CHAPTER 5

I am at the east gate at six fifty-eight.

The morning is cold, fog sitting low over the training grounds, the kind of pale grey morning that makes everything look like it hasn't decided to start yet. I have my running shoes on and my arms wrapped in two layers and my hair pulled back. I told myself on the way here that if this turns out to be something I didn't expect — something that feels wrong — I walk away. I have always known how to walk away.

Kade is already there.

He is in plain gear again, nothing with rank on it, and he has his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the tree line. He looks like a man who is comfortable with silence, which in my experience is either a very good sign or the sign of someone who does not feel the need to fill space because they already control it.

"You came," he says.

"I was curious," I say. "I'm here for twelve minutes and if you say something I don't like, I'm gone in less."

He nods. No pushback. "Fair."

We start walking into the trail. Not running yet. I match his pace — or he matches mine — and for a few minutes there is only the sound of the gravel and the trees adjusting to the morning.

"The Alpha King's program," he says, "has an open intake in eight weeks. For Elite Warrior candidates. Aged seventeen to twenty, ranked blood or exceptional ability, assessed by field evaluation."

I keep walking.

"The intake is competitive. Fifteen spots. Usually filled by sons and daughters of well-connected packs." He glances at me sideways. "This year, the King wants at least three candidates assessed purely on demonstrated ability. No politics. No family connections."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you're one of three people on my current list for those three spots."

I stop.

He stops two steps later and turns to look at me. The fog makes everything slightly soft at the edges except his face, which is exactly as clear and direct as it always is.

"You've been watching me for two weeks," I say.

"Yes."

"You've seen me in two training sessions, one live demonstration, and one patrol trail run."

"And tonight makes the fourth evaluation point." He says it without apology. "I work efficiently."

"You don't have enough data."

"I have more data on you than you think." His voice stays even. Not defensive. "I have three years of training records from Holt. I have academic files. I have the observation stand footage from the last four joint sessions."

I stare at him. "Holt kept records?"

"Holt has been keeping records since your second year of training." For the first time, something in Kade's voice softens — just barely. "He believed someone would eventually ask. He was patient."

I look away. The tree line is green and grey and familiar. My throat feels strange. I have spent five years being invisible in this pack, and Holt has been building a file. For this. For exactly this.

I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth and wait for the feeling to even out.

"Who are the other two?" I ask.

"Mira Steele. And a boy from the southern border pack named Edan Voss." A pause. "My cousin."

I look back at him. "Your cousin."

"I disclosed the conflict of interest to the King. He decided my ability to evaluate impartially outweighed it." A beat. "Edan is genuinely good. I am not listing him out of loyalty."

"And I'm not supposed to wonder if I'm on the list out of— what? Observation bias? Something else?"

He holds my gaze. "You can wonder whatever you want. I'd rather you run the six-mile trail with me right now and let your ability answer the question more efficiently."

I look at him for a long moment. He is asking me to stop hiding. In the middle of a foggy morning, on a trail I have run alone for three years, he is asking me to stop hiding. Not because it would be good for his list or his evaluation report. Because — and this is the part I cannot fully explain, the part that Raya is already certain about and I am still catching up to — because he has seen what is underneath the layers and the east wall and the managed sixty percent, and he will not pretend that he hasn't.

"Six miles," I say. "I set the pace."

"Agreed."

I start to run.

He keeps up.

And I push the pace — past comfortable, past polite, past the speed I use on this trail when I am alone and free and not performing anything. I push to the pace I run when I am trying to outrun something, which lately is everything that is coming at me from every direction.

Kade Voss does not fall behind.

He runs beside me, matching every adjustment I make, breathing steady and even. Not showing off. Not pushing harder than me to prove something. Just keeping pace with exactly what I am.

By mile three, something inside me — old, careful, always calculating — goes quiet.

By mile five, Raya is running too, her energy woven through my legs and lungs, and I know we are not managing anything.

We finish at the gate. I stop hard, hands on my knees, breathing deep. He stops beside me, breathing harder than he has let me see him breathe before.

Silence for a moment, just breath and birds.

"You have a wolf," he says. Not a question.

I look up at him. My cover is gone and I know it and — I realize, somewhere in my chest — I don't feel the way I thought I would.

"Yes," I say.

He nods slowly. "How long?"

"Two years."

Something moves through his face. Respect, maybe. Or something adjacent to it.

"Your father doesn't know."

"My father doesn't know a lot of things about me."

Kade is quiet for a moment. He looks out at the training grounds, the fog beginning to lift now, the compound becoming clearer in the early light. When he looks back, there is something in his grey eyes I have not seen there before. Not the evaluator's careful distance. Something that has stepped forward past that.

"Cole." His voice is different. The same even register, but different underneath it. "I need you to understand something."

I wait.

"What I just ran with — that ability, that wolf — if your pack had given you what you deserved, you would already be one of the strongest warriors in this region." He says it clean and direct, no softening, no performance. "The fact that you're not known is not your failure. It is theirs."

My throat is doing the strange thing again. I keep my face still.

"Put it on my list," I say. "Submit your report. Do your job."

"I intend to." He holds my gaze. "But understand that when this report goes in — and it will, in full — things in this pack will change. For you. Your father will know. The council will know." He pauses. "Nia Strand will know."

Something tightens in my chest. Not fear. Something sharper and more complicated than fear.

"I have survived Nia Strand for five years," I say.

"I know." His voice is very quiet now. "I'm asking you if you're ready to do more than survive."

I look at him. The fog is almost gone. The training grounds are clear and open around us, the compound sharp in the morning light.

"I've been ready," I say, "since I was twelve years old."

He nods. Once.

Then — and this is what I carry with me through the rest of the day, what Raya turns over and over in the quiet places between my thoughts — he says, "Good. Because it starts today."

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out.

A message from Mira: Nia spoke to your father this morning before training. I don't know what she said. Bren left the house right after. Zara — something is moving.

I look up from the phone. Kade is watching me.

The expression on my face gives something away — I see him read it before I can blank it — and he takes one step toward me. Just one. Close enough to lower his voice.

"What happened?"

I show him the screen.

He reads it. His jaw tightens.

"Stay close to Mira today," he says, and his voice has dropped the evaluator register completely. What is underneath it is something I do not have a word for yet, only a sensation: like a door opening in a room that has been sealed for a long time.

"Close to Mira," I repeat. "And?"

He looks at me. Something flickers in his grey eyes — fast, controlled, and not quite controlled enough.

"And to me," he says.

I put my phone back in my pocket and walk toward the gate without answering, because if I answer right now, something in my chest that has been perfectly still for seventeen years is going to move, and I am not ready.

Raya is already laughing.

Now, she says, it gets interesting.