Chapter 2: A Convenient Solution

<Cassandra>

Dying felt quieter than I expected.

There was no fire, or drowning, or even the so-called tunnel of light pulling me toward something on the other side. 

It was just cold. 

The forest floor pressed into my cheek, the bark of the tree dug into my spine, and somewhere above me, the moon hung brilliantly in the sky, watching me the exact same way the Bloodwyn pack had always watched me…

Without doing a single thing to help.

'So this is it then,' I thought, or maybe I didn't think it at all and only dreamed that I did. My mind had gone soft at the edges. 'Twenty-one years of surviving, and this is where it ends. On a patch of frozen dirt a good distance away, from a pack that doesn't want you, having drunk poison from the hands of a man who pitied you.'

I almost laughed, but I couldn’t bring myself to even flutter my eyelids. Suddenly, a twig snapped somewhere to my left.

As much as I tried, I couldn't move my head toward the sound. Couldn't move much of anything, if I was being honest. My fingers were curled in the dirt, my cheek was still pressed against the cold ground, and the wound in my chest where the bond had shattered was no longer burning.

 It had gone past burning now, and simply just existed, like a hole where something used to live.

Then another snap, much closer this time, followed by the sound of footsteps moving through the treeline.

'A wolf.'

I could practically feel its presence before it appeared before me.

The footsteps stopped, and there was a long silence that almost made me feel like I had hallucinated the sound of its footsteps.

My ears picked up a sharp exhale of breath, and someone crouched down in front of me.

I forced my eyes open; the effort was extraordinary to say the least. The face that came into focus was sharp-featured and completely unreadable, with dark hair and even darker eyes that were running over me with a kind of frustrated expression.

"You're not dead." He sounded almost irritated about it.

'Congratulations,' I wanted to say. 'Neither are you.'

But nothing came out.

He reached out and pressed two fingers to the side of my throat, checking my pulse, then pulled them back and stayed crouched with his forearms resting on his knees, staring at me like I was an anomaly.

"You’re a rejected?" He asked, more as an observation than a question.

I blinked in response, not wanting to speak.

He looked at the satchel near my hand. Then at the shattered leather cord of the empty vial still clutched between my fingers. 

He reached out and plucked the vial from my hand, holding it up to the moonlight. "How long ago did you drink it?" 

"Does it matter?" I managed to say, and I can personally say that it took everything in me to utter those simple three words.

The man seemed to have smiled, or maybe I must have imagined it. "Fair enough."

He straightened up, and I braced myself for the sound of footsteps walking away. In my experience, it's what people always did whenever they realized I was of no benefit to them whatsoever.

Instead, I felt his arms slide beneath me.

‘What—’

"Relax." He muttered softly, lifting me off the ground like I weighed nothing, which, given the state I was in, was probably close to accurate. "You're not dying tonight. The healing potion you took may have stopped your severed bond from killing you, but you still need medical attention if you want to survive."

I went completely still in his arms. 'Healing potion?'

The word sat in my chest and slowly dismantled everything I had decided the moment I uncorked that vial. It wasn’t wolfsbane, but a healing potion. 

The wolf-shaman had pressed a healing potion into my satchel in the seconds before the guards dragged me across the border, and I had stood in the dark and drunk it, believing I was choosing to disappear from this world forever.

“What’s your name, rogue?”

I blinked in surprise when I realized he was talking to me, “C-Cassandra.” I replied softly.

"Where are you taking me?" My voice came out smaller than I intended.

"Somewhere warm." He started walking, and I didn't have the strength to argue. "Don't bother fighting me. I'm not the enemy tonight."

'Tonight,' I noticed. 'Good to know exactly where I stand.'

*

<Dominic>

The fire in my study had burned down to embers by the time Jasper walked in, and I hadn't moved to add more wood to it. I'd been sitting in the leather chair behind my desk for the better part of two hours, staring at the documents in front of me without reading a single word on them.

The Elder Council's letter sat at the top of the pile.

I didn't need to read it again; I had the relevant part memorized already. 

