CHAPTER 3: THE PRICE OF PEACE

"No." The word came out of me before I understood I was saying it. "You cannot decide this for me."

"I am not deciding. I am asking," Felix said, stepping down from the podium, lowering his voice like that would make it less cruel.

"You are not asking. You are standing in front of over two hundred people and telling them that I am the price for peace, then waiting for me to agree in front of all of them."

Whispers filled the hall, sharp and afraid this time, not mocking like they had been the night before. "If you say no," Felix said quietly, "Kingston attacks within the week. And we do not have the numbers to survive that, Helena. You know this."

"So my life is worth less than everyone else's."

"That is not what I meant."

"It is exactly what you said." My voice cracked. Then Kayla pushed through the crowd and grabbed my hand, squeezing hard. "Helena, you don't have to—"

"She does," someone shouted from the back. "Would you rather we all die because one girl won't agree to marry a rich Alpha?"

I looked at Felix. He was no longer looking at me like a daughter anymore. He was looking at me like a solution he had already written down on paper.

"I need air," I said, and walked out before he could stop me.

Kayla found me an hour later, sitting on the fire escape outside my window, staring out at the Bronx rooftops, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders that did nothing against the cold, actually settling into my chest.

"You could run," she said, climbing out to sit beside me. "Right now. Tonight. I would come with you."

"And let this whole pack burn because I was too scared?" I shook my head. "I can't do that. Even after everything, I can't do that."

"Even though nobody here has ever once chosen you first?"

The question sat heavily between us, because she was right, and I still could not make myself say yes to leaving. "If I run, everyone here pays for it. I won't have that on me. Not after last night."

"What happened last night?" Kayla asked. "You came back different, and you won't even talk about it."

I thought about telling her. About the stranger by the water, the six men, the way his hand had felt steadying my shoulder for one brief second before he remembered himself and stepped back. I thought about the words the last attacker had said before disappearing into the trees. Your father should have thought twice.

"Nothing," I said instead. "Just a bad night."

Kayla did not push, though I could tell she did not believe me. We sat there for a long time in silence, and somewhere in that silence, I made my decision, quietly, without thinking about any of the ceremony Felix had given in front of the whole pack.

By morning, I stood in his office, with my hands folded, and my voice steadier than I felt.

"I'll do it," I said. "I'll marry him."

Relief and shame moved across Felix's face at the same time, there and gone so fast that I almost missed the shame part. "Helena, thank you." He responded.

"Don't thank me." I looked at him hard, searching for something in his face that I could not name. "Just tell me one thing. Why us? Out of every pack in this city, why does Kingston want peace sealed with Ashwood blood specifically? We're the smallest pack in Manhattan's shadow. And we have nothing they need."

Something moved across Felix's face, gone almost as fast as it appeared, but I caught it, the same look he got whenever I asked questions he did not want to answer.

"Politics," he said, too quickly. "Old grievances. But it does not matter."

"And it matters to me. Because I am the one being handed over."

"Helena." His voice sharpened, just slightly, just enough to end the conversation. "The wedding will happen within days. And I think you should spend your remaining time here saying whatever goodbyes you need to say, not asking questions that will not change anything."

I wanted to push harder, but the finality in his voice told me I would get nothing more today. I turned to leave, my hand already on the door, when his voice stopped me one more time, quieter now, almost gentle.

"For what it's worth," he said, "I am sorry it has to be you."

"That doesn't help," I said, and walked out before he could see that it actually did, a little, even if I hated myself for letting it.

Three days later, a car arrived to take me across the bridge into Manhattan, sleek and black, nothing like anything Ashwood owned. I sat in the back with Kayla's hand gripping mine, watching the Bronx disappear behind tinted windows, watching cracked sidewalks give way slowly to glass towers that seemed to swallow the sky whole.

"I still don't know his name," I said quietly, mostly to myself. "I'm about to marry a man, and I don't even know what to call him."

"Maybe that's better," Kayla said, though her voice shook. "Maybe not knowing makes it easier."

It did not feel easier. It felt like walking blindly into a house already on fire, and somewhere underneath the fear, a small, treacherous part of me was still thinking about gray eyes and a hand that had steadied my shoulder in the dark.

The car slowed as it approached a private gate, and beyond it, rising into the clouds, stood a tower of black glass and steel taller than anything I had ever stood beneath in my life. A man in a dark suit stepped forward to open my door, his face carefully blank.

"Miss Voss," he said. "Alpha Kingston is expecting you. The ceremony has been moved up. It begins within the next hour."

Immediately, I heard what he said I became dumbfounded.

"Within the next hour," I repeated. "I thought I had days left."

"Plans changed," the man said simply, offering his hand to help me out, giving nothing else away. "Something happened at the estate this morning. So the Alpha wants this finished before sundown."

Behind me, Kayla's fingers tightened around mine one last time before I had to let go, and as I stepped out into the shadow of that enormous tower, my legs shaking beneath a dress I had not even had time to see yet, I could not shake the feeling that whatever had happened at that estate this morning was about to change everything I thought I understood about the man I was walking toward.