What He Chose Not to Say

KADE

Rogues didn't cross onto Ashworth land by accident. Not this deep, not this close to the pack house. Which meant whoever had tripped the outer wards tonight was either desperate, stupid, or hunting something — and I intended to find out which before I decided how much mercy the answer deserved.

"Movement, west ridge," Marcus said, falling into step beside me, already half-shifted, fur rippling along his forearms. "Solo. Moving fast, then not moving at all."

"Wounded?"

"Maybe or waiting."

I didn't slow down. Three rogue incursions this month already, two of them bold enough to test our border defenses directly. I'd buried a good tracker two weeks ago because the pack before me had gotten soft about what mercy cost. I wasn't going to be the Alpha who repeated that mistake.

"If it's a scout," I said, "we don't take chances."

Marcus didn't answer. He didn't need to. We both knew what *don't take chances* meant, out here, at night, on contested ground.

I smelled her before I saw her and something about it stopped me mid-stride so hard that Marcus nearly ran into my back.

Copper. Pine. Something underneath that hit some part of me I didn't have language for, old and immediate and utterly unwelcome in a moment like this.

*Not now.*

I pushed through the last stretch of tree line and found her collapsed against the old boundary stone, one hand still curled loosely around a knife she didn't have the strength left to lift. Dark hair. Torn jacket. Blood at her side, old enough that it had stopped being an emergency and started being a slow, quiet kind of dying.

She heard me. Of course she did. Her head came up, eyes finding mine even half-conscious, and there was no fear in them. Just exhausted, furious defiance, like she'd already decided that whatever happened next, she wasn't going to give me the satisfaction of watching her beg for it.

I had a knife of my own. I'd crossed the clearing already reaching for it, muscle memory doing what six years of Alpha instinct had trained into me — rogue on the land, threat unconfirmed, handle it before it becomes a bigger problem than one body in the frost.

I got within three steps of her before the scent hit full force, and every part of that instinct simply — stopped.

*Mate.*

The word arrived in my chest like something breaking open, unwanted and undeniable in the same breath. My wolf surged up under my skin so hard I had to plant my feet to keep from stumbling. Marcus, behind me, went very still, close enough to sense whatever had just happened to me even if he didn't understand it yet.

"Kade?"

I didn't answer him. I was too busy looking at the woman in front of me, really looking, past the blood and the torn jacket and understanding with a cold, separate part of my mind exactly who I was looking at.

The crest, half-hidden under the tear in her collar. The set of her jaw, stubborn even half-dead. I'd seen that same jaw across a council table once, years ago, on the Alpha who wore it like a threat.

Ronan Reyes's daughter.

"Please," she said, voice cracked and barely audible, knife still trembling in her grip like she meant to use it even now, even like this. "Just — whatever you're going to do—"

"Put the knife down," I said. My voice came out rougher than I meant it to. "I'm not going to hurt you."

She didn't believe me. I watched her not believe me, watched her brace anyway, too proud or too far gone to do anything but meet whatever came next head-on.

Marcus stepped up beside me, studying her face with a slower kind of recognition. "Kade. That's—"

"I know who it is," I said, cutting him off before the name could leave his mouth.

He looked at me, confused, waiting for the order that should have followed, the one that would have made sense an hour ago, before the scent, before my wolf had rewritten every instinct I walked out here with.

I didn't give it.

"She's wounded," I said instead. "Get Priya. Now."

"Kade, if this is who I think it is—"

"Now, Marcus."

He went. He'd been my Beta long enough to know when arguing wasn't going to change anything.

I crouched down where she could see me, close enough now that the scent was almost unbearable, close enough that some deep, old part of my chest had already started aching in a way I didn't have time to examine.

"What's your name," I said, even though I already knew.

Her eyes were losing focus, the fight finally draining out of her as whatever adrenaline had kept her upright ran out all at once.

"Doesn't matter," she managed. "Not anymore."

"It matters to me."

She didn't answer that. Her eyes slid shut, breath going shallow, and I caught her before she hit the ground, some instinct in me screaming that this — carrying her, protecting her, not letting one more thing hurt her tonight mattered more than every border protocol I'd built my leadership on.

I looked down at her face, slack now, unguarded in a way I doubted she'd allow herself while conscious, and made a decision I wasn't sure yet whether I'd regret.

I wasn't going to tell her I knew who she was.

Not yet. Not until I understood why Ronan Reyes's daughter had crossed onto my land alone, wounded, and rogue, running from something, or someone, that had hurt her far worse than whatever fight had left blood on her side.

Whatever it was, I intended to find out before I let her father's name become the reason she ran again.