Chapter 5

FREYA

The meeting was set for the following morning.

Orin had booked a private room at the Lodge, which was the closest thing our pack had to a proper meeting venue. It was all exposed timber and stone hearths and the permanent smell of pine resin and old smoke. It wasn't the glass-and-steel corporate environment that the offer had suggested, but I'd specifically told Orin to keep it local. I wanted to see how they would adapt.

I arrived thirty minutes early and they were already there. I pushed open the door and stopped.

The room had one long table, and at the far end of it sat two people I didn't recognize, and one that I did.

His scent hit me before I fully saw his face, then I realized I'd been holding onto it for years without meaning to. He smelled like night air, dark cedarwood, and something underneath it that I couldn’t even name.

He was sitting with one arm over the back of the chair like he'd been comfortable here for hours, with his dark curls, bronze skin, and those blue eyes that were already on me before I'd taken two steps into the room.

Ethan Morven, the guy who’d saved me from those rogues a few days ago.

I stopped walking.

"You," I said.

"Me," he agreed, and then he smiled slowly, looking too pleased with himself.

I looked at Orin, who had the grace to look slightly apologetic. "The acquisition offer is from Morven Holdings," he said. "They’re from the Northern Pack. I just found out this morning."

"You could have told me before I walked in."

"I thought you might not come," Orin said honestly.

He wasn't wrong.

I pulled out the chair across from Ethan and sat down, because walking out wasn't something I was going to do. I set my folder on the table and looked at him.

"We went to the same school," I said. It was not a question.

"We did." He was watching me with that particular expression of his, now attentive in a way that felt like something more than casual interest.

"You had a reputation," I said.

"Most interesting people do," was his reply.

"You bullied half the school."

Something crossed his face, just briefly. "I was accused of that," he said, and his voice was a bit more careful than it had been. "There's a difference."

I didn't push it. The accusations had followed him for years, and I remembered that. Brian had brought it up more than once, talking about it dismissively, even though it felt to me like he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

And I had stopped thinking about it, because it had been convenient to. Because Brian and Ethan's Packs had been competing for territory and it was easier not to complicate things.

Right now I wasn't so sure that things were as uncomplicated as I'd thought.

"Why do you want my company?" I asked, getting right to it.

"Because it's valuable," he said. "The mining territory borders three packs. Whoever owns it controls a significant amount of the regional supply chain." He tilted his head. "And because I knew you were going to need to sell, and I'd rather it be to me than to someone who'd use it as leverage against you."

I stared at him for a while.

"That's a very convenient version of generosity," I finally said.

"I'm a very convenient kind of person."

"You're annoying is what you are."

He smiled, and it was different from the one he had on in the beginning. Less performative, more real. "There she is."

I looked down at my folder and thought about Jane Norwood’s glass shattering on the floor, the cut on my hand, and the picture of Brian with his arm around Lena on a beach, both of them having fun on a vacation that was supposed to be mine.

Then I looked back up.

"Are you trying to use this acquisition to take shots at Brian's Pack?" I asked. "Because if that's what this is, then I'm not interested in being a piece in someone else's game."

"And if I said it was both?" Ethan said, very simply. "Business and personal, together. You get what you need, I get what I want. It's not complicated."

"It sounds complicated."

"Most worthwhile things usually are."

I was still working out what to say to that when he stood, moved around the table without any warning, and crouched slightly to look at my hand where the bandage was still visible on my wrist. He took it in both of his hands without asking.

"What happened?" he said.

"It's nothing."

"Freya."

The precise way he said my name made me look up at him. His fingers were light and careful on the bandage.

"Brian's mother," I said. "A glass. It wasn't intentional."

He held my hand for a moment longer than necessary, and I felt my heart skip a few beats, though I had no interest in examining that closely. I pulled back.

"Don't," I said.

He looked at me, and for one second there was something in those blue eyes that was not playful at all. He just looked somehow quiet, patient, and very serene.

Then he lifted my hand, pressed his lips briefly to the back of it, and said absolutely nothing.

I opened my mouth to say something. And then he kissed me.

It wasn’t gentle or tentative. It was deep and hard, and my whole nervous system stopped working for approximately three seconds before I got it together enough to pull back.

I kept staring at him. He looked way too calm.

"We should discuss terms," he said, like nothing had happened.

"Ethan—"

"We have to talk about the acquisition," he said, and sat back down in his seat, straightening his jacket. "I have a draft of the agreement here if you want to start with the numbers."

I sat there for a moment, breathing, my hand still warm where he'd held it.

Outside the windows of the Lodge, I could hear the various sounds of the woods, wind in the pine trees, and the distant call of something moving through the darkness at the edge of the territory. My territory, or what was left of it.

I picked up my folder.

"Show me the numbers," I said.