chapter 2

(Kaelan's POV)

"Tell me you didn't just scent bond to a Thorne in the middle of my corridor."

My father didn't yell often. He'd trained that out of himself decades ago, the same way he'd trained fear out of his voice and grief out of his face. So when Damon Ashwood's words came out sharp enough to cut, I understood exactly how much trouble I was in before he finished the sentence.

"I don't control my wolf's reaction to a mate bond, Father. You know that better than anyone."

"I know," he said, "that a mate bond to that girl will end your title, end this pack's alliance with the Voss line, and possibly end this territory's ability to survive the next six months. Do you understand what you're describing to me right now?"

I did. That was the problem.

I'd walked that corridor a thousand times without noticing Lyra Thorne, the same way I hadn't noticed most of the Omega staff, not out of cruelty, just the particular blindness of a man carrying a whole pack's survival on his shoulders, who doesn't have room left to see individual people. And then I'd turned a corner and my entire chest had rearranged itself around a girl scrubbing floor tile, and every instinct I owned had started screaming her name like it was the only word left in the world.

I hadn't chosen it. That was the part my father refused to hear.

"The law is the law," he said. "No Ashwood Alpha mates outside a recognized bloodline. The Thorne name lost its recognition the night that pack burned. You know why."

"I know the story," I said carefully.

Something moved behind my father's eyes, there and gone so fast I told myself later I'd imagined it. "The story is the truth, Kaelan. Don't let one Omega's face make you forget that."

"I'm mating Selene Voss in seven days," I said. "Nothing about my wedding has changed."

"Good," my father said, and for a moment I thought that was the end of it, until he added, quieter, almost to himself, "Because if it does, I will handle it. The way it was handled before."

I should have asked him what that meant. I've replayed that conversation more times than I can count, wondering what would have changed if I'd pushed instead of walking away to find Marcus and pretend the day was normal. But I was twenty six years old and exhausted and seven days from a wedding I didn't want, and I let it go, because that was easier than looking directly at what my father had just admitted to.

Marcus caught up to me in the west hall, arms crossed, wearing the expression he reserved for telling me things I didn't want to hear.

"That was not subtle," he said.

"I'm aware."

"Your eyes went gold in a public corridor, Kaelan. In front of at least six witnesses. By tonight it'll be in front of sixty."

"I said I'm aware."

"Then you're also aware what the council does with a confirmed forbidden bond." Marcus's voice dropped, not unkind, just precise, because precision was the only language he trusted. "You lose the title. She loses considerably more than that."

That stopped me cold. "What does that mean?"

"It means the law doesn't just end your claim to Alpha," Marcus said. "It labels the bloodline responsible for the violation a continuing threat to pack stability. Read the old text sometime, if your father ever lets you near it. It's not gentle."

I thought about Lyra's face in that corridor, the second before she'd looked away, the flat, careful blankness she'd folded over whatever had actually been happening underneath it, like she'd had a lifetime of practice hiding exactly this kind of feeling. I thought about nine years of a girl learning to disappear inside my own pack house, and a law with her family's name burned into the reason for its existence, and I felt something shift in my chest that had nothing to do with mate bonds and everything to do with the sudden, uncomfortable sense that I had never once asked why that law existed at all. I had just assumed my father had good reasons. Ashwood Alphas were raised to assume that.

"Move the wedding up," I said instead of answering him.

Marcus blinked. "What?"

"If I marry Selene fast enough, this stops being a story anyone can tell." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Talk to the Voss envoy tonight. I want the ceremony inside two weeks instead of six."

"And the girl?"

"Reassign her," I said, and it cost me more than I expected to say it, some new, unfamiliar ache opening up under the words. "Somewhere far from the pack house. Somewhere I won't..." I stopped.

Marcus watched me for a long moment. "Somewhere you won't see her," he finished, quiet, almost gentle for him. "Kaelan. That's not going to make a mate bond stop existing. You know that."

"It'll make it manageable."

"It'll make it worse," Marcus said. "But it's your call. You're the Alpha."

He said it like a warning, not a compliment, and he was already walking away to do what I'd asked before I could take it back. I stood alone in the west hall with a wedding date I'd just accelerated by a month and a pull in my chest that had gotten worse, not better, the instant I'd said the word reassign, like my own wolf understood exactly what I was trying to do and was already furious about it.

Behind me, at the far end of the corridor, my father's study door was still closed. I found myself staring at it, turning over a sentence he hadn't meant to say out loud.

The way it was handled before.

I told myself it meant nothing. I told myself a lot of things that week.

None of them turned out to be true.