Chapter 4: The three mysterious Figures

The Ashwood guards dragging me to the border stopped dead the moment the three hooded figures stepped onto the road. I felt the shift in the men holding my arms, the way their grip tightened, the way their bodies angled instinctively into a fighting stance and their hands reaching out for their sheathed swords

"Crimson Hollow," one of them muttered, and the other spat on the ground like the name itself was something dirty.

The figure in the center lowered his hood. He was older than me by maybe a decade, with a scar cutting through one eyebrow and eyes the same unusual amber shade I'd caught in my own reflection a thousand times without ever knowing why it looked wrong for an Ashwood orphan to have them.

"We're not here for a fight," he said, his voice pitched low and even. "We're here for her."

"She's no more Ashwood's business," the guard on my left snapped. "Banished tonight by the Alpha's own word. She's no one's concern now."

"That's where you're mistaken." The scarred man's eyes moved to me, and something in his expression shifted, softened, in a way that made my chest ache worse than the torn bond already had. "She's the lost daughter of our Alpha. Missing for sixteen years. We've been searching every border territory since the night she disappeared, and I never thought I'd find her wearing an Ashwood uniform."

The guards laughed, short and disbelieving, but I saw the way their eyes flicked toward me, toward the amber color they'd probably never bothered to notice on a servant girl before tonight.

"That's not possible," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. "I scrub floors for a living. I don't know you. I don't know anything about Crimson Hollow, or a father, or any of this."

"You wouldn't." His voice gentled further, the way you'd speak to something wounded and likely to bolt. "You were four years old the night raiders burned the eastern village where your mother had taken you into hiding. We searched through those woods for weeks. We found signs of a struggle, blood that matched hers, and no trace of you at all. Your father has never stopped looking."

The eastern village. The burning I remembered, the smell of smoke and wet leaves, A woman's hands shoving me down into a ditch. I had never told a single soul in Ashwood the exact details of that memory because I'd barely trusted it myself, had assumed for years it was some half formed nightmare rather than a real night that had actually happened to a real four year old girl.

"How do you know that," I said, and my voice shook now in a way I couldn't hide. "How do you know about the ditch."

Something in his face cracked, just slightly, grief finally breaking through the careful composure he'd been holding since he lowered his hood. "Because I was the one who carried your mother's body home. And because your father has kept the ditch itself marked with stones for sixteen years, waiting for a reason to believe you might still be alive somewhere."

The Ashwood guards exchanged a look I couldn't read, some silent calculation about whether this was worth dying over, a banished servant girl who'd just been publicly humiliated by their own Alpha.

"Take her," the one on my right finally said, shoving me forward hard enough that I stumbled toward the Crimson Hollow strangers. "She's not our problem anymore. The Alpha rejected her himself, in front of the whole council. Whatever she is, she's yours now."

They turned and walked back toward the gates without a single glance behind them, leaving me standing in the road with three strangers who claimed to be my family, in the dark, with nothing but the clothes on my back and a bond wound still bleeding somewhere behind my ribs.

The scarred man studied me for a long moment. "My name is Rowe and Am a Beta. I served as your father's second for twenty years, since before you were born. He's going to want to see you the moment we arrive, but I need you to understand something first, before we take another step toward home."

"What."

"Ashwood has been at war with Crimson Hollow for three generations. Your mother fled there specifically to keep you out of it, out of a fight she believed would eventually cost you your life either way. If you come with us tonight, you're not just coming home. You're walking straight into the middle of everything she died trying to save you from."

I thought of Damon's face as he'd said the words that tore the bond loose. I thought of Vivienne's satisfaction, of the forged pouch and the burned letter no one had bothered to read, of an entire pack that had watched me dragged out of their hall and not one person moving to stop it.

"I don't have anywhere else to go," I said. "Take me home."

Rowe nodded once, sharp and final, and gestured for the other two to fall into step around me, a formation I recognized instinctively as an honor guard even though I'd never seen one in my life. It felt strange, being protected by strangers who claimed to have loved me before I could remember my own name. We walked deeper into the dark together, away from the only home I'd known for eight months, toward a father I couldn't remember and a war I hadn't known, until tonight, was somehow already mine.

We were perhaps a mile from the Crimson Hollow border when Rowe suddenly went rigid beside me, one hand shooting out to stop me mid stride, his head turning sharply toward the trees to our left.

"Someone's been following us ever since we left the gates," he said quietly, drawing a blade from his belt without taking his eyes off the treeline. "And whoever it is, moving that silently, that isn't Ashwood."