Chapter 2

"You stupid, useless girl. Do you have any idea what you've done?"

Mara's hand connected with the side of Wren's face before the door to the servants' corridor had fully swung shut. The blow snapped her head sideways and sent a bright spray of pain from her cheekbone to her temple, and she stumbled back into the wall and held herself there, pressing her palm flat against the stone, riding the wave of it until her vision cleared.

She'd been hit harder. She breathed.

"My Lydia." Mara's voice shook with a fury so genuine it had stripped all her usual cold efficiency away. "She's been prepared for this for months. Months. Everything in place, everything arranged, and then you — a nothing, a slave, a cursed Ashford — stand in the back of that room like you belong there and he walks past every worthy woman in this pack to pick you." She grabbed Wren's hair and wrenched her head back, forcing their eyes to meet. "What did you do? What did you say to him?"

"Nothing," Wren said steadily. "He asked my name."

"Don't lie to me."

"I'm not lying." She kept her voice level — not flat, which made Mara hit harder, but steady. The tone of someone stating facts. "He asked my name. I gave it. That's all that happened."

Mara stared at her with those old-bruise eyes, searching for the lie, and when she didn't find it, her grip tightened instead. "An Ashford," she said, and the word came out like something rotted. "He knows what you are. You understand that? He knows exactly what you are, and he chose you for it. You think he wants a bride? You think any of this is about you?"

Wren's ears were ringing faintly. She touched the back of her head. No blood.

"He's going to use you," Mara said, voice settling back into its usual cold groove. "Drain you of whatever he thinks you have, and when it doesn't work — because the healer lines are gone, your mother saw to that when she refused to save anyone but her own — he'll discard you. And when he does, I'll be here. Waiting." She smoothed her apron with precise, angry movements. "Pack your things. You leave at dawn."

She left. The door banged shut.

Wren stayed where she was for a moment, pressing her fingers against her throbbing cheekbone. She could feel the bruise already forming, hot and deep. She thought about Mara's words — he knows what you are — and turned them over carefully, examining every facet before deciding what weight to give them.

He knew the Ashford name. He'd shown recognition, not curiosity, when she said it. That meant he hadn't simply picked her by chance or instinct. He had known who he was looking for, and he'd come here to find her.

That changed everything and nothing. She was still being taken somewhere against her will. She was still at the mercy of an Alpha she'd never met. The only difference was the reason, and reasons rarely improved your situation. They just told you what kind of trap you were in.

She allowed herself five minutes. She sat on the edge of her mat, pressed her hands to her knees to stop them trembling, and felt the full weight of what she was losing: the tin behind the stone, the forty-seven dollars, the map she'd memorised so completely she could walk the route in her sleep. Two years of planning. Three weeks from the finish line.

She didn't cry. She'd run out of tears somewhere in her second year at Blood Moon and had never quite found them again.

After five minutes, she got up.

❖ ❖ ❖

The visitors came one after another to her small room that night, each with their own agenda.

First Lydia — Mara's daughter — who stood in the doorway with her careful beauty arranged into something that tried to be contempt but couldn't quite get there. She was too frightened underneath, Wren thought. Frightened of what this meant for her prospects, frightened of what Mara would become now that her ambitions had collapsed. She said Wren had better enjoy her moment because it wouldn't last. Wren thanked her for the visit and waited until she left.

Then two kitchen omegas, not to be cruel but to see — to stare at the servant who'd been chosen, to reassure themselves that she was still nothing. She offered them nothing to take back to the others. Gave them flat eyes and silence until they grew uncomfortable and went away.

Then, when the pack house had gone quiet and the hour was very late, a knock on her door.

She opened it to find a man she didn't recognise.

He was older — mid-forties, perhaps — with grey at his temples and a face that was kind in a way that seemed structural, like it had been built that way rather than arranged for the moment. He wore Black Hollow insignia on his coat, which meant he'd come with Cain Voss, which meant he had no reason to be standing at her door with an expression that looked uncomfortably like guilt.

"Miss Ashford," he said. "My name is Thorne. I'm Beta to Alpha Voss." He held up a bundle. "I brought you some things. For the journey."

Wren looked at the bundle. She looked at him. She opened the door wider and stepped back.

He came inside. She watched his eyes move over the room — that methodical sweep. But where Cain's gaze had been assessing, Thorne's was something different. He looked at the mat on the floor, the absence of a chair, the single crate, the cracked basin in the corner, and something in his face went still and careful the way faces went when people were trying not to react to something they found unbearable.

He set the bundle on the crate. "Clothes for travel. Some food for the road. A few necessities." He paused. "You can trust they're not —"

"Poisoned?" Wren said.

"I was going to say compromised in any way. But yes. Not that either."

She studied him. "Why does his Beta personally deliver provisions to women Alpha Voss has selected? Is this how it usually goes?"

A complicated expression crossed Thorne's face. "No," he said honestly. "It isn't."

"Then why?"

He was quiet for a moment. He looked at his hands, then at her. "Because you deserve better than what you've had," he said, simply enough that she almost believed it wasn't a strategy. "And because the Alpha asked me to make sure you had what you needed."

"He asked you specifically."

"He did."

"So he knew what this room looked like. What I had."

Thorne held her gaze. "He had some idea."

Wren absorbed this. She looked at the bundle — good fabric, she could see it even in the poor light. Real clothes. She thought of Mara's words: he knows what you are. She thought of Cain's expression when she'd said her name — not surprise. Confirmation.

"What does he want from me?" she asked. "Not the official reason. The real one."

Thorne's face shifted. Not evasion — she'd have read evasion easily by now. Something more like restraint. A man choosing what to say and how much.

"The Alpha will explain when you arrive," he said carefully.

"That's a deflection."

"It is." He met her eyes. "I'm sorry. Some things aren't mine to tell."

She wanted to push harder. But something about his directness — the way he admitted the deflection instead of dressing it up — told her she would get nothing more from him tonight.

She nodded once. "Thank you. For the provisions."

He moved toward the door. His hand was on the frame when she spoke again.

"Thorne."

He stopped.

"If I try to escape during the journey. What happens?"

He didn't turn around. A long pause stretched between them. Then: "The Alpha would find you," he said quietly. "He's very difficult to outrun." Another pause. "And he would not be pleased."

"With me."

"With himself. For frightening you badly enough that you felt you had no other option." He stepped through the door. "Get some sleep, Miss Ashford. Tomorrow is a long day."

He pulled the door closed.

Wren stood alone in her room, staring at the bundle on the crate. She pulled it open slowly, moving through the layers of clothing until she reached the bottom. Real cloth. A canteen. Dried food packed well for a journey.

And beneath it all, folded very small: a piece of paper.

She unfolded it. Four words, in a hand she didn't recognise:

Don't run. Not yet.

She read it twice. She folded the paper back along its creases and tucked it inside the lining of her sleeve.

She lay down on her mat and stared at the ceiling and thought: not yet implies eventually. It implies he knows she'll try. It implies that when she does, he wants her to succeed.

Who leaves a note like that for their own captive?

She was still turning that question over when the first grey light began to show under the door, and she heard boots in the corridor — measured, deliberate — and then, abruptly, Mara's voice cutting upward in protest. And then Mara's voice, cutting off completely.

Wren sat up.