Chapter Five: The Border and the Alpha

I ran. I can’t shift, my wolf is exhausted and my body is carrying something I will not risk so I run on human legs through the dark and the crashing behind me gets closer and I thought with the part of my brain that is still functional: so, this is how it ends. Cast out of my pack and eaten by rogues before the sun comes up. Classic.

I trip on a root. I go down hard, hands out, and the ground comes up fast and I think: the baby. I twist at the last second, take it on my hip and shoulder, and land badly but not catastrophically. I scramble to get up.

The rogues break from the trees. Three of them, shifted, red-eyed, the kind of wolves that have been outside pack law long enough to forget they were ever inside it. They move with the particular looseness of things that have stopped caring about consequences. I back up against a tree. My hip is screaming. My hands are bleeding. I have no wolf, no pack, no weapon, and nowhere left to run.

Something then happens.

I don’t understand it. The moonlight which is very bright here, brighter than it has any right to be this close to dawn seems to move. Not clouds. The light itself seems to gather around me, and for a second, I’m not afraid. I’m incandescent. I’m silver, warm, certain and the rogues hesitate.

And then something large and fast hits the nearest rogue from the side and it is not light, it is a wolf, grey, brown, furious and the fight is over in forty seconds.

I sat on the ground. My hip hurts. My hands are bleeding where I caught the fall. The light has faded back to ordinary moonlight and I don’t know what happened or if anything happened at all.

The large wolf shifts. Between one breath and the next he is a man: tall, dark-haired, a cut across his jaw that is already healing, looking at me with an expression I cannot immediately classify because I’m not used to being looked at this way. Like I’m something that matters. Like he is relieved I’m still on the ground and not on the ground for worse reasons.

‘Are you hurt?’ His voice is calm. Not a king’s calm not the cold control of a man reminding you who has the power. Just a man asking a question because he wants to know the answer.

My hip, I say. I’m fine.’ You’re bleeding.’ I know. I said I’m fine.

Something moves across his face. Not offence. Almost like he wants to smile.

He crouches to my level instead of standing over me, which is such a small thing that I notice, it the way you notice small things when you are not used to them. ‘You’re past the Ashcroft border. You’re on Ashdale land.’

I know. ‘Ashcroft and Ashdale aren’t exactly friendly.’ I know that too.

So, what are you doing on my border at, He looks at the sky four in the morning, bleeding, running from rogues?’

I look at him. I decide, with the particular clarity that comes from having nothing left to lose, to simply tell the truth. My pack cast me out. The rogues were already following me when I crossed the border. I apologize for the trespass.

He looks at me for a moment. ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Lyra Voss.’

‘Rowan Ashdale.’

I know that name. Every wolf in two packs knows that name. I look at him, really looked and I see it now: the ease with which he moves, the way the wolves who arrived with him arranged themselves around him without being asked, the quality of his stillness. He is an Alpha. But not the kind of Alpha I have spent my life trying to be invisible to.

Something in his bearing is different less like a man reminding the room who holds the power and more like a man who simply doesn’t need to.

I am on my hands and knees on an Alpha’s border at four in the morning with no pack, no status, a baby that is not yet three months old, and I have just trespassed on his land.

I’ll go,’ I say. I’m sorry to have... ‘You’re not going anywhere tonight.’

I stop. ‘I beg your pardon?’ ‘You’re injured. It’s four in the morning. There are still rogues in those trees.’ He straightens and offers his hand. ‘Come inside. We’ll sort out the rest in the morning.’

I look at his hand. I look at his face. I have been given a great deal of help in my life that was not help. I have become very good at reading the cost behind an offer, the weight that sits underneath the gesture, the thing that will be named later and collected with interest.

I do not read a cost here. I read a man who has decided that someone is hurt on his border and that is sufficient reason.

I take his hand. He pulls me up carefully, making sure not to pull against my hip. He keeps his hand under my elbow until I am steady.

Thank you, I said.

‘Don’t thank me yet. My pack cook is going to have opinions about the hour.’

This time I do almost smile.

We are halfway to the Ashdale pack house when a messenger wolf breaks from the trees at a run, skidding to a halt in front of Rowan with a folded note and wide eyes. Rowan reads it. His expression does not change, but something in his jaw does.

He folds the note. He looks at me.

‘This is from the Vael Kingdom,’ he says carefully. ‘The Lycan King is requesting that all neighboring pack Alphas report any Ashcroft wolves found on their territory.’ He pauses. ‘Specifically, an unmated female.’

The cold comes back. I see. Specifically, Rowan continues, still in that careful voice, ‘with grey eyes.’

We look at each other. My eyes are silver, I said. ‘Not grey.’

The pause is exactly one second. Then: ‘That’s true. Silver eyes. Completely different. Come on, then.

I follow him through the dark toward the lights of the Ashdale pack house, and behind us, the Lycan King’s message sits folded in Rowan’s pocket, and I do not ask why Jasper Vael is looking for me.

I don’t need to know yet. I need to sit down. Eat something. Figure out what comes next. I am very good at that.

Behind me, the forest is quiet now. The rogues are gone. The Ashcroft border is behind me and I will not cross it again. Ahead, the lights of the Ashdale pack house glow warm and steady through the trees, and beside me walks a man who crouched to my level and offered his hand and did not name a price.

I hold all of that carefully. I don’t know yet what any of it means. I just know that I am still here, still moving, still breathing.

For now, that is everything.