Chapter 4

Point of view: Kade

“Your mother wasn’t born a Thorne,” I told her. “I found the name Elena Voss in my father’s old war ledgers an hour before dinner, and your father introduced you as Elena’s daughter without blinking. I don’t know yet what that means. I intend to find out.”

Wren’s face had gone pale in the low lamp light, and for a moment I regretted saying anything at all. She looked like a woman standing on ground that had just quietly, invisibly, begun to crack beneath her.

“My mother died when I was six,” she said. “I don’t remember much. My father never talks about her family.”

“Then maybe it’s nothing,” I said, though I did not believe that, and judging by the look on her face, neither did she. “I’ll look further before I say anything else. You should sleep. Tomorrow will be worse than tonight, I promise you that much.”

She left without another word, and I stood alone in my study long after her footsteps faded down the hall, staring at a ledger page with a name in it that meant nothing to me yet and, I suspected, everything eventually.

Tomorrow arrived exactly as promised, worse.

My father called a formal dinner to introduce the visiting delegations properly, which meant every ranking wolf from both packs crowded into the great hall, along with a guest I had not been told to expect: Selene Draven, daughter of the Draven pack, our closest ally, and the woman my father had spent three years quietly hoping I would choose instead of any treaty bride.

“Kade.” She found me before the meal even started, sliding into the space beside me with the easy familiarity of someone who had known me since childhood. “I heard congratulations were in order. Though I confess, I always thought it would be someone else standing where the Thorne girl is standing now.”

“Selene.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, smiling in a way that did not reach her eyes, “I’m not here to make a scene. I’m here because your father asked me to be, and because I wanted to see for myself what kind of woman gets chosen over an actual alliance.”

Across the hall, Wren stood near her father, spine straight, hands folded, doing an admirable job of looking like a woman who belonged here instead of one hiding an entire identity behind a borrowed name. Ronan stood near the far wall, watching her the way he watched everything he did not yet trust, patient, thorough, waiting for a single loose thread.

My father rose before the meal began, tapping his glass for silence, and I felt my stomach drop before he even opened his mouth, some instinct warning me exactly where this was headed.

“Many of you know our history,” he said, voice carrying easily across the hall, the practiced tone of a man who had given this speech before. “The Blood Moon War taught this pack a hard lesson about trusting instinct over judgment. It is why, twenty years ago, I made a law that stands to this day. No Omega shall ever hold the title of Luna in this pack. Rank exists for a reason. Instinct can be manipulated. Judgment cannot.”

A ripple of agreement moved through the Ashborn side of the hall, the kind of easy applause that comes from people who have never once had to live inside a rule instead of simply benefiting from it. I did not look at Wren. I could not make myself do it, afraid of what my face might give away if I did.

“Fortunately,” my father continued, raising his glass toward her father, “the Thorne heir carries no such complication. A daughter, properly ranked, properly raised. This treaty was built correctly.”

I watched Wren’s knuckles whiten around the stem of her own glass. She lifted it anyway, and drank, and said nothing, and I understood in that moment with total, sickening clarity exactly how much danger she was standing in, a law spoken aloud in a room full of witnesses, aimed directly at a truth she was desperately hiding, and not one person in that hall except the two of us and possibly Ronan had any idea how close it had just come to detonating everything.

After the meal, I found her alone on the east balcony, staring out at the dark tree line where the blood moon had hung the night before.

“You heard him,” she said, without turning around.

“I heard him.”

“So now you understand exactly what happens if the truth comes out. It isn’t only the lie about my name anymore. It’s what I am.” Her voice was carefully flat, the voice of someone holding something very heavy very still. “Omega. The one thing your father’s law says can never stand where I’m standing.”

“I know.”

“Then why,” she turned to face me, eyes bright and furious and frightened all at once, “why does some part of you still look at me like the courtyard, like nothing your father just said changes anything?”

I did not have a good answer. I was not sure a good answer existed. “Because instinct doesn’t ask permission,” I said finally. “And apparently mine has already decided something my father’s law was specifically written to prevent.”

She flinched, like the words cost her something, like some sharp mixture of hope and terror. Before either of us could say anything else, Ronan appeared at the balcony doors, expression tight, glancing once at Wren before landing on me.

“Kade,” he said, low and urgent, “a word. Now. It’s about the Voss name you asked me to trace.”

I felt Wren go still beside me.

“What did you find,” I asked.

Ronan’s eyes flicked to Wren once more, weighing something, deciding something, before he answered.

“Enough to know we shouldn’t be having this conversation out here, where anyone could hear it.”