The Wound

He talked for longer than sixty seconds.

She let him.

Kade dressed her arm himself — she didn't ask where he'd found the cloth and the water, didn't comment on the fact that his hands were steadier than hers would have been in the same situation. He worked with the efficiency of someone who had bandaged wounds before, often, and she kept her eyes on the window and her breathing even and tried to pretend that his touch wasn't burning through every wall she had.

"Three weeks ago," he said, wrapping the linen with precise, careful movements, "I received intelligence that someone was planning to sabotage this summit. I came here to find them, not to negotiate peace."

"Then the summit was cover."

"For me, yes." He tied off the bandage. Didn't let go of her wrist immediately. "Apparently someone had the same idea in reverse — using the summit to eliminate you."

"Or to frame your pack for my death and start the war anyway."

"Yes." He did let go then, and she felt the absence of his hand more than she should have. "My intelligence suggested the threat was internal to your pack. Someone who doesn't want the peace to hold."

Zara went very still. "You're accusing a Silverblood of trying to have me killed."

"I'm telling you what I know." His pale eyes were steady. No deflection, no political smoothing. She'd dealt with enough diplomats to recognise the absence of them. "What you do with it is your business."

She studied him. This close, in the low torchlight, she could see things the distance of the great hall had hidden — the fine lines at the corners of his eyes that came from years of tension, not age. The way his jaw held a tightness that never fully released. The scar on his throat, which she now saw wasn't just a scar — it was a mark. Deliberate. The kind a wolf made to claim a kill.

Someone had tried to take his throat. Someone had gotten close enough to try.

"Who marked you?" she asked, before she could stop herself.

His stillness was different from hers. Where Zara's stillness was trained, weaponised, his was the stillness of something old and deep that had learned to carry weight without bending.

"My Beta," he said finally. "Three years ago."

She hadn't expected that. A Beta turning on an Alpha was the gravest betrayal a pack could suffer — the wound it left wasn't just physical.

"He's dead?" she asked.

"Yes."

One word. The weight of an entire story compressed into it. She recognised that too — she'd done the same thing herself, with her own griefs, for years. Made them small. Made them fit in her mouth without breaking anything on the way out.

"That's why you're cold," she said. Not cruelly. Just with the recognition of one soldier seeing another's old injury.

Something moved across his face — surprise, she thought, and then something rawer that he shut down fast.

"I'm cold," he said carefully, "because it's the most efficient way to lead."

"That's what you tell yourself."

The silence stretched between them, dense with the bond and the shared blood on the floor and the three unconscious wolves at the room's edge. Outside, she could hear his pack moving — controlled, efficient, cleaning up. Her own wolves would be wondering where she was. Lena would be counting minutes.

She should leave. Everything rational told her to leave.

"The person who sent you that forged message," Kade said quietly. "They knew about the bond."

"Or they knew you'd made contact with me."

"No one saw that."

She looked at him. He looked back. The implication settled between them like ash.

Someone inside one of their packs — or both — had known the mate bond had snapped into place the moment they'd seen each other. Which meant someone had been watching closely enough to see what even the crowded hall had missed.

"We have a problem," Zara said.

"Several." His mouth did something that wasn't quite a smile but was the closest thing she'd seen from him. "The peace summit ends in four days. Someone in that building wants it to fail. And you and I are—"

"Don't say it."

He paused. "I was going to say targets."

She held his gaze. The bond hummed. Her wolf pressed against her ribs with something that felt embarrassingly like longing.

"Four days," she said. "We share information. Quietly. We find whoever is behind this before they try again."

"Agreed." He leaned back slightly, watching her. "And the other thing?"

"There is no other thing."

He said nothing. He didn't need to. They both knew what lived in the space between them, hot and inevitable and entirely unwanted.

Zara stood. Checked her bandaged arm. Rolled her sleeve down.

"I'll need everything you have on your intelligence source," she said, all business, all armour. "By morning."

"You'll have it."

She walked to the doorway. Stopped without turning around, because she didn't trust her own face.

"Your Beta," she said quietly. "I'm sorry."

Another silence. Then, so low she almost missed it:

"So am I."

She left before the bond could make her stay.