Chapter Two: The Alpha's Territory

The Dravon Pack territory was nothing like home.

  I realized that the moment the car crossed the border and the trees changed. Back in Holt Pack land, the forest was ordinary — tall enough, green enough, the kind of trees you stopped noticing after a while. But here the trees were massive. Ancient. They pressed close to both sides of the road like walls, their branches tangling overhead and blocking out the sky. It was midday but it felt like dusk.

  I sat in the back seat between two guards who hadn't said a single word to me since we left. There was a third guard driving. Nobody had introduced themselves. Nobody had asked if I needed anything. They had simply put me in the car with a small bag of Lena's things — because apparently my own belongings weren't considered worth bringing — and driven.

  Five hours.

  Five hours of silence and dark trees and the slow, creeping understanding that I was not going home.

  I pressed my face close to the window and watched the territory pass. Every few miles there was a pack marker on the side of the road — black stone, carved with the Dravon crest, which was a wolf mid-leap with its jaws open. Not decorative. A warning. This is ours. Stay out.

  My wolf, the small quiet presence that lived in the back of my chest, had gone completely still the moment we crossed the border. She wasn't scared exactly. More like — alert. The way an animal goes still when it senses something much bigger nearby.

  I understood the feeling.

  I just wished she'd been a bit more helpful about it.

  ---

  The Dravon estate appeared around a long bend in the road, and my first thought was that it didn't look like a home.

  It looked like a statement.

  It was enormous. Stone walls, three stories high, with a slate roof and tall narrow windows that caught the grey afternoon light. There were two wings stretching out on either side of the main building like arms. Iron gates at the entrance, already open, which somehow felt less like welcome and more like — we knew you were coming, we just didn't bother to come out.

  A dozen wolves stood in the courtyard. All of them watching the car pull in.

  All of them completely silent.

  I had grown up in a pack compound. I knew what it felt like to walk into a group of wolves and feel their collective attention. It was always a little uncomfortable, like standing under a heat lamp.

  This was different.

  This felt like being examined. Measured. Filed away.

  I got out of the car — one of the guards opened the door without meeting my eyes — and stood up straight. The air here was cold and smelled like pine and iron. My heels clicked against the stone courtyard and every single head turned toward the sound.

  I kept my face calm.

  *Be smart, be careful, remember your training.*

  My mother's voice. The only thing she'd given me before they put me in the car.

  I repeated it quietly in my head like a prayer.

  A woman stepped forward from the group. She was older, maybe fifty, with iron-grey hair pulled back severely and the kind of posture that made you stand up straighter just by looking at her. She wore a dark jacket with the Dravon crest on the lapel.

  "Lena Holt," she said. Not a greeting. A confirmation, like she was checking something off a list.

  I hesitated for exactly half a second.

  "Yes," I said.

  The lie came out smooth and easy, which surprised me. But I had made a decision in that car during five hours of silence — until I understood this place and the people in it, I was Lena. The moment I told anyone the truth, I became a problem. And problems in a pack this powerful didn't tend to end well.

  The woman's eyes moved over me slowly. She had pale green eyes that didn't miss much.

  "I'm Maren," she said. "Head of household. I manage the estate and its staff. You will come to me with any domestic needs." She paused. "Any other needs, you will not bother the Alpha with."

  Noted.

  "I understand," I said.

  "The Alpha is not available this evening. You'll be shown to your rooms. The ceremony is tomorrow morning." She turned before I could respond and walked toward the main doors. "Follow me."

  I followed.

  ---

  My room was on the second floor of the east wing.

  They were beautiful, which I hadn't expected. A large bedroom with a four-poster bed and heavy curtains the color of midnight blue. A sitting room with a fireplace that was already lit, warming the space against the cold. A private bathroom with a deep soaking tub and stone floors.

  Everything was expensive. Everything was perfect.

  Everything felt like a cage with nice furniture.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and looked around the room and let myself, for exactly two minutes, feel everything I'd been holding back since the laundry room door opened last night.

  The fear. The anger. The loneliness that sat in my chest like a bruise you keep pressing even though you know it hurts.

  I thought about my small room back home. The window that faced the wall. The single shelf of books I'd collected over years.

  I thought about Lena, wherever she was. Free.

  Two minutes.

  That was all I allowed myself.

  Then I stood up, went to the window, and looked out at the Dravon estate grounds in the fading afternoon light.

  I needed to understand this place. The layout. The staff. Who held power, who was close to Kael, who to avoid and who might actually be useful. I needed to be invisible again — but a different kind of invisible. Not the invisible of someone who doesn't matter. The invisible of someone who is paying very, very close attention.

  I was good at that.

  I could work with that.

  A knock at the door.

  "Come in," I said.

  A young woman entered, maybe my age, with a round face and dark hair in a braid over one shoulder. She was carrying a tray — tea, bread, something warm in a covered dish. She set it down on the table near the fireplace without quite meeting my eyes.

  "From the kitchen," she said. "Maren said you hadn't eaten."

  "Thank you." I paused. "What's your name?"

  She looked up, surprised, like the question was unusual. Maybe it was, here.

  "Sena," she said.

  "Thank you, Sena."

  She gave me a small, uncertain smile, nodded once, and left.

  I poured the tea and sat by the fire and ate slowly and thought about what tomorrow would look like. The ceremony. Kael. The vows I would have to say in my sister's name.

  I was so deep in my thoughts that I almost didn't hear it.

  Footsteps. In the corridor outside my room. Slow, deliberate, unhurried.

  They stopped right outside my door.

  I set down my cup and looked at the door.

  Silence.

  Five seconds. Ten.

  Then they walked away.

  Heavy footsteps. Measured. The kind of walk that didn't rush because it had never needed to.

  My heart was beating faster than I wanted it to.

  I already knew, somehow, before I'd even met him properly, before tomorrow, before any of it —

  Those were his footsteps.

  He'd stopped outside my door.

  He hadn't knocked.

  He hadn't entered.

  He'd just — stopped. Like he was deciding something.

  And then he'd walked away.

  I sat by the fire for a long time after that, staring at the door, wondering what the decision had been.