Chapter 3 — What are you doing here?

By midmorning, Hallie’s hands smelled like flour, dust, and old wood.

It was exactly what she wanted.

No one at Cedar Draw had asked her to advise Grant. No one cared that Bellamy Creek had trained her to stand beside an Alpha. She had been given a list, a pencil, and a section of communal supplies to count before the next work rotation.

So she counted.

Three sacks had split along the seams. Two crates were marked as full even though one was missing nearly a quarter of its contents. The totals were not wrong enough to suggest theft. They were simply wrong in several directions.

Hallie crouched beside the nearest crate and checked the numbers again.

A woman carrying another sack paused beside her. “You need me to get somebody?”

“No. I just need to know whether these came in together.”

“They did.”

“And the damaged sacks?”

“Yesterday.”

Hallie nodded. “Thank you.”

At Bellamy Creek, she would have been expected to turn the discrepancy into a decision. Here, no one had given her that authority.

A useless count would help no one.

She separated the damaged goods from the intact stock, wrote the actual numbers beside the recorded ones, then added a short note explaining which losses could be traced to torn packaging.

When she straightened, Grant was standing at the open end of the storage shed.

Hallie’s grip tightened around the pencil.

He looked much the same as he had the day before: broad shoulders, dark hair, the first threads of gray at his temples. Stillness made him more intimidating than movement would have.

She remembered another version of him from another life.

Older. Bloodied. Feared.

The man in front of her had not lived any of that yet.

“Problem?” he asked.

“Several.”

His mouth shifted slightly. “That sounds promising.”

“It isn’t.”

Grant stepped inside.

The shed was wide enough for two people to work without touching, but his presence changed the space anyway. Hallie could feel exactly how close he was without looking.

She stayed where she was.

Grant glanced over the stacked crates. “You were told to count.”

“I did.”

“You reorganized.”

“Only what needed separating so the count made sense.”

He picked up the sheet.

“You added causes.”

“Possible causes.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone what to do about them.”

“No one asked me to.”

That made him look at her.

For a moment, neither spoke.

Hallie became aware of the loose strands of hair against her cheek, the dust on her forearm, the fact that she looked nothing like the polished future Luna Bellamy Creek had spent years shaping.

Grant’s gaze moved over her face, then to the pencil still in her hand.

Not dismissive.

Something in his expression had sharpened.

“You always this careful about where your authority ends?” he asked.

“I learned early that people resent being managed by someone they didn’t choose.”

The words came out before she could soften them.

Grant’s attention settled fully on her.

“Useful lesson,” he said.

She looked away first.

That irritated her more than it should have.

He set the sheet back on the crate. “Caleb told me where you came from.”

“I assumed he would.”

“And what you were trained for.”

“Yes.”

“And Austin Bellamy.”

There it was.

The mate bond reacted to the name with a dull pull beneath her ribs. Not enough to stop her breathing. Enough to remind her it had followed her here.

Grant noticed something. She could tell by the way his eyes narrowed, as if he had seen a movement she had failed to hide.

“He rejected you,” Grant said.

“Yes.”

“But the bond is still active.”

Hallie forced herself not to rub at the ache.

“Yes.”

Grant leaned one hand against the edge of the crate.

He was closer now.

A few inches of air stayed between them.

Close enough that Hallie could see the uneven line of his nose and the sun-darkened skin at his throat. Close enough to understand why people found him dangerous even when he did nothing at all.

Her body went alert.

Not with the involuntary pull Austin created.

This was different.

Grant’s gaze dropped to her mouth for the briefest second.

Then returned to her eyes.

Hallie held her ground.

The silence stretched.

“Does that bother you?” she asked.

His brow lifted. “Which part?”

“That I came here with another Alpha’s bond still attached to me.”

“Attached isn’t the same as gone.”

“I know.”

“Other packs will know too.”

The answer landed harder than she expected.

Hallie had left Bellamy Creek because she refused to spend another life waiting for Austin to choose differently. She had known the bond remained. She had felt it with every mile.

But she had thought of it as something private.

A pain she would carry.

Grant was telling her it was also a status other people would read.

“A rejection should mean something,” she said.

“It does.”

“But not enough.”

“Not to everyone.”

Hallie looked toward the open doorway.

Outside, Cedar Draw kept moving. No one here had asked whether Austin wanted her to leave.

Yet beyond Cedar Draw, she could already imagine the questions.

If Austin was still her mate, what exactly was she?

Rejection had left the bond alive.

Grant straightened.

His eyes remained on her for a moment longer than necessary.

Then he tapped the inventory sheet.

“Finish this section. After that, show Caleb what you found.”

Hallie nodded. “All right.”

Grant took two steps toward the door, then stopped.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, “you did more than count.”

Hallie looked at the neat rows of numbers, the damaged sacks separated from the good ones, the notes she had written because she could not bear to do a job badly just because it was small.

When Grant glanced back, his attention caught on her again.

This time she recognized the look.

Interest.

He left before she could decide what to do with that.

Hallie stood alone in the storage shed, pencil between her fingers and Austin’s bond still alive inside her.

She had crossed into another territory.

The world had not crossed her old identity out with it.