Chapter 5

Nora

"I was at the diner," I said. "They needed an extra hand for the dinner rush."

It was the same lie I always told. Until now, it had always been enough.

Victor didn't move. "You think I can't smell him?"

The floor seemed to tip sideways under my feet.

I had scrubbed that room until my hands cracked. I’d been so careful. So sure.

"I'm an Alpha, Nora." He came toward me, slow and unhurried, the way he always did right before it got bad. "You scrubbed the floors. You washed the sheets. None of it matters. A strange wolf bled in my house, inside my territory, and his scent is in every corner of that room. I could find it with my eyes shut."

His lip curled.

"But you wouldn't understand that, would you? You're wolfless. You walk around deaf and blind to half the world and you call it clever. You have no idea how loud you've been this whole time."

That was the cruelest part of being what I was. I could never tell what gave me away until it already had.

"It isn't what you think," I started.

"It's exactly what I think." His voice stayed soft, almost gentle, which was worse than shouting. "You ran to the neighbors once already. Now you're sneaking strange wolves across my borders, and you actually believed I wouldn't notice."

He shook his head, like I'd disappointed him.

"You always did think you were clever."

"I wasn't running," I said. "I swear to you, I wasn't—"

His hand shot out and twisted into my hair.

The pain wrenched my head back and stole the rest of the sentence. Behind him, Lily made a small, broken sound, and then she was sobbing, the tears finally spilling down her cheeks.

"Please," she cried. "Please don't hurt Nora. Please, please—"

My heart cracked straight down the middle.

"Lily." I forced my voice level even with my scalp on fire. "Go to your room, baby. Lock the door. Don't open it for anyone but me."

She didn't move. She just shook, frozen.

"Go," I said. "I'll be okay. I promise you."

She ran. I heard her door bang shut, heard the lock turn.

I didn't get even a second to feel relieved. Victor's hand left my hair and clamped around my throat, and he hauled me through the door into the cold yard, my heels dragging twin lines through the dirt.

The horsewhip hung from a nail by the back door. He'd put it there himself, years ago, where I'd be forced to look at it every single morning.

He lifted it down.

"Kneel."

I knelt. I had learned long ago never to make him say it twice.

The first lash split across my back, and the world went white for a heartbeat. The leather bit through my thin shirt and into the half-healed welts already there. I bit down hard on my own scream and held it in. Lily was behind a locked door, but the walls were thin, and I would not let her hear me break.

"Apologize."

"I'm sorry." My voice shook so badly I barely recognized it. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have thought about running."

The whip fell again. And again. I lost count after the fourth. Each time, I said the words because that was the only way it ever ended.

My back burned from shoulder to hip, every new welt tearing over the last.

"You owe me more than sorry," he said. His breath came ragged now, almost wet. "You owe me for her."

I didn't have to ask who he meant. There was only ever one her.

"Your mother was whole before you came along," he said. "Something tore in her body the day she birthed you, and the healers never caught it. When she carried Lily, that old wound finished her. You damaged her first. Lily took what was left. Between the two of you, you killed the only woman I ever loved."

It was the story he told himself every time he picked up the whip. It made him the victim. It made a twelve-year-old and a newborn the murderers.

For six years, I had swallowed that lie because surviving meant staying quiet.

Another lash landed. I gasped against the dirt.

And some last frayed thread, the one I should have known to keep still, pulled loose.

"I didn't kill her." I lift my head off the ground. My mother's face is right there in my mind, her hand smoothing my hair, her voice telling me to be good. I did not do this. I was a child. "I didn't kill my mother."

The silence behind me was worse than any lash.

I knew that silence. I had just said the one thing in the world that could make Victor lose the last of his control. He was going to kill me this time. I was certain of it.

I shut my eyes and waited for the blow to fall.

It never did.

…

There was a sound like a body slamming into wood.

My eyes flew open. Victor was sprawled on the ground six feet away, the whip knocked from his hand. A man stood between us, broad and unmoving.

Then strong arms slid under me and lifted me carefully against a warm chest.

Kane.

“I made it to the road,” he said against my hair. His arms tightened around me, mindful of my back. “Then I turned back. I knew you were lying the second you smiled. Thank the Goddess I turned around and came back.”

I should have told him to put me down. I should have thought about what this would cost. Instead my fingers curled into the front of his ruined shirt and held on, and I let myself, just for a breath, feel safe. I hadn't felt safe in six years. I'd forgotten what it did to a person.

Behind us, Victor pushed himself onto his knees, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth. His gaze climbed to Kane's face. And I watched something move through my stepfather's eyes that I had never once seen there. Fear.

"Alpha Wolfe," he said.

Alpha.

I stared up at Kane. The wounded stranger I'd stitched back together on my couch. The boy I'd lied to so he wouldn't get himself killed.

He hadn't been a boy at all. He had been an Alpha the whole time.

And he was still holding me like I was something worth keeping.

Victor climbed to his feet and slipped back into the voice the pack knew — smooth, reasonable, untouchable.

"Put her down," he said. "She's my daughter. This is a family matter, and it is none of your concern."

Kane's arms didn't loosen by an inch. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet and even, with something underneath it that made the whole yard go still.

"I'm taking her," he said. "And Lily."