Chapter 4: The Morning After

By breakfast, the whole pack knew.

Elena hadn't expected otherwise — Ashcombe was small enough that news traveled faster than most people could outrun it, and a public rejection was exactly the kind of story that grew new details every time it changed hands. By the time she made herself walk to the kitchen, dry-eyed and hollowed out from a night without sleep, her mother already had the particular tight, overly cheerful expression of someone who'd fielded three separate visits before eight in the morning, each one dressed up as sympathy and none of them actually about sympathy at all.

"Mrs. Halloway stopped by," her mother said, not looking up from the pan. "And Renata Voss. Your father's cousin. Twice removed, I think, though she certainly acted closer than that."

"Let me guess. They wanted to know if I'm all right."

"They wanted to know if you'd said anything last night. About the man in the woods." Her mother set the pan down harder than necessary. "Word travels, Elena."

"Of course it does." She sat, mostly because standing felt like too much effort, and stared at the food in front of her without much interest in eating it. "What did you tell them?"

"That my daughter had a difficult night and doesn't owe the pack gossip mill an explanation." Her mother's voice had an edge Elena hadn't heard directed at anyone else before — not at her, exactly, but at the situation itself, at the unfairness of having to defend a daughter who'd done nothing wrong except exist inconveniently. "Who was he, sweetheart?"

"I don't know. He didn't exactly hand over paperwork."

"Elena."

"I'm not being difficult, I told Dess the same thing last night. He said his name was Kael. He knew things about — " She stopped, unsure how much of it she wanted to say out loud, unsure how much of it she even believed in daylight. The flame reaching for her hand felt like something she'd dreamed, except she knew she hadn't. "He knew things about our family. About the bloodline. He said it wasn't really omega-line. That it had been buried."

Her mother went very still, in a way that had nothing to do with surprise and everything to do with recognition, and something cold settled in Elena's stomach that had nothing to do with the rejection at all.

"You know something," Elena said.

"I don't know anything." Too fast. Too careful. "I know rumors. Old stories nobody's put much stock in for generations."

"Tell me the rumors, then."

Her mother was quiet long enough that Elena thought she might refuse outright, might retreat into the same brand of gentle deflection she'd used the whole of Elena's childhood whenever questions got too close to something she didn't want to answer. But something in her face had shifted overnight too — maybe watching her daughter get discarded in front of the whole pack had used up whatever patience she'd had left for careful half-truths.

"There was a woman," her mother said finally, sitting down across from her, hands wrapped around a mug she wasn't drinking from. "Generations back. Great-great-grandmother, or close to it — the family tree gets murky that far up, on purpose, I always assumed. She wasn't from Ashcombe originally. Married in. And the story goes that she wasn't quite what she seemed."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know exactly. That's the trouble with old stories — they lose their edges the longer they're passed around. But I remember my grandmother saying the pack Elders back then were glad when whatever she was seemed to fade out of the bloodline. Relieved, even. Like it had been a close call, letting something like that marry in." Her mother's mouth twisted, something between old resentment and old fear. "After that, every generation got quieter. More ordinary. Omega markers, mostly, same as you. I always thought that was just how bloodlines went sometimes. Now I wonder if someone made sure of it."

Elena's fingers had gone cold around her own untouched mug. "Made sure of it how?"

"I don't know, Elena. I'm not an Elder. I'm not a historian. I'm your mother, and I'm telling you a story I half believe because you're sitting across from me looking like something out of it." She reached over, gripped Elena's hand hard enough to hurt, hard enough to be real. "Whatever that man knows, whatever he thinks you are — be careful. People who go looking for buried things rarely do it out of kindness."

The rest of the day passed in a fog of exactly the kind of scrutiny Elena had dreaded. She couldn't walk to the training grounds without catching whispers that cut off the moment she got close. Priya found an excuse to pass by three separate times, each time with a look that managed to be pitying and satisfied at once, which took a particular kind of talent. Marcus, at least, had the decency to stay out of sight entirely — whether out of guilt or simple indifference, she couldn't tell and didn't especially want to know.

It was late afternoon, cutting through the training yard on her way home, when she found Dess waiting for her by the fence, arms crossed, expression carefully neutral in the way that meant she'd rehearsed whatever she was about to say.

"The Elders want to see you," Dess said. "Tonight. Formal request, not a suggestion."

"About what."

"About the man in the woods. And," Dess hesitated, glancing around like the fence posts might be listening, "about what happened at the wall. The torches. Half the Elders saw it, Elena. They're not calling it coincidence anymore."

Something in Elena's chest went tight — not fear, exactly, though there was plenty of that mixed in. Something closer to inevitability. Like a door she'd been standing in front of all day had finally, quietly, swung open.

"What are they calling it?"

Dess's expression didn't change, but her voice dropped low enough that Elena had to lean in to catch it.

"I don't know the word for it," she said. "But my grandmother used it once, a long time ago, about someone else. Someone we don't really talk about."

"Dess."

"They're calling you an Ashwalker," Dess said. "And Elena — I don't think that's a good thing to be, in Ashcombe."

Behind them, the sun was dropping low over the training yard, throwing long shadows across the grass, and for the second time in two days, Elena felt the world rearrange itself around a word she didn't understand yet, waiting to find out exactly how much it was going to cost her.