Chapter 2

Wren's POV

Dinner is supposed to be simple. Serve, refill, disappear into the wall like the furniture. I've had years of practice at disappearing, and for the first hour it works exactly the way it's supposed to.

Then Alpha Vane sets his glass down and asks a question that isn't on the script anyone gave me.

"Who poured this?"

Callum blinks, caught mid-sentence about timber allocations. "Excuse me?"

"The wine." Rhydian doesn't look away from his glass. "Who poured it?"

I'm three feet behind him with the bottle still in my hand, and every adult at that table turns to look at me at once, which is exactly the opposite of what five years of training has prepared me for.

"I did," I say, because lying would be stupid and slower.

"Come here."

It's not rude, the way he says it. It's just certain, the way you'd say it to someone whose answer you already expect. I look at Callum first, out of habit more than permission, and he gives the smallest nod, the kind that means behave, don't embarrass me, and I step forward until I'm standing at the edge of the table close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him like he runs several degrees warmer than a normal man should.

He doesn't touch me. He just looks, and for a second I understand what Dell's cousin meant about not being able to hold his gaze, except it isn't fear that makes me want to look away. It's something closer to being seen for the first time in five years, and that's so much worse.

"What's your name?" he asks.

"Wren." My voice comes out smaller than I want it to.

"Wren," he repeats, like he's testing the shape of it. Then, to Callum, without turning his head: "You didn't mention you had a sister."

The pause that follows is short, barely a breath, but I've spent five years learning to read my brother's silences, and I know this one. It's the silence of a man recalculating.

"She's staff," Callum says smoothly. "Household staff. Nothing more."

"She has your bone structure."

"A distant relation." Callum's smile doesn't move, but something behind his eyes goes flat and cold, aimed at me for exactly a heartbeat before it's gone. "You know how these old packs are, Alpha Vane. Half of Ashgrove is related to the other half somewhere back a few generations."

Rhydian doesn't answer that right away. He's still looking at me, and I realize with a jolt that he's not looking at my face anymore, not exactly. His head tilts slightly, the way a wolf tilts when a scent doesn't match the shape it's coming from.

"You're wearing a binding," he says. Not a question.

The whole room goes quiet enough that I hear my own pulse.

"A precaution," Callum says, too fast now, the smoothness cracking at the edges. "For household safety. It's a standard practice for staff without formal pack standing."

That's a lie, and every wolf at this table with any real knowledge of pack law knows it's a lie, because bindings aren't standard practice for anyone, they're a punishment reserved for serious offenses, and Rhydian's eyes flick to Callum for the first time since I walked over, and something passes over his face that I can't read, but I feel the temperature of the room drop a few degrees anyway.

"Interesting," is all he says.

Callum recovers fast, redirecting to the timber clause as if nothing happened, and I'm dismissed with a small motion of his hand, sent back to the wall where I belong. I go gladly. My heart is still hammering by the time I reach the kitchen doorway, and I don't understand why, because nothing actually happened. A man asked my name. That's all.

Except I can still feel his eyes on me from across the room even with my back turned, a physical weight between my shoulder blades, and I spend the rest of the dinner trying and failing to convince myself I imagined it.

It gets worse before it gets better, though. Halfway through the meal, one of Callum's advisors, a thin, nervous man named Ferris who's worked for the family longer than I've been alive, tries to smooth things over by steering the conversation somewhere safer.

"The Split Ridge crossing has always been contested ground," Ferris says, refilling his own glass with a hand that isn't quite steady. "Generations of disputes. I think both packs can agree there's value in finally settling it cleanly."

"There's value in settling it correctly," Rhydian says, not looking at Ferris at all. "Not just cleanly."

"Of course, of course." Ferris laughs, a little too loud. "Alpha Vane has always had a reputation for precision."

"I have a reputation for noticing things other people would rather I didn't," Rhydian says, and his eyes flick, deliberate, back toward the wall where I'm standing with a fresh bottle in my hands, close enough to feel the weight of that sentence land on me even though he never says my name.

Callum laughs too, that same practiced laugh Ferris just used, and steers the conversation hard back toward timber quotas, and for a while it works. I refill glasses. I clear plates. I do everything invisible girls are supposed to do, and I almost convince myself the moment at the table earlier was nothing, a passing curiosity from a man who probably collects passing curiosities the way other people collect coins.

Then I catch him watching me again, not the way Callum watches me, not checking for mistakes, but the way you'd watch something you're trying to place, a word on the tip of your tongue, and every time it happens my pulse does something I don't have a name for and don't particularly want one.

I don't imagine what happens after dessert.

The contract documents come out, spread across the table for final review before signing, and I'm pouring the last round of coffee when Rhydian speaks again, this time addressing the whole table, his voice carrying that easy, absolute authority that makes every other conversation in the room stop on instinct.

"I want an addendum before I sign."

Callum sets his pen down. "Of course. What terms?"

"Transfer of one household attendant to Nightfall service, effective immediately upon contract execution." He doesn't look at me when he says it, which somehow makes it worse, like I'm already a line item and not a person standing four feet away with a coffee pot going cold in my hand. "Standard exchange clause. You get the water rights you need. I get one attendant."

Callum laughs, an actual laugh, disbelieving. "You want staff. From my household."

"I want her." Now he looks at me. "Specifically."

The coffee pot nearly slips out of my hand.

"That's absurd," Callum says, and for the first time all night his voice has an edge to it that isn't performance, that's real fear trying to pass itself off as offense. "She's not part of any exchange. She's not even properly staff, she's—"

"You said she was staff not ten minutes ago." Rhydian's tone doesn't change at all, which is somehow the most unsettling part of this entire evening. "Which is it, Alpha Calloway? Because I need water rights across the Split Ridge more than you need to keep one household girl, and I don't think you're in a position tonight to tell me no."

Nobody says anything. I stand there holding a coffee pot, watching my brother's face do something I have never once seen it do in five years of careful observation.

He looks scared.