Chapter 3

Three days in, and Selena has learned the shape of her new life.

She rises before the rest of the east wing does, before Mira or the guards or the pale gray light that never quite commits to morning in Blackthorn territory. Nobody makes her get up early. That's the strange part. She could sleep until noon and no one would drag her out by the hair the way she half expects, some old fear from stories about conquered pack territories, about what happens to the daughters of dead Alphas.

Instead there's just quiet. Too much of it.

She spends the mornings walking the courtyard, memorizing exits out of habit more than hope, cataloguing which guards rotate when, which gates stay open past dusk. She tells herself it's strategy. Some mornings she almost believes it.

Today she's three steps into her usual circuit when a voice stops her cold.

"You're new."

She turns. A man leans against the stable wall, arms crossed, watching her with an ease that doesn't belong to anyone who just walked into hostile territory as a prisoner. He's handsome in the way that knows it — dark hair a little too styled for a wolf pack, a smile already halfway to charming before he's said a second sentence.

"I'm not new," Selena says. "I'm a hostage."

"Guest," he corrects, pushing off the wall. "Kael doesn't keep hostages. Bad optics." He offers a hand she doesn't take. "Oliver. I'm his cousin."

Something in the word cousin makes her go still. Family. An opening, maybe, or a door she hasn't found the shape of yet.

"You don't sound thrilled to be here," she says, testing.

Oliver's smile doesn't move, but something behind his eyes does — quick, gone before she can name it. "I've been away. Doing business abroad. Just got back." He tilts his head, studying her the way Mira did that first night, except there's nothing curious about it. It's closer to appetite. "You're the Veyne girl. Darius's daughter."

"Was."

"Was," he agrees, and there's something almost gentle in how he says it, like he's handing her a small mercy she didn't ask for. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry about your father. Whatever he did to deserve this."

Selena's spine straightens. "You don't know what he did?"

"Kael doesn't exactly hand out explanations." Oliver shrugs, easy, unbothered, and starts walking beside her like they've already agreed to this, like she invited the company. "Family trait, apparently. He decides things and the rest of us find out after."

She should walk away. She knows she should. Instead she matches his pace, because he's the first person in this castle who's said anything close to a criticism of Kael out loud, and hunger makes people careless.

"You resent him," she says.

"I love my cousin." He says it lightly, like a joke that isn't quite one. "Doesn't mean I don't notice things. Like how the elders chose him over me when we were younger, and nobody's ever once asked if that felt fair."

Selena files that away too. Add it to the growing list of cracks she's been hunting for since the night the horns sounded.

Kael learns his cousin is back before he sees him — Rhen again, this time in person, catching him halfway across the training yard with the particular tightness in his jaw that means the news isn't good, or isn't simple.

"Oliver's here."

Kael stops. "Since when."

"This morning. No warning, no letter ahead of him, just walked through the gate like he'd been gone a week instead of two years." Rhen's voice stays level, but there's something underneath it, careful in a way Rhen doesn't usually bother being. "He's already found the Veyne girl. They were walking the courtyard together when I came to find you."

Something tightens low in Kael's chest, sharp and unwelcome and immediately suspicious, because he doesn't have a good reason to feel it and hasn't earned the right to.

"Why does that bother you," Rhen asks, watching him too closely.

"It doesn't."

"Kael."

"It doesn't matter who she talks to." He says it too fast, and hears it too, the way the words come out clipped instead of careless. He starts walking toward the courtyard anyway, and doesn't examine too hard why his pace has picked up.

Oliver sees him coming before Selena does. His smile widens, easy and warm, arms already opening for an embrace that Kael steps into because two years is two years, because whatever else Oliver is, he's still blood, still the boy Kael grew up sparring with in this same yard before either of them understood what the weight of an Alpha's title actually cost.

"Look at you." Oliver claps him on the back, laughing. "Still terrifying. Good to see some things don't change."

"You could've sent word you were coming home."

"And ruin the surprise?" Oliver steps back, glancing once at Selena, quick and easy, nothing that should mean anything and somehow still setting Kael's teeth on edge. "I was just getting acquainted with your guest here. She's got a mouth on her. I like it."

"She's not — " Kael stops himself before he finishes the sentence, not entirely sure what word was about to come next, only sure he doesn't like how close it came to sounding like a claim.

Selena watches this happen with open, careful interest, filing away every flicker that crosses Kael's face like she's building a case file no one's given her permission to open.

"I should get back," she says finally, into the silence Kael left hanging.

"Selena." Kael says her name before he's decided to. She stops. Turns. Waits, chin lifted, daring him to say something worth the interruption. He doesn't have anything ready. "Nothing. Go."

She goes. Oliver watches her the entire way across the yard, and Kael watches Oliver watch her, and neither of them says a word about it.

"Interesting," Oliver murmurs once she's out of earshot.

"Don't."

"Don't what?" Oliver's smile turns sharper at the edges, delighted by something Kael hasn't said out loud and doesn't intend to. "I haven't done anything. Yet."

He walks off toward the castle before Kael can decide whether that last word was a joke.

That night, Oliver locks his door the way he always does when he needs privacy, waits until the castle settles into its late, careful quiet, and pulls a small mirror-glass from beneath a loose floorboard he installed himself two years ago, long before anyone thought to wonder why.

The surface ripples once he breathes on it, and a voice answers from somewhere that isn't anywhere at all.

"You're back sooner than expected."

"Change of plans." Oliver keeps his own voice low, easy, the same charm he wears in daylight now stripped down to something colder underneath. "Kael killed Darius. Took his people. Took his daughter too, apparently, though I don't think even he's decided what that means yet."

A pause on the other end, considering. "And the girl?"

"Furious. Grieving. Smart." Oliver almost smiles, thinking of the courtyard, of her sharp eyes cataloguing every gate. "She'll be useful. Or she'll be a problem. Possibly both."

"Watch her. Watch him." The voice in the glass goes quieter, colder, patient in a way that's outlasted decades. "And Oliver. Does he suspect anything about you?"

"Not a thing." This time the smile does come, small and private in the dark. "He never has."