Chapter 3

Kane

I came awake the way I'd been trained to. Hands first, eyes second.

Someone had stepped into the room. My body decided she was a threat before my mind got a vote.

I had her against the wall before I understood I was standing. My fingers found a throat. Small. A pulse slamming under my thumb.

The great Alpha Wolfe, my wolf drawled inside my skull. Brought low by a kitchen and two little girls. Terrifying.

Then I actually looked at what I was holding.

A girl. Younger than me. Brown eyes, wide and steady, no scream in them. Just a careful, waiting stillness. The stillness of someone who'd already learned that fighting only made it worse.

I dropped my hand and stepped back fast.

"I'm sorry." My voice came out wrecked; my throat had taken a beating somewhere on that road. "I woke up somewhere I didn't know. I couldn't be sure it was safe."

Something hit my thigh. Hard, for its size.

A second girl. Six, maybe. Pounding her little fists into my leg with everything she had. "Let go of Nora! Let go right now!"

I went down on one knee.

It put me below her. An Alpha doesn't kneel; I knew that the way I knew my own name. I did it anyway. "You're right. I let go. See?" I held up both hands, empty. "I'm sorry. I scared you both. That was wrong of me."

The little one stopped mid-swing. She studied me with enormous suspicion, cheeks puffed out, deciding my fate.

"...Fine. I forgive you. But only 'cause you said sorry."

"That's more than I deserve." I meant it.

"My name is Kane Wolfe." I looked back up at the older girl, still rubbing her throat where my hand had been. "I owe you both. I don't forget a debt. Whatever this is, I'll pay it back."

She didn't react to the name.

That stopped me harder than the fists had. I gave myself a second to look at her properly. Dark hair, loose curls falling past her shoulders. A plain dress, mended at one cuff, an apron still tied at her waist with flour on it. Nothing about her should have held my attention.

It held my attention anyway. Long enough that she shifted her weight and glanced away.

"I'm Nora." Her voice was low and level. "This is my sister, Lily. I didn't drag you out of those woods for a reward. You can eat, and then you should go. Your family will be looking for you."

She doesn't know who you are, Rend marveled. Goddess, I love it here.

Every wolf knew my name. That was the trouble with it.

I was twenty years old and already running a pack. The old Lycan King had taken a liking to me, and that was enough to make certain people want me dead. Yesterday, on the road to the Alpha conference, they had nearly managed it.

But none of that meant anything to Nora. To her, I was only a stranger she’d been kind enough to save.

For the first time in longer than I could remember, my name felt weightless.

The smell reached me through the open door. Eggs, and something fried golden, set out on a small table.

"That smells good." I was surprised to find I meant that too.

"Nora's the best cook." Lily clambered up onto the arm of the couch. "Better than anybody in the whole world."

I ate at the table. It was a plain breakfast. A folded pancake, a smear of egg, the kind of thing no kitchen of mine would have dared send out. I'd eaten at the King's own table, off plates worth more than this entire house.

This was better. I couldn't have told you why.

Take her with us, Rend said. Her and the pup. We keep them.

She isn't a thing we keep, I told him. Wanting her doesn't make her ours.

He went quiet. He didn't agree. He never does.

Lily had decided I was hers to interrogate. "Where are you from? Why were you all bloody? Did you fight a bear?" She didn't pause between them, just stacked the questions up, swinging her feet. "Are you a warrior? You look like a warrior."

I answered all of it. Far from here. Darkmoon Pack. A fight, not a bear. Yes, a warrior, of a sort. She nodded along, filing each answer away for later.

Across the room, Nora reached to tuck a loose curl behind her ear with a hand still dusted in flour. She left a pale smudge along her jaw and never noticed. It was a small, stupid thing. I had the ridiculous urge to reach over and wipe it off with my thumb.

Cute, Rend offered.

I watched her watch her sister instead. There was a soft, helpless thing in her face when she looked at Lily, as though that child were the only good thing she had left, and she'd burn the world down before she lost it.

Then Nora's eyes cut to the clock on the wall, and every easy line in her went tight.

"You should go." She was already on her feet. "Now. You've eaten. You're steady enough to walk."

"I just woke up." I didn't move. "What's the rush?"

"There's no rush." Too fast. "I just. Your family. You said it yourself, they'll worry."

She crossed the room and got a hand under my arm, trying to lever a man twice her weight up out of the chair.

It might have been funny if her urgency hadn't been so sharp it set my teeth on edge.

I stood, mostly so she'd stop straining herself. "I haven't paid you back yet. I don't leave a debt open."

I set a hand on her shoulder to steady her, just to make her stop fussing and look at me.

She flinched. A full-body flinch, a sound bitten off behind her teeth.

I'd barely touched her.

Everything in me went still.

"Nora." I kept my voice low and even, the way you keep it near something wounded. "Where does it hurt?"

"It doesn't. You startled me." She stepped back. Too controlled. The control was the tell.

I should have let it go. I caught the edge of her collar instead. Slow. Asking. Watching her face the whole time. I drew it back from her shoulder an inch.

Her skin was a map of old hurt. Scars layered over scars. Some pale and years gone, some still healing pink. Not the clean line of a training blade. Not a hunt gone wrong.

These had been put there. On purpose. Again and again, by someone who'd had all the time in the world.

The growl came up out of me before I chose it. Low. Not human. The sound that empties a room.

I had no claim on this girl. I'd known her the length of one breakfast. None of that mattered to the thing that had just woken in my chest and bared its teeth.

"Who did this to you?" My voice had gone to gravel. "Nora. Look at me. Who?"

From the couch, Lily piped up. Certain, helpful, the way only a six-year-old can be.

"It's—"