Chapter 4: Old Ground

Mira spent the walk back to the guest quarters rebuilding every wall Kade Sterling had cracked in that room, brick by careful brick, the way Rurik had taught her — name the fear, set it down, pick up the work instead. By the time she reached her door, Rhea Voss had returned, cool and composed, the terror underneath locked back where it belonged.

She didn't get to enjoy the peace for long.

"You're the new Ironclaw woman."

The voice came from down the hall — young, male, careful in a way that immediately made her wary. She turned to find a wolf close to Kade's age leaning against the wall outside her door, arms crossed, dark hair and a face that was almost, but not quite, unfamiliar.

Then it clicked, and her stomach dropped.

Damon. Kade's younger brother. He'd been fourteen the day of her rejection, all elbows and awkward silence, the kind of boy who watched everything and said almost nothing. He'd cried, she remembered suddenly — one of the only wolves in that hall who had, standing near the back where he thought no one would notice.

He was not fourteen anymore. And the way he was looking at her now, head slightly tilted, made her wonder exactly how much he noticed these days.

"Ms. Voss," she said, holding out a hand with a steadiness she didn't entirely feel. "And you're Damon Sterling, I take it. Alpha's brother."

"That's me." He shook her hand, but his eyes didn't leave her face, searching in a way that made the scar through her eyebrow feel suddenly very exposed. "Funny thing. You've got a way of standing that reminds me of someone."

"So your brother said."

"Did he." Something flickered across Damon's expression — not quite a smile. "He say who?"

"He said he couldn't place it."

"Huh." Damon studied her another moment, and Mira held perfectly still, refusing to give him anything to confirm whatever he was already half-suspecting. Finally he pushed off the wall, hands in his pockets, easy and unhurried in a way that felt deliberately performed. "Well. Whoever it is, I'm sure it'll come to him eventually. Kade's slow like that. Always has been. Takes him a while to see what's right in front of him."

There was a weight underneath the words that made her chest tighten.

"Was there something you needed, Mr. Sterling?"

"Damon's fine." He started walking backward down the hall, still watching her. "I just like to know who's wandering around my family's territory with the power to take twenty percent of it. Figured I'd introduce myself before the paperwork does it for me." He paused at the corner. "Nice to meet you, Ms. Voss. Or whatever your name actually is."

He disappeared around the corner before she could decide whether that last line had been an accusation or just a mercenary's natural suspicion of another mercenary. Either way, her pulse didn't settle for a long time after he was gone.

---

She spent the afternoon in the guest room drafting repayment terms, grateful for the excuse to stay away from the rest of the pack hall, but the work only occupied the surface of her mind. Underneath it, Damon's words kept circling. *Takes him a while to see what's right in front of him.*

He knew something. Or suspected it. And if Kade's own brother was already circling close to the truth, thirty days felt like a very short window to keep Rhea Voss's mask from slipping entirely.

A knock interrupted the thought — sharp, official, not Damon's careless rhythm.

Priya stood in the doorway when she opened it, clipboard in hand, expression carefully neutral in the way of someone delivering a message they'd rather not be delivering. "Alpha Sterling would like you to join him for dinner. Council business," she added quickly, as though that clarification mattered. "There's a matter regarding Cross Pack he'd like to discuss before finalizing the repayment terms."

Mira's pulse ticked up. "Formal dinner, or—"

"Small group. The Alpha, Elder Thorne, Damon. And Selene Cross is expected to attend as well, actually — diplomatic visit, unrelated timing, though I imagine it won't feel unrelated once everyone's in the same room."

Of course it wouldn't. Mira closed the folder in her hands and made herself breathe evenly.

"I'll be there," she said.

---

The dining hall had new tapestries she didn't recognize, dark green and silver instead of the deep red her own mother had once helped weave, and Mira noted the change the way she noted everything now — filed away, useful, evidence of exactly how much of her old life had been quietly replaced.

Selene Cross was already seated when she arrived, and Mira understood within seconds why Kade's council took the rival Alpha's daughter seriously. She was striking in the deliberate way of someone who'd trained her beauty into a weapon — sharp cheekbones, dark red hair, eyes that swept over Mira once with the swift, complete assessment of a predator cataloging a potential threat.

"The Ironclaw representative," Selene said, before anyone could introduce them, a faint smile playing at her mouth. "I've heard about you already. Word travels fast in small territories."

"I imagine it does," Mira said, taking the empty seat across from her, deliberately unbothered.

"Selene's father and I have been discussing border stability," Kade said, settling at the head of the table with the particular weariness of a man mediating two conversations he'd rather not be having at once. "Given recent events, it seemed worth including Ironclaw's perspective. Since you'll have financial interest in Ashwood's stability for the next twelve months."

"I appreciate being included," Mira said, and meant it, though not for the reason Kade assumed. Any information about Cross Pack's intentions was information Ironclaw — and, some old buried part of her insisted, Ashwood — would need.

"Financial interest," Selene repeated, turning the phrase over with visible amusement. "How practical. I'd heard Ironclaw only cares about money. Refreshing, honestly, compared to packs that pretend their politics are about anything nobler."

"Money's honest," Mira said. "It doesn't pretend to be loyalty."

Something sharpened in Selene's expression — interest, maybe, or the recognition of an opponent worth taking seriously. "I like her," she said to Kade, though her eyes stayed on Mira. "Where did you find this one?"

"Ironclaw sent her," Kade said. "I didn't find her anywhere."

"Pity. I was hoping there was a story."

Mira kept her face perfectly still, though the word *story* landed closer to the bone than Selene could possibly have intended. Beside her, she was aware of Damon watching the exchange with a little too much interest, and further down the table, Thorne's eyes flicking between her and Kade with something that had started, over the course of one dinner, to look less like dismissal and more like calculation.

The dinner unfolded through careful diplomatic sparring — Cross Pack's border ambitions dressed up as peaceable concern, Kade's exhausted patience wearing thinner with every exchange, and Mira watching all of it with the particular attention of someone gathering intelligence for a report Rurik would want in detail. By the time dessert arrived, she understood two things clearly: Selene Cross wanted Ashwood land, whatever polite language she wrapped it in, and Kade Sterling was too worn down from grief and war and debt to fight her on it much longer without help.

"You've gone quiet, Ms. Voss," Selene said suddenly, catching her watching. "Ironclaw representatives usually have opinions about border stability. It affects your collateral, after all."

"I'm listening," Mira said. "It's usually more useful than talking."

Selene's smile widened, something assessing in it now. "I look forward to negotiating with you directly, then. Once the Ashwood debt resolves one way or another." Her gaze flicked briefly to Kade, then back, deliberate. "Territory changes hands so easily these days. It would be a shame to see this pack lose more of it than it has to."

The threat sat there, thin and polite, and Mira watched Kade's jaw tighten as he absorbed it, watched him say nothing because there was nothing yet to say. She felt, unexpectedly, an old and furious protectiveness rise in her chest — for the orchard, the training yards, the pack hall with its carved wolf-head lintel, all of it land that had once been meant to be hers too, before it wasn't.

She hadn't expected that feeling to survive three years of telling herself she didn't care anymore.

It had, apparently, only been sleeping — same as everything else.