Chapter 6:Closer

Isadora's POV:

Nobody moved for a long time after the gate closed behind the three humans.

The courtyard stayed quiet but it was a different quiet now. Loaded and uncomfortable, the silence of three hundred wolves who had expected one thing and gotten something else entirely. I could feel the confusion moving through the pack like a current, heads turning slightly, eyes cutting toward each other. Nobody dared speak. Nobody dared look at the Alpha directly.

Evander stood in the center of the courtyard with his hands clasped behind his back and his face carved from stone and let them stew in it.

Then he turned to Daxton.

"Prepare a room," he said. "Third floor. Close to my study."

The words landed like a stone dropped in still water. Every wolf in that courtyard felt the ripple. I watched Daxton's jaw tighten, watched the careful neutral mask slide over his face half a second too late to hide what was underneath it.

"The east guest room is available," Daxton said carefully. "But it is quite far from"

"I said close to my study." Flat. Final. "Have it ready before nightfall."

Daxton said nothing else.

Evander turned and walked back toward the keep doors. The pack parted for him the way water parts for something large and inevitable. Guards fell into position. Wolves dropped their eyes as he passed.

He stopped when he reached me.

I was standing exactly where he had left me, under the stone archway, and I had nowhere to go and no intention of pretending otherwise. I looked up at him. He looked down at me. Around us the courtyard slowly began to empty, wolves filing away in twos and threes, and still neither of us moved.

"The room is for you," he said.

I had already known that. I kept my expression neutral. "Why close to your study?"

"Because I said so."

"That is not a reason."

Something moved in his jaw. He took one step toward me, slow and deliberate, and I held my ground the way I always held my ground because stepping back had never once been in my nature and I was not about to start now.

"You ask too many questions," he said quietly.

"You give too few answers," I said back.

The courtyard was nearly empty now. Just us and two guards at the far wall who were very professionally looking at everything except us. The wind moved through the archway between us carrying the cold mountain air and the smell of pine.

Evander looked at me for a long moment. His dark eyes moved over my face with that same unhurried certainty that made my pulse do things I refused to acknowledge.

Then he said, "You will be more useful close by."

"Useful," I repeated. "That is what I am to you. Useful."

"You are a human in a wolf pack," he said evenly. "What else would you like to be?"

The question hung in the cold air between us. Honest and sharp and completely unanswerable because every answer I had would have told him too much.

I said nothing.

He nodded once, as if my silence confirmed something. Then he turned to go.

He had taken exactly two steps when I said, "I did not agree to this."

He stopped.

The courtyard went absolutely still.

He turned back slowly. The two guards at the far wall had found something fascinating to study on the ground directly in front of their boots. Evander walked back toward me with the same unhurried deliberate steps as always and stopped close enough that I had to keep my chin raised to hold his gaze.

"What did you say?" he asked quietly.

"I said I did not agree." My voice was completely steady. "You decided where I would sleep and what room I would be put in without asking me anything. I am telling you I did not agree to it."

The silence that followed lasted exactly three seconds.

Then his hand came up.

He took the collar of my shirt between two fingers, not rough, not violent, but absolutely immovable, and held it in that loose certain grip the way you hold something you have no intention of releasing until you are ready. He leaned down until his face was close to mine and his dark eyes were all I could see and his voice dropped to something so quiet only I could possibly hear it.

"Let me explain something to you," he said. "You are in my keep. You breathe air that belongs to my territory. Every meal you have eaten since you arrived has come from my pack. Every guard that has stood outside your door has done so because I ordered it." His eyes held mine without wavering. "You do not agree or disagree with my decisions. You do not negotiate with me. You do not tell me what you will or will not accept." A pause. "You obey. That is all."

My heart was slamming. My hands were perfectly still.

"And if I do not?" I asked.

He looked at me for a long moment. Something in his eyes that I could not name and could not look away from.

"You will," he said simply. Like it was already decided. Like the outcome had never been in question.

He released my collar. Straightened. Stepped back.

"The room will be ready by tonight," he said, back to that flat certain tone. "You will be moved before dinner. Maren will show you where everything is."

He turned and walked into the keep and the doors closed behind him and I stood alone in the empty courtyard with my pulse loud in my ears and my collar still warm from where his fingers had been.

I pressed my hand flat against my sternum.

Breathed.

Then I looked up at the third floor windows of Blackthorn Keep, cold and dark against the grey sky, and I thought very clearly and very calmly about every single thing I had just observed. The layout of the courtyard. The position of the guards. The time it had taken to walk from the lower cells to the courtyard. The distance between the archway and the outer gate.

He thought I would obey.

He thought this was already decided.

I almost smiled.

We will see about that, Alpha