chapter 3

(Lyra's POV)

"You've been reassigned to border patrol support," Marcus said, sliding a folded paper across the kitchen counter like he was handing me a death sentence, which, given the timing, felt about right. "Effective tonight."

I stared at him. Omegas didn't go on border patrol. Omegas scrubbed floors and stayed where the pack could keep an eye on them without having to think about it. "Border patrol," I repeated.

"Hunter sign was found on the northeast perimeter this morning. Boot prints, silver shavings, a cold camp. Alpha wants extra hands running supply and tracking support while the patrol investigates." Marcus's face gave away nothing, which was somehow worse than if he'd looked smug about it. "You have decent instincts. You're needed."

"I have decent instincts because I've spent nine years making sure nobody notices me," I said. "That's a different skill than tracking hunters."

"Take it up with the Alpha," Marcus said, and left before I could ask the obvious question: whether this assignment had anything to do with a corridor and a pair of gold eyes three days ago, and a wedding that had somehow, overnight, gotten moved up by a full month.

Briar found me shoving supplies into a pack an hour later, radiating the specific outrage of someone who'd already put the pieces together. "He's sending you into the woods," she said. "Right after the corridor thing. Right after he moved the wedding up. Lyra, that's not a coincidence, that's a man panicking."

"It's an assignment."

"It's him trying to put a forest between the two of you so his wolf calms down," Briar said. "Which, for the record, is not how mate bonds work. I've seen it not work on at least two separate wolves in this pack. You just end up in the same forest, dramatically."

She was, infuriatingly, right within six hours.

The northeast patrol met at the perimeter marker as the sun went down, six wolves and me, and I had exactly enough time to feel relieved that Kaelan Ashwood wasn't among them before his voice came out of the treeline behind me, low and certain.

"Change of plan. I'm leading this one."

I turned around, and the pull hit me again, same as the corridor, same devastating recognition, except this time there was nowhere to look away to and no floor tile to focus on. Just him, in patrol leathers instead of an Alpha's formal coat, a blade at his hip that looked older than the rest of his gear, eyes carefully, deliberately brown.

"Alpha," I said, flat, careful, exactly the voice I'd used in the corridor.

Something flickered across his face, disappointment, maybe, that I'd used it again. "Thorne. You're on tracking support with me. The others are running the north loop."

"Sir, I don't think that's..."

"It's decided," he said, and there was an edge in it that told me arguing wouldn't move him an inch, and underneath the edge, something that sounded almost like he needed it decided before he lost his nerve to decide it.

We walked the tree line in silence for the better part of an hour, close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off him, far enough that neither of us had to admit we were keeping the distance on purpose. The forest at night smelled like pine and cold dirt and, underneath it, faint and wrong, gun oil.

"There," I said, crouching by a half buried print in the mud. "Boot, not paw. Recent. Whoever it is knows to stay off game trails."

Kaelan crouched beside me, close enough that his shoulder nearly brushed mine, and I felt my pulse do something humiliating. "You're good at this," he said, sounding surprised, and then, quieter, like he was correcting himself out loud, "I shouldn't be surprised. I don't actually know what you're good at. I've never asked."

"No," I agreed. "You haven't."

"Is that an accusation?"

"It's an observation," I said. "I've lived in your pack house for nine years, Alpha. This is the first real conversation we've had."

He looked at me for a long moment, and the careful brown in his eyes flickered, just once, gold at the edges. "I know," he said. "I don't know what to do about that."

"You could start," I said, "by not sending me into a forest because you're afraid of what happens if I stay in the corridor."

That landed. I watched it land, watched something in his jaw tighten with the particular discomfort of a man being read correctly by someone he'd expected to be too intimidated to try. "That's not what this assignment is," he said, and it came out unconvincing even to him, I could tell, because his voice dropped at the end of it like he was hoping I wouldn't push.

I pushed anyway, because nine years of silence had apparently used up my entire lifetime supply of knowing better. "Your wedding got moved up a month the same day your eyes went gold in front of me. I might be an Omega, Alpha, but I'm not stupid."

"I never said you were stupid." His voice had gone rough, low, the public composure cracking at the edges. "I said..." He stopped himself.

"Said what?"

For a second I thought he'd actually tell me. His gaze dropped to my mouth, just for a heartbeat, just long enough that my whole body went still and hot and terrified all at once, and then a branch cracked twenty feet to our left, and both of us spun toward it, wolves rising to the surface in the same instant, and whatever he'd been about to say vanished into the dark.

A shape moved between the trees, too controlled to be an animal, too quiet to be pack.

"Down," Kaelan breathed, and put himself, without hesitating, without asking, directly between me and whatever was out there.

Something metallic caught the moonlight forty feet off. Not a knife.

A rifle scope.

"Kaelan," I whispered, and it was the first time I'd said his name instead of his title, and even in that terrified half second, some helpless part of me noticed exactly how right it felt in my mouth. "There's someone in the trees, and I don't think they came here for the wolves running the north loop."

His whole body went taut beside me, coiled, ready.

"Then they came for us," he said. "Don't move."

The scope shifted. Aimed.

Directly at me.