CHAPTER 2: SIX AGAINST ONE

Six men stepped out from the trees, surrounding us in a slow, tight circle. My heart was beating so hard I could hear it in my own ears.

"Careful," the stranger said, his voice low and even, not looking at me, keeping his eyes on the men closing in. "Stay behind me and don't move."

"Why would rogue wolves attack anyone out here?" I whispered, my voice shaking.

"They're not rogues." His jaw was tight. "Rogues don't move in formation."

One of the men laughed, stepping closer, his eyes moving to me with a hunger that made my skin crawl. "Didn't know you brought company tonight, Kingston.."

Kingston.

My stomach dropped straight to the ground. I looked at the man standing between the six-armed strangers and me, and understood, too late, exactly who I had been talking to for the past ten minutes.

"You're the Alpha," I breathed. "The Kingston Alpha."

He did not answer me. He did not even glance back. "Touch her, and you will not leave these woods with working hands," he said, so calmly it was almost worse than if he had shouted it.

"Run," he said quietly, only for me. "When I move, you run, and do not look back."

"I'm not leaving you to fight six of them."

"This isn't a discussion," He said coldly.

Before I could argue, the men rushed at him.

I should have run because he told me to. But my legs would not move, and I watched, frozen, as he moved faster than anything I had ever seen. He caught the first man by the throat and slammed him into a tree hard enough that the back cracked. He ducked under a swinging fist and drove his elbow into another man's ribs so hard I heard the crack from where I stood.

It was terrifying and efficient. Because there was no anger in it, only cold precision, like a man doing something he had done a hundred times before.

One of the men slipped past him, coming straight for me, and I stumbled back until my spine hit a tree, a scream caught in my throat.

And immediately, he rushed over before the man's hand reached me.

He ripped the attacker off me and threw him so far I lost sight of him in the dark, then turned back, chest heaving, blood at the corner of his mouth, eyes sharp and searching me for damage.

"Are you hurt?"  he said, his voice clipped, urgent in a way that did not match the flat coldness from before.

"I'm fine," I whispered. 

He exhaled hard, and for one brief second, something almost human passed behind those gray eyes before he shut it down again, straightening, putting distance back between us.

The last two men did not stay to test their luck. One of them, already backing into the trees, spat out something before he vanished. "This isn't over, Kingston. Your father should have thought twice before he crossed us."

Then they ran off, and the woods went quiet except for our breathing.

"What did he mean by that?" I asked. 

Something shifted behind his eyes, guarded again, calculating. "None that concerns you." He responded.

"Six men just tried to kill you. I think it concerns me a little."

He did not answer that. "Go home," he said instead. "And always stay out of these woods at night."

"I don't even know your name."

"You don't need it," he said. "Whatever this was, it's over."

He turned and walked into the dark, and I stood there alone by the water, shaking, wondering why a man who had just saved my life could not even give me his name before disappearing.

I could not sleep that night because I kept seeing his eyes, and underneath that, a cold, creeping dread I could not explain, like I already knew, somehow, that tonight was not the end of anything.

By morning, Alpha Felix had called an emergency meeting, and every senior member of Ashwood Pack assembled altogether into the same hall I had been humiliated in less than twenty-four hours earlier. I stood at the back, arms crossed, trying to disappear into the wall.

"Three nights ago," Felix said, his voice tight, his hands gripping the podium so hard his knuckles were white, "some Kingston patrol were found dead at our eastern border. Six of their warriors were killed and left for anyone to find."

The room went dead silent. My stomach turned over slowly.

"We did not order this," someone shouted. "Why would we start a war we cannot win?"

"It does not matter what we did or did not do," Felix snapped. "Kingston believes Ashwood is responsible, and they have been demanding answers for three days. And now last night's incident made things more worse."

He paused, and something on his face made the whole room go still.

"Last night, someone attacked their Alpha directly. In Central Park." Felix's eyes swept the crowd." Six men. An assassination attempt on the head of the most powerful pack in this city, hours after they buried six of their own."

My blood went cold immediately. The man in the woods. The blood at his mouth. Your father should have thought of that twice before he crossed us.

I had been standing beside the Kingston Alpha when someone tried to kill him, and I did not even know his name.

"Kingston is done being patient with us," Felix said. "They believe both attacks came from inside Ashwood, whether we ordered them or not, and they are not interested in hearing more excuses. They want blood, or they want peace, and the peace comes with a price."

My chest tightened. I already knew, somehow, before he said another word, that whatever he would say next was going to involve me.

"They have asked for a bride," Felix said, his eyes finally lifting, scanning the crowd, and landing, slow and heavy, right on me. "One woman, to marry their Alpha and seal a truce before this becomes a war neither pack survives."

The whole room also turned to look at me immediately.

"Helena," Felix said quietly, and I could hear it already in his voice, the decision already made before he even asked the question. "You have no mate now, and no one else in this pack is free to give."

"You cannot be serious," I whispered, my mind racing back to the man in the woods, to the cold fury in his eyes as he fought off six assassins, wondering with growing horror if the stranger who had saved my life and the stranger I was about to be handed over to were about to become the same terrifying person.

"It is you," Felix said, "or it is war."