her breath shaking and the scent of him still lingering in the cold air.

She hated that scent of him.

Cedar smoke and winter wind, beneath it that her wolf noticed quite well.

By the time Lisa reached the south barracks, her face had settled back into something unreadable. She handed over the remaining salves, murmured an apology for the broken jar, and ignored the puzzled look from the guard on duty. Then she returned to the healer’s den.

Mia was sorting herbs when Lisa came in. She looked up once and immediately set the bundle in her hands aside.

“What happened?”

Lisa placed the basket on the table. “I think he knows.”

Mia’s mouth tightened. “Tell me.”

She narrated what transpires between,But not every detail. She could not bring herself to repeat the way the bond had flared between them, or how one touch had turned certainty into something frighteningly real. But she told Mia enough: the collision on the path, the shattered jar, Adrian face,and his words.

Mia’s eyes softened with pity, which only made Lisa feel worse.

“I don’t want pity.”

“Then don’t ask for it.”

“I didn’t.”

“No,” Mia said quietly. “You never do.”

That made Lisa look away.

Mia came around the table and began checking her hands for cuts from the broken glass. Her touch was brisk but careful. “He’s afraid.”

Lisa let out a bitter laugh. “He’s cruel, not afraid.”

“Sometimes those are the same thing.”

“I’m tired of hearing that.”

Mia dabbed salve across a shallow cut near her thumb. “And I’m tired of young wolves making fear everyone else’s problem.”

For the first time since returning, Lisa smiled.

It disappeared as quickly as it came.

“What happens now?” she asked.

Mia tied a strip of clean cloth lightly around Lisa’s hand. “Now you try every possible means to stay away from him .”

Lisa pulled her hand back. “That’s not a plan.”

“No,” Mia agreed. “It’s survival.”

The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of chores. Lisa sorted roots, washed jars, swept the back room, and tried not to feel the invisible thread of awareness now running through her every thought. It was faint when Adrian was far away, but never fully gone. A low pull. A sense that somewhere on the mountain, he existed in.

The dining hall was crowded when she arrived, warm with firelight and loud with pack voices. Long wooden tables stretched from one end of the room to the other, packed with wolves balancing bowls of stew, torn bread, and metal cups of ale or tea. The smell of roasted meat and smoke hung thick in the air.

Lisa usually ate near the end of the far table with the den workers and apprentices, where no one paid much attention to her.

But tonight, attention found her anyway.

She felt it before she saw him.

That impossible, unwanted awareness sharpened suddenly, as unmistakable as heat against skin. Lisa stiffened mid-step.

Adrian was across the hall with Robert and Mary , surrounded by a loose half-circle of young wolves hanging on whatever story Robert was telling. He wasn’t laughing. He was looking directly at her.

And he did not look away.

The bond tightened.

Lisa hated that her heart skip a beat.

Then Robert followed Adrian’s gaze and grinned. “Look,” he said loudly enough for several nearby tables to hear. “Our favorite ghost showed up after all.”

A few people chuckled.

Lisa kept walking.

She reached for a bowl at the serving table, but before she could take it, Mary moved beside her and picked it up first. Not rudely. Not obviously. Just smoothly enough that Lisa was forced to wait.

By the time another bowl was passed down, the moment had already done its work. Several people had noticed. A few were smirking.

Petty, and childish Lisa thought.

Exactly the sort of thing Adrian would pretend not to be involved in.

She took her food and turned.

“Careful,” Adrian said from behind her. “Wouldn’t want you dropping it.”

The words were ordinary enough that someone unfamiliar with him might have mistaken them for consign.

Lisa turned slowly to face him.

Up close, his expression was composed, almost bored. No sign at all of what had passed between them in the pines. No hint of the fire she knew he had felt. It was worse, somehow, than open anger. It meant he could hide it. It meant he could bury the truth beneath mockery and let her stand alone under it.

“You seem very interested in what I do with my hands,” she said.

A few heads turned.

Robert let out an appreciative noise.

Adrian’s eyes turned cooled. “Only when you make a spectacle of yourself.”

That got a laugh.

Not from everyone. But enough.

Heat rushed into Lisa’s face. She hated herself for it. Hated him more for seeing it. For making her body respond to both humiliation and the bond at once, until she felt flayed open from the inside.

Still, she forced herself not to look away.

“You should try it sometime,” she said. “Showing up where you’re expected.”

The silence after that was instant.

Everyone knew.

Not the truth, perhaps, but enough of the insult to taste it.

Adrian’s face changed, Just slightly.

But Lisa saw it.

So did Mary, whose eyes flicked between them with sudden sharp curiosity.

Adrian stepped closer, and the hall seemed to contract around him.

For one terrible, traitorous second, the bond sparked again—warm, alive, intimate in a way nothing about him deserved to be. Lisa gripped the bowl harder to keep from flinching.

His voice dropped low. “You should learn when to stop talking.”

She met his gaze. “Why not make me.”

That was a terrible mistake.

She knew it the instant the words left her mouth.

Not because she regretted them, but because of what lit up in his eyes when he heard them. Something fierce and dark and tightly leashed. Something that made the wolves around them begin to shift, sensing tension.

Then Adrian smiled, It was the same smile he wore in the training yard before he knocked her into the muddy ground .

“Gladly,” he said.

And with one quick movement, he bump his shoulder hard into hers as he passed.

Not enough to look deliberate.

More than enough.

The bowl flew from Lisa’s hands and crashed across the floor. Stew splattered her skirt, her boots, the nearest bench. Gasps and laughter broke out all at once.

For a heartbeat, no one moved.

Adrian turned back with perfect timing, brows lifting as if surprised. “You really are clumsy.”

The humiliation hit so fast Lisa could barely breathe.

Around them, the hall buzzed with reaction—some amused, some awkward, some pretending not to notice. No one called him on it. No one ever did.

Lisa set the empty remains of the bowl down on the nearest table with hands that did not feel like her own.

Then she looked him dead in the face and said, clearly enough for half the room to hear, “I would rather be clumsy than cruel.”

The laughter died immediately, Adrian’s smile vanished.

Good, Lisa thought to herself, Hope it hit hard.

She turned and walked out before anyone could stop her, leaving the spilled stew, the staring wolves, and Adrian Thorne standing in the middle of the dining hall with the whole pack watching him.

Outside, the night air hit her like ice.

Only when the doors shut behind her did she let the breath she didn’t know she was holding go.