CHAPTER 2

Ryley

The word was still hanging in the air between us when my body caught up to what I'd just said. My pulse was already too fast, my palms damp against the arms of my chair, every old instinct I'd spent seventeen years training into muscle memory screaming the same thing at once: pack land means eyes, and eyes mean questions, and questions are how you end up dead.

Isaac just looked at me, patient in the particular way he gets when he already knows he's going to win this one and is simply waiting for me to catch up.

"Ryley—"

"I don't go into packs, Isaac. You know that. I'm a lone wolf, and I don't need that kind of drama in my life." I kept my voice level, professional, the same tone I'd use shutting down a client who thought flattery might get them out of an audit. If I came from a lower bloodline, wolves like me got called rogues and hunted for it. Coming from the line I actually came from, refusing a pack just made me difficult. I'd take difficult over dead every day of the week.

"I wouldn't be asking if it wasn't important." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and for a second the easy charm dropped off him entirely. "Mr. Orion suspects more fraud within his empire, and he's demanded I send the person who found the problem the first time. You saved his enterprise almost a million dollars, Ryley. That's not a small thing to walk away from."

"You know I have Channing. I can't just uproot our lives because a rich alpha snapped his fingers. He has school. He has hockey. He has an actual life here." My voice came out sharper than I meant it to, and I didn't bother softening it.

"Isn't school almost done for the year?" Isaac asked carefully. "And it might be good for him to be around his own kind for a while." He said it gently, like he was handling something breakable, and maybe he was right to.

"You know what I mean, Ryley," he added when I didn't answer right away, shaking his head like he could already hear the argument forming behind my teeth.

"Yes, I know exactly what you mean. But I have my reasons for keeping myself and my son away from that life, and they're not up for negotiation." He sighed, dragging a hand down his face, and for a moment neither of us said anything. The silence sat heavy between us, thick with everything I wasn't going to explain not to him, not to anyone.

"He's one of our wealthiest clients, Ryley. I need my best on this, and you know you're the only one I trust to handle it properly."

"Flattery will get you nowhere, Isaac. This isn't just my life on the line here it's ours. His and mine both. And school may be almost done for the year, but what about next year? It'll be Channing's senior year. I want him graduating with the friends he's had since he was eight years old, not scrambling to catch up somewhere new because his mother couldn't say no to a paycheck."

"What if it's only for the summer?" he pressed, refusing to let it go the way he always did when he'd already decided I was going to say yes eventually. "I'll give you a bonus now, and another when the contract's finished. Whatever it takes."

I let the silence stretch out long enough that I watched him start to sweat a little, weighing exactly how much I could actually get out of this before I let myself cave. If I was doing this and some resigned, exhausted part of me already knew I was I wasn't doing it on anyone's terms but my own.

"If I do this, Isaac, Channing and I need our own home. Not the pack house. Our own house, away from all of it. I need my own office, and weekends and any other days I request are guaranteed off, no exceptions. This is one of the last real summers I get with him before he's gone, and I refuse to waste it standing in some alpha's boardroom on command. I answer to you. Only you. Mr. Orion doesn't hold any authority over me, contract or not I'll respect his pack's rules while I'm on his land, but I will not be forced to submit to him, and I won't start until school lets out for the year." I laid it all out flat, watching his face the entire time, daring him to argue a single point of it.

By the time I finished, Isaac had a grin on his face I hadn't seen from him in months. He'd be handsome if he weren't my boss, and if I weren't already regretting every word that had just come out of my own mouth.

"Done," he said, standing before I could reconsider any of it.

"Oh, and Isaac" I called after him before he reached the door. "I'll need my first bonus in the form of a teal green sports car."

He laughed, actually laughed, shaking his head as he pulled the door open. "Send me a picture and the specs. I'll forward over everything Mr. Orion's already sent so you can get started before you even set foot on his land." He paused in the doorway. "Thank you, Ryley. I mean it."

The door clicked shut behind him, and I slumped back into my chair, groaning at the ceiling like it owed me an explanation for how badly that had just gone.

Channing would get his dream car. But was any of it worth walking back into the exact kind of world I'd spent seventeen years clawing myself out of?

"This could be good for him," Lily said quietly, uncurling from the back of my mind where she'd been listening to every word. "He'll finally get to train with others like him. Run with others like him."

"I'm just trying to keep him safe," I told her, rubbing my temples. "We're the last of the Halliwell bloodline, Lily. I won't be forced to submit to anyone, and I won't let him be forced either. I let someone get close to me once. Look what happened to our family. To our pack. I can't lose him. I won't."

"I'll do everything I can to keep our pup safe. You know that."

"I know you will. You'd kill an alpha with your bare teeth if it came to that." That got a low, satisfied rumble out of her, the closest thing to a laugh she had. "I just don't want it to come to that. I don't want to deal with a council that turned its back on my family the second it was convenient. It's better if everyone keeps thinking the future Luna of the Aurora Mountain Pack is dead. Dead women don't get hunted."

I spent the rest of the afternoon staring at my monitor without actually seeing it, running the same argument in circles. It's temporary. It's for Channing. I can control this. By the time I picked him up from practice, I still hadn't decided how I was going to say it, so I just said it blurted it out somewhere between the parking lot and the highway on-ramp, the words tumbling out faster than I meant them to.

"We're spending the summer on Orion Pack land. It's a work thing. Two months, tops."

Channing went quiet for a second, which was rare enough that I glanced over to make sure I hadn't broken him.

"Like — an actual pack? With actual wolves?" he asked, and I could hear the effort it took him not to sound too excited about it, out of some misguided attempt to protect my feelings.

"An actual pack. Alpha Blake Orion. It's a big one wealthiest in the country, from what I hear." I kept my eyes on the road, my hands a little too tight on the wheel.

"Mom. You hate packs."

"I don't hate packs. I hate what they expect from people." It was as close to the truth as I was willing to get at a red light.

"So why'd you say yes?"

I could've given him the easy answer the bonus, the car, the money for school. All true. None of it the real reason, and I think he knew that, the way he always seems to know things about me I never actually say out loud.

"Because you deserve a normal summer for once. Because it's the last one before your senior year, and I wanted to give you something more than just me and a couple of fishing trips with Walter." I glanced at him. "And because the bonus is going to cover a car you've been not-so-subtly hinting about since March."

That got him. His whole face lit up in a way that made the last of my nerves feel almost worth it.

"Wait, seriously? What kind of car?"

"You let me worry about the details," I told him, fighting a smile.

"Mom, I love you, but you have the worst poker face in the world. What kind of car."

"Go pack your bag, we leave in two weeks," I said instead, and he groaned dramatically but let it go, already pulling out his phone to text someone probably every friend he had about spending the summer somewhere he'd get to actually be a wolf among wolves, instead of hiding what he was the way I'd taught him to his whole life.

I watched him from the corner of my eye the rest of the drive, so easy with his excitement, so unafraid of a world I'd spent seventeen years making sure he never had to be afraid of. I envied him that, even as it terrified me.

"He's happy," Lily said quietly.

"I know," I told her. "That's the only reason I'm doing this."

Two weeks wasn't nearly enough time to prepare myself for whatever whoever was waiting for us on the other side of that border. I just didn't know yet how right I was to be afraid of him.