CHAPTER - Six

Nora's POV

The main hall was already packed by the time I got there.

Every pack member who could walk had crowded near the big windows, whispering, craning their necks to see the gate. I stayed near the back, half hidden behind a stone pillar, my heart still slamming against my ribs like it was trying to break free and run to him on its own.

Damien stood at the front with Elder Morrison and two of his senior warriors. Rachel was right beside him, of course, her hand resting on his arm like she'd been glued there. Her eyes were sharp today. No trembling lip. No wounded look. Just quiet, careful calculation.

"Open the gate," Damien said. "Let's see what Blackridge wants."

The big iron gates groaned open, and there he was.

I had heard his voice for two years. I had imagined his face a hundred different ways lying awake at night. Nothing I imagined came close.

Kade Parker was tall, taller than Damien, with the kind of quiet stillness that made a whole yard go silent without him saying a word. Dark hair. A jaw that looked carved rather than grown. He wore a plain black jacket, no pack colors, no guards standing behind him — just him, walking through the gate alone like he had nothing in the world to fear.

And in some ways, he didn't. Everyone knew what Blackridge could do if provoked.

He stopped in the middle of the courtyard and looked around slowly, unhurried, like a man checking a room before he decides whether it's worth his time.

"Alpha Parker." Damien stepped forward, his voice even but his shoulders too stiff to be relaxed. "This is unexpected. Silvercrest wasn't informed of a visit."

"I don't send notice when I don't need permission." Kade's voice was calm, almost bored. "I'm not here for you, Damien."

A murmur ran through the crowd. I felt my stomach drop straight to my shoes.

"Then why are you here?" Damien asked.

Kade's eyes moved across the courtyard, slow and searching, the way a wolf checks a room before committing to a step. "I'm looking for someone."

"Who?"

"That's between me and her."

Rachel's fingers tightened on Damien's arm. I saw it from across the yard, small and fast, like a flinch she couldn't quite hide.

I should have stepped back further behind the pillar. I should have turned and walked away while everyone's attention was still on the gate. Instead my feet stayed rooted to the spot, and my traitor heart kept beating his name like a drum.

Kade's gaze swept the crowd once more. And then it stopped.

On me.

I don't know how he knew. I hadn't said a word. I hadn't moved. But his eyes found mine across that entire courtyard full of people, and something in his face changed — just barely, just enough for me to catch it. A flicker. Recognition, maybe. Or something closer to relief.

He didn't smile. He didn't call out my name. He just held my gaze for three long seconds that felt like three years, and I swear the whole world went quiet around us.

Then he looked away, back to Damien, as smooth as if nothing had happened at all.

"I'll need somewhere private to speak with pack leadership," Kade said. "There are matters between Blackridge and Silvercrest that need addressing."

Damien's jaw was tight. I could see him trying to work out what this meant, what angle Kade was playing, why the Alpha of one of the strongest packs on the coast had walked up to his gate alone with no warning at all. "Of course. This way."

They started toward the main hall. Rachel cast one last look over her shoulder — not at Damien, not at Kade, but straight at me. Her eyes were narrow now, calculating in a way that made my skin crawl. She had noticed something. Maybe not everything. But something.

I turned and slipped out of the courtyard before anyone else could look my way, my legs shaking with every step, my mind racing faster than I could keep up with.

He was here. Two years of midnight phone calls, two years of a friendship neither of us ever gave a real name to, and now Kade Parker was standing inside Silvercrest territory, close enough to touch, close enough to ruin everything I had been so carefully hiding.

I made it back to the guest house and shut the door before my knees gave out. I pressed my back against the wood and slid down until I was sitting on the floor, my hands pressed flat over my mouth to keep from making a sound.

He knew. Somehow, some way, he knew it was me.

My second phone buzzed in my pocket.

I pulled it out with shaking hands. One new message from Kade.

*Hello, V. Or should I say — Nora.*

I stared at those words until they blurred. My whole body went cold and hot at the same time, like I'd been dropped in ice water and set on fire in the same breath.

Another message came through before I could even think of how to respond.

*Don't worry. Your secret's safe with me. For now.*

*But you and I are going to talk. Tonight.*

I sat there on the floor of that small, borrowed room with my mother's cracked photo still tucked in my bag, my hand pressed against my stomach, and I realized that whatever plan I thought I had, whatever careful, quiet exit I had been counting down toward — it had just changed completely.

Twenty-three days had suddenly become a lot more complicated.