Chapter 6

Briony's POV

"What the hell did you just do?"

Kieran's voice filled the room before I had a single word ready for it. He crossed the floor fast, eyes going from my glowing palm to Faro's chest rising steadily and even, like he couldn't decide which one scared him more.

"I don't know." It was the truth, and it came out shakier than I wanted. "One second Bettina said he wasn't going to make it, and the next…"

"The next you did that." He grabbed my wrist, not rough, but not gentle either, turning my palm up toward the torchlight like he needed to see the mark again to believe it was real. The gold in it had faded to almost nothing now, just a faint shimmer under the skin. "This isn't a healer's trick. I've watched healers work my whole life. This is something else."

"It's the Thistlewood mark." Bettina's voice cut in, but it landed hard enough that the room went still. She was still gripping the edge of the table like it was the only thing holding her up. "Anchor-born. I thought that line died out generations back."

"Anchor-born." Kieran repeated it slowly, testing the weight of it. "That's not a healing gift, Bettina. That's a war gift."

"It's both. It was always both." She wouldn't look at me when she said it, which scared me more than anything else in the room. "The stories say an Anchor-born can pull a wolf back from the edge of anything. A wound. A frenzy. Death itself, if the timing's right and the cost doesn't kill her first."

"Cost." I heard myself say it before I decided to. "What cost?"

Bettina's mouth pressed into a thin line. "Not tonight. You need rest, not a history lesson."

"Bettina…"

"Not tonight." She said it with a finality that told me pushing wouldn't get me anywhere, not with Faro still on the table.

Sage hadn't said a word this whole time. She was staring at my hand like she was trying to reconcile it with the girl she'd grown up next to, the one who used to trip over her own boots on patrol drills. "Briony. Did you know? Any of this?"

"No." I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly cold in a room that had felt too warm two minutes ago. "I didn't know any of it. I still don't."

Kieran hadn't let go of my wrist. His thumb moved once over the fading mark, absent, like he wasn't fully aware he was doing it. "Who else knows about this bloodline? Outside this room."

"Nobody, as far as I know." Bettina glanced toward the door, and something in her face shifted, careful in a way it hadn't been a second ago. "The elders who remember are long dead. Except Halric. He's old enough to have heard the stories."

Kieran's jaw tightened at that name. "Halric knew the treaty demanded a Thistlewood daughter. Not which one." He said it like he was working something out in real time, turning a piece over and not liking the shape of it. "He never once asked why it had to be a Thistlewood at all."

Nobody answered that, because nobody had an answer, and the silence sat there.

"This doesn't leave this room." Kieran's voice dropped, hard and final, the Alpha voice, not the one he used on me in empty hallways. "Nobody outside the four of us knows what happened here tonight. Not what she did, not what she is. If Blackfen finds out there's an Anchor-born inside Ashvale's walls, they won't stop until they have her, and I don't have the men to hold that line if they come looking for her specifically."

"You make it sound like a weapon," I said. "Not a person."

"Right now it's both, whether either of us likes it or not." His eyes came back to mine, and for a second the fury from the courtyard was gone, replaced by something closer to calculation,an Alpha counting his losses before they happened. "You don't tell anyone. Not Rowan, not the guards, no one. Understood?"

"I understand." I didn't like it, but I understood it.

Faro stirred on the table then, eyes cracking open, confused and groggy, alive in a way he had no business being twenty minutes ago. Sage moved to him fast, murmuring something low to keep him calm, and for a second the whole room's attention shifted off me and onto the boy who nearly died.

That's when I saw the door.

It was open a crack wider than it should've been, the hallway beyond it empty and quiet, and standing just inside the threshold a moment ago,I was almost sure of it, had been Petra, one hand still on the frame like she'd been listening the whole time. By the time I blinked, she was gone, footsteps fading fast down the corridor like she never was there at all.

"Kieran." My voice came out tight. "I think someone was at that door."

He turned so fast the torches flickered. "Who?"

I opened my mouth to answer, and realized I couldn't be sure enough to put a name on it,not with what Petra had already said to me once today in front of the whole pack.

But I was sure of one thing. What we just decided to keep locked inside these four walls, it might already be too late.