Chapter 8

Sable's POV

I woke up stiff on a bedroll that smelled like someone else's sweat, sunlight cutting through a gap in the tent flap right across my eyes. For a second I forgot where I was. Then my wrist ached where the old man had grabbed it, and everything came rushing back.

Ivy was already outside when I crawled out, sharpening a knife against a whetstone like it was the most normal thing in the world to do before breakfast.

"Sleep okay?" she asked, not looking up.

"Not really."

"Yeah, the first night's rough for everybody." She slid the knife into a sheath at her hip and stood, brushing dirt off her knees. "Come on. I figured I'd show you around before people start staring at you like you're some kind of exhibit."

"They already stare."

"Fair. Maybe this'll cut down on it a little."

We walked past the fire pit from the night before, cold ash and half-burned logs the only sign anyone had been there. A woman crouched near it, stitching a tear in a leather vest, and she nodded at Ivy without looking twice at me.

"That's Sela," Ivy said once we passed. "She ran from an arranged mating a few years back. The family tried to marry her off to some Beta twice her age. She said no, then said no with a knife when they didn't take the first no seriously."

"And nobody came after her?"

"Somebody did. She's still here, so you can guess how that went."

We kept walking. A man near the treeline was teaching two younger wolves how to string a bow, patient in a way that surprised me.

"That's Tomas," Ivy said. "Used to be a scout for some packs up north. Got blamed for a raid he tried to warn everybody about. They didn't listen, people died, and somehow it became his fault for not stopping it alone."

"That's not fair."

"A lot of stuff that happens to people out here isn't fair. That's kind of the whole point of this place." Ivy gestured out at the loose scatter of tents and lean-tos spread through the clearing. "Everybody you see got kicked out, ran out, or walked out of somewhere that decided they didn't fit. Wrong rank, wrong bloodline, wrong mate, wrong everything."

"So what happens here? No pack structure at all?"

"No Alpha. No Beta. No omega getting stuck cleaning up after everybody else because of some rank they didn't choose." She said it simply, like it wasn't a big deal, though it landed on me like something much bigger. "You pull your weight, you get a say. That's it. That's the whole system."

Back in Ironclaw, my whole life had been about my place at the bottom, about knowing exactly how far down I ranked before I even opened my mouth. Here, apparently, that didn't exist.

"Nobody's ever asked me what I think about anything," I admitted. "Not once, not in ten years."

"Get used to it," Ivy said. "People here argue about everything. Doesn't mean they hate each other. Means everybody's got a voice, whether you like what they're saying or not."

We passed a boy no older than twelve hauling water buckets, and an old woman sorting dried herbs into cloth bags outside a tent with faded symbols stitched along the flap.

"That's Yarrow's place," Ivy said. "She's the closest thing we've got to a healer. You'll probably meet her today, especially after what you did for Bram last night."

My stomach tightened at the mention of his name. "Is he okay?"

"Stable, last I checked. Whatever you did bought him enough time for Yarrow to finish the rest." Ivy glanced sideways at me. "You really don't know what that was? What did you do to him?"

"No idea," I said honestly. "It just happened."

"Huh." She didn't push further, though I could tell she wanted to. "Well, whatever it is, it's got people talking. Some good, some not so good, in case last night wasn't clear enough on that front."

We kept moving through the camp, and Ivy pointed out a dozen more faces, a dozen more stories that all sounded a little too familiar. A girl who refused a forced bonding. A man who'd been blamed for his brother's death in a hunting accident. A pair of siblings whose whole family got wiped out in a territory dispute and who wandered for months before finding this place.

"Everybody's got a story like that," Ivy said. "Nobody here got a fair shake wherever they came from. That's kind of what binds this place together, if you want to call it binding."

"It's more than I ever got in Ironclaw," I said. "People are actually looking out for each other instead of just looking for who to blame."

"Don't get too sentimental about it. We've got our own fights, our own grudges. Last week two guys nearly killed each other over who ate the last of the dried venison." She shrugged. "It's not perfect. It's just better than most of the alternatives."

We turned a corner near the edge of the camp, past a row of supply tents stacked with crates and coiled rope, and Ivy's steps slowed as we approached one set off a little further from the rest, its flap tied shut with extra care.

"And this one?" I asked, curious despite the odd shift in her expression.

Ivy's whole posture changed. Her shoulders went stiff, her hand drifting to rest near the knife at her hip without really meaning to, I think.

"Don't go in there," she said, voice flat now, none of the easy tone from a minute ago left in it.

"Why not? What is it?"

She looked at the tent for a second longer before answering, like she was deciding how much to actually tell me.

"That's where we keep what we pull off the rogues we kill," she said. "Collars, weapons, anything with a mark on it that might tell us who's sending them. Some of what's in there isn't exactly easy to look at."

I thought about the scrap of leather she pulled off the rogue in the forest, the burned symbol on it, the way her jaw had tightened when she found it.

"Is there more like that scrap you found on the first one?" I asked.

Ivy's eyes stayed fixed on the tent flap, like she could see straight through it if she looked hard enough.

"A lot more," she said quietly. "And none of it's pointed at just one enemy. Whoever's sending these things after you isn't working alone.”