“The Acting Alpha cannot ascend to full title without a marked mate. The Council will not ratify authority without this condition being met. You have thirty days.”

“Thirty days.” I sighed, leaning back in the chair and pressing two fingers to my temple while staring at the ceiling.

The irony wasn't lost on me. I had rebuilt this pack from the ground up. I had clawed back every scrap of territory Viktor Varkas had taken from us when I was ten years old, watching my father's blood soak into the ground of what had been our home. I had spent fifteen years turning my grief into strategy, and that strategy into power, and now — now — the thing standing between me and everything I had built my entire life toward was a mark I couldn't make.

The worst part was that it wasn’t because I didn't want to, but because Alice's body wouldn't accept it.

"Well, you look pleasant," Jasper said, dropping into the chair across from me without being invited.

"Get out."

"In a moment." He set something on the edge of my desk, and I dropped my gaze from the ceiling to see what it was.

A small leather satchel, worn and dirty, with a broken vial cord hanging from the inside pocket.

I stared at the satchel for a moment, then I looked up at my beta with a hint of confusion in my eyes. “What’s this?”

"I found it with a girl," he said simply. "A rejected exile, from the smell of her." He paused for dramatic effect like he always did. "She drank what I’m sure she thought was wolfsbane and lay down in the forest to die."

"Congratulations, Jasper. So you found a dead wolf out in the forest. Now what does that have to do with my current situation?" I asked, willing to entertain his nonsense.

"The girl is alive, Alpha. Her shaman must have given her a healing potion instead." His eyes stayed on mine, which meant he was about to say something I wasn't going to like. "She's in the east wing. My men are with her."

"Why is she in my house, Jasper?"

He leaned forward and laced his fingers together. "Because she's a wolf without a pack, without a mate, and without a single reason to refuse whatever we offer her." He let that sit for a moment. "And because we have just thirty days."

The silence in the room tightened to the point you could hear the crickets outside.

I understood what he was saying before he even finished saying it, and every part of my brain was already running the logic before the rest of me could object. 

A rogue wolf with no allegiances and no bloodline to complicate things. No pack to come looking for her.

A Luna with nothing to go back to.

"But Alice—" I started, only to be cut short by Jasper.

"Alice can't be marked." He said it plainly, without apology. "You've tried what, six times already?” He scoffed.

“Her body rejects it every time, which means she has a fated mate somewhere that isn't you. The Council isn't going to wait. Viktor Varkas isn't going to wait." Jasper held my gaze. "But a forced mark is still a mark. And the girl in the east wing has no one in this world to tell her she has options."

The fire crackled in the fireplace, and a gust of wind blew through the study.

I stood up from the desk slowly and moved to the window, looking out at the Blackthorne grounds, at the torches that lined the perimeter, at the territory my father died for and my mother rebuilt, and I had spent every waking moment of my adult life refusing to lose again.

‘Thirty days.’ I mulled those two words over in my head for the umpteenth time.

"Is she conscious?" I asked.

"Barely. But she will be."

"And she knows where she is?"

"Not yet."

I stared at the torchlight for a long moment.

'Forgive me,' I thought, though I wasn't sure who I was asking.

"Bring her to me in the morning." I turned back to my desk and sat down. "Before she knows enough to start asking the wrong questions."

Jasper stood, smoothing his jacket. "And what about Alice?"

"Alice doesn't need to know about this tonight."

“Your wish is my command, Alpha.” He bowed briefly, picked up the satchel from my desk, and moved toward the door. His hand was on the frame when he stopped.

"For what it's worth," he said, without turning around. "I don't think she's what you're expecting."

"I'm not expecting anything, Jasper. She's nothing but a solution to a very urgent and pesky problem."

"Right,” Jasper chuckled. “Oh, and her name is Cassandra. Do well to learn it before the ceremony." He said after a moment and left, the door clicking shut behind him.

I sat alone in the study with the embers going cold in the fireplace, and the Elder Council's letter still sitting on top of the pile, but somehow there was only one thing on my mind…