CHAPTER THREE: ALPHA CADE

They walked me for almost two hours, deeper into territory I had no map for, and nobody spoke much except to tell me which way to turn. Marcus kept glancing back at me like he expected me to bolt, which would have been funny if I'd had the energy to laugh. I could barely keep pace with them on flat ground.

The pack house, when we finally reached it, wasn't what I expected. Ashwood's main house was old stone and ivy, built to look like it had been standing since before the pack itself existed. This one was newer, sharper edges, dark wood and glass, like whoever built it wanted you to know this pack hadn't inherited its power from anyone. It had built its own.

Marcus left me in a front room with the other two scouts standing near the door, not quite guarding me, not quite not. I sat because my legs asked me to and I didn't feel like arguing with them today.

It was maybe twenty minutes before the door opened again.

I'd built up an image in my head on the walk over, some version of a rival Alpha assembled entirely out of Ashwood gossip. Cruel probably. Cold, definitely. The man who walked in matched almost none of it. He was younger than I'd pictured, for one thing, closer to Kane's age than his father's generation, and he moved like someone who'd never once had to raise his voice to be listened to.

He looked at me for a long moment before he said anything at all. Not the way Marcus had looked at me on the border, cataloguing what I was worth. Something more careful than that. Like he was trying to work out a math problem where I was one of the numbers and he didn't yet know which one.

"You're the Ashwood girl," he said finally. Not unkind. Not particularly warm either.

"Mia," I said. "Mia Ashford."

"Roman Cade." He didn't offer his hand, which I appreciated more than I expected to. "My scouts tell me you crossed onto my land alone and pregnant, six days after your own Alpha rejected you at his own wedding."

There didn't seem to be any point pretending otherwise. "That's about right."

"That's either extremely brave or extremely stupid." He said it like an observation, not an insult, tilting his head slightly. "Possibly both."

"I didn't have a lot of options left."

Something shifted in his face at that, small, and gone again before I could name it. He crossed the room and sat across from me, close enough to talk without raising his voice, far enough that I didn't feel cornered by it.

"Here's what I don't understand," he said. "Ashwood and Cade haven't been on speaking terms in longer than you've been alive. You had to know what it meant, walking onto my land. So either you didn't think it through, which I doubt, given you made it this far without getting caught by anyone but my own scouts. Or you knew exactly what you were doing and did it anyway."

I didn't answer right away. Partly because I wasn't sure myself which one was true.

"I wasn't thinking about Cade and Ashwood," I said finally. "I was thinking about not staying somewhere my children were going to grow up being pitied for existing."

That landed somewhere. I watched it land. His jaw did something small and tight, and for just a second the careful, unreadable calm slipped enough that I saw something underneath it that looked almost like anger, though I couldn't have told you who it was aimed at.

"Kane Voss rejected his own pregnant mate in front of three hundred witnesses," he said slowly, "and didn't even know she was pregnant when he did it."

"You already knew that part."

"I suspected it." He studied me again, that same careful math problem look. "Now I know it."

I felt something cold settle in my stomach, slower than fear, closer to the realization that I'd just handed a rival Alpha a weapon without meaning to. "That's not why I told you."

"I know." And strangely, I believed him. "Doesn't mean it isn't useful information."

We sat with that for a moment, the honesty of it more unsettling than if he'd lied and pretended otherwise.

"What happens now," I asked, because someone needed to say it and it clearly wasn't going to be him first, "to me."

Roman was quiet long enough that I started bracing for an answer I wasn't going to like.

"You have two choices, as far as I can see them," he said. "I send word to Kane that his rejected mate is standing on Cade land, pregnant, and let the two packs sort out what that means politically, which I promise you will not go well for you personally, whatever it does for either Alpha involved."

"And the second choice."

"You stay. Quietly. Under my protection, for now, no strings I've worked out yet, though I won't insult you by pretending there won't eventually be some." He said it plainly, no attempt to make it sound softer than it was. "And we figure out the rest as it comes."

"Why would you do that." It came out flatter than I meant it to, more suspicion than gratitude. "You just told me I handed you a weapon. Why protect the person holding it for you."

For the first time since he'd walked in, something like a real smile touched the corner of his mouth, though it didn't reach the rest of his face.

"Because Kane Voss just handed me something worth more than any weapon," he said. "A weakness he doesn't even know he has yet. I'd rather keep that where I can watch it than hand it back to him early."

It wasn't romantic. It wasn't kind, not exactly. But it was honest in a way nobody in Ashwood had bothered being with me in six days, and right then, sitting in a strange pack house on land that wasn't mine, exhausted and pregnant and out of every other option, honest was worth more to me than kind.

"Okay," I said. "Quietly, then."

Roman nodded once, like the matter was settled, and stood to leave. He paused at the door without turning around.

"For what it's worth," he said, "I don't think you're either of the things I said earlier."

"Which things?"

"Brave or stupid." He glanced back at me then, and there was something almost gentle underneath the careful control, gone as fast as it appeared. "I think you're just the first person from that pack who's ever actually surprised me."

Then he was gone, and I sat alone in a house full of strangers, on land my own pack considered enemy territory, and understood that I had just traded one kind of danger for another. I just hadn't decided yet which one scared me more.