Chapter 18

Wren

Six months into leading Nightshade, Wren had developed a working theory that Rurik Thorne found excuses to visit her territory roughly twice as often as actual alliance business required, and she'd stopped pretending, even to herself, that she minded.

"The brand," Rurik said, spreading a rough sketch of the mark across the table between them — the same mark he'd found on the rogue's collar six months back, the one Ezra still wouldn't fully discuss. "I've had someone tracing it through old records. It's not new. Whoever's using it now didn't invent it — they're reviving something that used to belong to a pack called Ashenmoor. Wiped out, or near enough, about forty years back. Nobody's sure by who, or why, or what happened to whatever was left of them afterward."

"Ezra knows something about it. He won't say what."

"Might be worth pushing him on that, gently, when you're ready. Whatever this is, it's bigger than rogue incursions. Organized brands don't happen by accident, and neither does a forty-year-old pack symbol getting revived out of nowhere." Rurik's expression stayed serious a moment longer, then eased, the shift as deliberate as everything else about him. "Not tonight's problem, though. Tonight's problem is that you've been staring at this map for two hours and you look like you could use actual food instead of whatever Milo's been feeding you out of guilt-induced desperation to be helpful."

Wren huffed something close to a laugh despite herself. "Milo's cooking has improved."

"Milo's cooking has improved from actively dangerous to merely inadvisable. I've eaten it. I have opinions." He was already standing, already reaching for his coat, an easy invitation in the gesture that didn't demand anything, just offered. "Come on. There's a place on the Ironfang side of the border that does something with venison that might restore your faith in food as a concept."

They walked the border path together afterward, the meal behind them, comfortable silence stretching easy between them in a way Wren had learned, over six months, was simply how Rurik operated — unhurried, unbothered by quiet, never pushing for more conversation than a moment actually needed.

"Can I ask you something," she said eventually, because the quiet had gotten comfortable enough to risk it. "You've never once asked about before. About what happened, before Nightshade. Everyone eventually asks."

"Didn't need to ask. Word travels, same as everything else does out here, and I make it my business to know who I'm allying with." He said it plainly, no judgment in it. "Figured if you wanted to talk about it, you'd bring it up eventually. Wasn't going to make you carry the burden of explaining yourself to me on top of everything else you're already carrying."

"That's either very considerate or very strategic."

"Can't it be both?" A small smile, genuine. "For what it's worth — whatever he did, whoever he was, I've spent six months watching you build something real out of six starving people and a cabin with more moss than roof. I don't need the details of the wound to respect what grew back over it." He glanced at her, something more careful in his expression now, less easy. "I'm not in a hurry, Wren. I want to be clear about that. Whatever this is, whatever it turns into — I can wait for you to be ready for it, for as long as that takes. I'd just rather you knew I was waiting, instead of guessing."

Wren didn't have an answer ready for that, not one that felt honest enough to offer him. Something in her chest had gone warm and careful at once, grateful for the patience and simultaneously aware, with the particular clarity of a wound that never fully closed, that a small and stubborn part of her was still standing in a clearing five months and one lifetime ago, waiting for a different man to finish a sentence he'd started and never gotten to complete.

She didn't tell Rurik that. It wouldn't have been fair to either of them, not tonight, not with the wound as unfinished as it still was.

"Thank you," she said instead, which was true, if incomplete. "For waiting. For not asking me to explain myself."

"Anytime." He didn't push for more, true to his word, just fell back into easy silence beside her as they walked the border path back toward Nightshade land, moonlight silvering the trees, and Wren found herself, for the length of that walk at least, almost able to believe that whatever came next might actually be simple.

She should have known better than to believe that. She was starting to suspect, five months into leading a pack built entirely out of things that refused to stay simple, that nothing in her life was ever going to manage it again.