Chapter 6: The Pack House

The pack house went silent the moment I carried her through the front gate.

I felt it before I saw it, the particular hush that falls over a courtyard full of wolves who have just scented something they do not understand and do not like. Guards at their posts went still. A pair of hunters crossing toward the kennels stopped mid-stride. By the time I reached the main doors, half my household had found some reason to be standing in the yard, watching me carry an injured Silverwood woman across the threshold of a home that had spent generations teaching its children to hate everything she represented.

"Alpha." Corin fell into step beside me, having ridden ahead to warn the house, though nothing short of seeing it themselves could have prepared anyone for this. His voice was carefully neutral, which from Corin meant he was working very hard to keep it that way. "Your mother is waiting in the east hall."

"Of course she is."

Aria had gone quiet in my arms somewhere on the last stretch of road, not asleep, just still, watching the pack house rise up ahead of us with an expression I recognized because I had worn it myself once, a long time ago, the look of someone doing math on how bad a situation actually was and arriving at an answer they did not like.

My mother was waiting exactly where Corin said she would be, standing in the center of the east hall with her arms folded and her expression doing an admirable job of staying composed. It slipped the moment she saw the girl in my arms and the mark still raw at her throat.

"Damian." Just my name, the way she always did it when she wanted the full weight of her disapproval delivered in a single syllable.

"I know how this looks."

"I do not think you do." Her eyes moved to Aria, taking in the Silverwood coloring, the fine, deliberate craftsmanship of a warrior's training visible even in the exhausted line of her shoulders. "You know what family that mark makes her."

"I know exactly what family it makes her."

"And you did this anyway."

"I did not do anything," I said, sharper than I meant to. "It happened. My wolf decided it before I had any say in the matter, which I imagine you understand better than most, given how many stories you have told me about my father losing an argument with his own instincts."

That landed. My mother's jaw tightened, and for a moment something almost like sympathy crossed her face before the political weight of the situation reasserted itself. "The pack will not accept her easily. You understand that."

"I understand it will take time."

"Time is not the problem, Damian. History is the problem. Ask her what her father taught her about our family before you assume time solves anything."

I did not have an answer for that, and Aria, silent in my arms through the entire exchange, chose that moment to speak for herself for the first time since we had crossed into the courtyard.

"Your family taught you a lie too, apparently," she said, voice rough but steady. "Since neither of you seem to have any idea what actually happened a hundred years ago, only what you were told to believe."

My mother's eyes narrowed at that, sharp and assessing in a way that told me she was recalculating something. I set Aria down carefully, testing whether her leg would hold her weight, and when it did not entirely, I kept an arm at her back without asking permission, because some instinct under my skin refused to let her fall in front of my own mother's judgment.

"She needs care," I said. "The wound on her leg, the mark. I will see to it myself."

"You will see to it," my mother repeated, in a tone that suggested she found this development almost as alarming as the mark itself.

"I will."

I did not wait for her to argue further. I brought Aria to my own quarters, the only room in the pack house I trusted enough guards not to gossip about within the hour, and set her down on the edge of the bed while she watched me with the wary, exhausted stillness of someone too tired to keep fighting and too proud to admit it.

"I can tend my own wounds," she said, when I knelt to unwrap the binding on her leg.

"You have been riding on it for hours. Let me look before you decide that."

She let me, which told me more about how much pain she was actually in than anything she would have said aloud. The cut was deeper than I liked, and the mark at her throat, still raw from where I had broken skin that morning, needed attention of a different kind entirely. Mate marks healed strangely, faster than an ordinary wound but only with the right care, a truth my own wolf seemed to understand instinctively even though I had never needed to learn it myself.

"This is going to sound strange," I said.

"Everything about today has been strange. Continue."

"The mark heals faster if it's tended properly. My mouth, not just bandaging." I watched her face carefully as I said it, bracing for the anger I fully expected.

She went very still instead, some complicated mixture of wariness and something else entirely crossing her expression. "You're telling me you need to put your mouth on my neck again."

"I am telling you Kade will not settle until it is done properly, and neither, I suspect, will you, once the ache sets in properly tonight."

I kept my voice level, though nothing about the moment felt level at all, some low, insistent pull under my skin making it difficult to think clearly about anything except the small distance between us. "I will stop the moment you tell me to."

She did not tell me to stop.

I moved slowly, giving her every opportunity to change her mind, and when she tilted her head just slightly, just enough, I understood it as the only permission I was going to get. My mouth found the mark at the curve of her shoulder, and I licked her wound, gentle in a way that had nothing to do with the violence of how it was made, and she made a small, sharp sound that was not entirely pain, her fingers curling into the fabric of my shirt without either of us acknowledging it out loud.

Something in my chest settled the way it had in the valley, that same terrible, undeniable rightness, and I understood, kneeling there with her pulse fluttering beneath my tongue, that whatever careful distance I had planned to keep between us had already started slipping through my fingers, faster than any wall I had ever built could hope to hold.