Chapter three: You’re coming with me

Nobody moved, the words hanging in the air between us like smoke.

Return what's ours.

"What does that even mean?" I asked, but the guard only looked at Kael, waiting on him instead of answering me, and something about being talked over in my own clinic, about my own life, made my hands curl into fists at my sides.

"Clear the area," Kael ordered, voice flat and controlled in a way that told me he'd given orders like this a thousand times before. "No one goes near the bodies until my Beta gets there."

"Yes, Alpha," the guard said, and left without another glance in my direction, and I turned back to Kael, done waiting for permission to be part of my own crisis.

"Start talking."

"It's not the time."

"It's exactly the time." You walk into my clinic bleeding, you tell me I'm yours, some man named Silas shows up talking about me like I'm a prize to be claimed, and now there are bodies outside my door with my name basically written on the wall in blood. I think it's well past time".

He sighed, and for a second the exhaustion on his face looked almost human, almost like something I could sympathize with if I let myself. "You need to leave."

"There you go again."

"Mira."

"No," I said, grabbing my bag off the counter and zipping it shut with more force than necessary, the sound sharp in the quiet room. "I'm tired of people making decisions for me. I've worked here three years. I patched up men twice your size after they lost fights they shouldn't have survived. I survived before you walked through that door tonight , and I'll survive after you leave."

"You don't understand."

"Then explain it. That's usually how understanding works "

"I can't."

"Convenient," I said, and he stepped closer, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to hold his gaze, close enough that the pine and something wild scent of him wrapped around me again, distracting in a way I resented 

"I made you a promise."

"I never asked for one."

"I protect what's mine."

"I'm not yours," I said, low and certain, and for the first time since he'd walked into my clinic, something cracked behind his eyes, not anger, something closer to pain,raw and unguarded, gone as fast as it appeared, like he's caught himself showing too much.

"You will be if I fail," he said quietly, and the words landed strange in my chest, heavier than they should have.

"What does that even mean?" I asked again, and before he could ask what that meant, a voice cut in from the hallway.

"Alpha."

A tall man walked in without waiting to be invited, mid-thirties, dressed head to toe in black, a thin scar tracing his chin. Unlike everyone else in the room, he wasn't looking at me, he was looking at Kael, and there was something urgent in the set of his shoulders that made the air in the room shift again.

"The Council already knows."

Kael's jaw tightened, a muscle tickling there that I hadn't noticed before. "How?"

"We don't know."

The man said, and only then did his gaze finally shift to me, softening for just a second before it hardened back into professional neutrality. "So this is her."

"People keep saying 'her' like I'm not standing here," I said, arms crossed, and he almost smiled at that, extending a hand toward me like this was a normal introduction and not the middle of whatever nightmare I'd stumbled into .

"Rowan."

I didn't take it. "Mira."

"I know," he said, because of course he did, everyone apparently did, my whole life a piece of gossip passed between wolves I'd never met, and he turned back to Kael before I could ask how many other people knew my name before I knew theirs. "We need to go. Now."

"I'm not leaving her."

"You may not have a choice."

My patience finally snapped. "Would somebody please tell me what is happening?" Silence answered me again, the same suffocating silence that had followed every question I'd asked tonight, and I threw my hands up and headed for the door, done asking, done waiting, only for Kael's hand to close around my wrist before I got there.

"If you don't let go, I'm going to stab you."

"You already stitched me up once."

"I have another scalpel."

"I know," he said, grip staying gentle but immovable. "You can't leave."

"Watch me," I said, and pulled, and got nowhere.

"Seriously?"

"I don't enjoy this."

"I don't care whether you enjoy it."

Rowan cleared his throat. "Alpha" but Kael ignored him, focused entirely on me now.

"Mira. Look at me. I won’t do that , please."

Against my better judgment, against every instinct telling me to keep running,I did, and his eyes weren't cold anymore, they looked worried, and not for himself. For me. It caught me off guard enough that I forgot, for a second, to be angry, forgot to keep fighting his grip, forgot everything except the strange, unwanted warmth spreading through my chest.

Then every light in the clinic died at once.

The room dropped into total darkness, and somewhere outside, someone screamed, high and sharp and cut off too fast. A crash echoed down the hallway. Rowan moved instantly. "Stay behind me," and Kael pulled me against his side before I could protest, his body a solid wall between me and whatever was coming.

"What was that?" I whispered, and no one answered, because heavy footsteps were already closing in outside, more than one set, more than a few, boots against gravel in a rhythm too even to be panic.

Then, a slow knock, three deliberate taps against the metal door, patient in a way that made my skin crawl worse than if they'd just kicked it down.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

"Kael," came the voice through the dark, unmistakably Silas. "I think you forgot something."

My blood went cold, and then he said the one thing that made Kael's grip crush tight around my wrist.

"I'm not leaving without the girl."