Chapter 13

Briony's POV

By morning I had four guards instead of one, stationed at my door, my window, and both ends of the hallway, and I hated every single one of them on principle even though none of it was their fault.

"This is ridiculous," I said, watching a fifth wolf get added to the rotation outside the healing house. "I can't walk to the well without an escort now."

"You can't walk anywhere without an escort now." Kieran didn't look up from the notes he was reading, spread out across the war room table like they might rearrange themselves into an answer if he stared long enough. "Not after last night."

"I threw a fully grown man through a window with my bare hands. I think I can handle a walk to the well."

"You barely stayed on your feet doing it." He finally looked up. "You told me yourself. It didn't feel like healing. You don't know what it costs you yet, and neither do I, and I'm not betting your life on a power neither of us understands against wolves who came here specifically to take you."

I opened my mouth to argue and didn't have anything ready that beat that.

"I hate this," I said instead.

"I know." Something in his voice softened, just slightly. "I hate it too. I'd rather you hate me for keeping you safe than not have you here to hate me at all."

That landed harder than I expected it to. I sat down across from him, some of the fight draining out of me. "Do you think it was really Blackfen? Not just some rogue looking for an easy coin?"

"The token wasn't cheap trade goods. That's a real Blackfen craft, worn by their own soldiers." He turned it over between his fingers, the small iron piece catching lamplight. "And Blackfen doesn't send soldiers deep into another pack's territory for nothing. Somebody wanted you specifically, and they wanted you badly enough to risk exactly what happened,getting caught, losing a man, walking away with nothing."

"So it's not over."

"No." He said it plain, not softening it for my sake. "It's not over. If anything, last night tells me they're not waiting for whatever Petra's been feeding them. They're moving on their own timeline now."

I sat with that a minute, turning it over. "You think Petra and this are connected? Or two separate things happening at once?"

"I think it'd be a hell of a coincidence if they weren't." Kieran rubbed a hand over his jaw, tired in a way that went past one bad night. "But I can't prove it. Not yet. Which means for now I treat every threat like it's real, whether it's her or somebody I haven't even looked at yet."

"That's exhausting."

"Welcome to being an Alpha." A ghost of a smile crossed his face, gone almost as fast as it came. "You get used to assuming the worst. Keeps you alive longer."

"Sounds like a miserable way to live."

"It is." He met my eyes. "Which is why last night scared me more than I want to admit. Not because of what it means for the pack. Because of what almost happened to you."

I didn't have a smart answer for that. For once neither of us reached for one,we just sat there, the quiet stretching out comfortable instead of tense, the first time all week that felt true.

"For what it's worth," I said eventually, "thank you. For coming through that window so fast. For all the guards, even the ones I complain about."

"You don't have to thank me for that."

"I want to."

Something shifted in his expression, warmer than I'd seen from him outside the garden the night before, and for a second I thought he might reach across the table the way he had then, brush something back that didn't need brushing, just to have a reason to touch me.

A sharp knock cut through the moment instead.

"Alpha." Halric's voice, low through the door, tight in a way that immediately put both of us on edge. "A word. Alone."

Kieran's brow furrowed. "Come in, Halric. Whatever it is, she should hear it too, given everything…."

"Alone," Halric said again, firmer this time. Through the gap in the door I could see his face, and it wasn't the calm, steady expression I'd grown used to. It was pale. Strained. A man carrying something he didn't know how to put down gently.

Kieran glanced at me, then back at the door, something uneasy settling into his shoulders. "This about last night?"

"It's about the treaty." Halric's eyes flicked toward me for half a second, then away, like even looking at me cost him something. "Something I should've told you a long time ago. I would rather say it without an audience, if it's all the same to you."

The room went quiet in a way that had nothing to do with comfort this time.

Kieran stood slowly, jaw tight, torn between what his instinct told him to keep me in the room and what was written all over Halric's face that told him this couldn't wait.

"I'll be right back," he said to me.

I watched him follow Halric out into the hall, the door easing shut behind them, and sat there alone with my heart doing something uneasy in my chest that had nothing to do with the mark on my palm this time.