Chapter Three

What He Wants

Lucas POV

My second, Adam, was waiting for me in the hall with his arms crossed and his brow creased.

"You have that look," he said.

"I don't have a look."

"You absolutely have a look." He fell into step beside me. "What happened in the garden?"

"Their Beta was about to hit her." I kept my voice flat. I had learned long ago that letting anger out before the right moment was a waste. "In front of a guest and in front of me."

Adam was quiet for a second. "The bound girl?"

"Her name is Emily." I said it sharper than I meant to.

Another pause.

He knew me well enough not to push. We walked through the guest corridor in silence until I stopped at the window that looked out onto the darkening garden. She was still there, bent over the scattered logs, stacking them with careful hands. Moving slowly, like she was used to doing everything alone.

My wolf, Caius, had not been quiet since the moment she walked into that meeting room. He had pressed forward the instant she stepped through the door, not aggressive, not territorial. Just... alert. Deeply, completely alert in a way he had not been in years.

She is ours.

I had not responded to him then. I still was not sure how to.

Fated mates were real. Every wolf knew that. But I had seen twenty nine years of this world, survived three wars and two assassination attempts, and I had stopped expecting mine a long time ago. The idea that she would be here in this house, with a bound wolf and a dead stare and bruises she was trying to hide under a too-large dress, was almost too strange to believe.

Almost.

But Caius did not lie. He never had.

"Set up a meeting with Alpha Aden," I told Adam. "Tonight. His study."

"About the contract?" Adam raised an eyebrow.

"About the addendum I am adding to it."

Aden did not look pleased to see me at his study door an hour later. He had probably hoped the formal part of the day was done. He sat behind his desk with his hands folded and his smile stretched too thin.

"Alpha Lucas. I thought we had finished for the day."

"We had. I have one more item to discuss." I sat without being invited to. "The girl. Emily. I want her transferred to my pack as part of the agreement."

The smile disappeared. "She is not part of the deal."

"She is now."

Aden's eyes went cold. "She is my responsibility, my pack member. You don't get to"

"Your responsibility." I let that sit in the air between us for a moment. "The girl whose wolf you had bound at the age of six. Whose job in your house is to clean your floors. Who your Beta was raising a hand to in your own garden less than an hour ago." I leaned forward slightly.

"That responsibility."

His jaw tightened. "You do not know the full story."

"Tell me."

"She killed our parents." His voice dropped low and hard. "She was young, yes. But she knew what she was doing. The fire came from her. Everyone saw it. I bound her wolf so she could never do it again."

I watched his face as he said it. He believed it, or he had told the story so many times that he had forgotten what was real and what was not. Either way, something about it did not sit right with me. A six year old child, a fire in a sacred hall. A binding performed three days later fast for pack politics.

Too fast.

"I want her transferred," I said again. "Not as a servant. Not as an omega. She will be treated as a free pack member under Ironblood's protection."

"You are out of your mind."

"Possibly." I stood. "But the alternative is that I walk away from this deal entirely and you go looking for another Alpha willing to give you Ironblood's military backing. Good luck with that."

The silence stretched long. I watched him count the costs, weigh the options. He needed us. His pack's eastern border had been under pressure for six months. Without Ironblood, they would not last another winter at their current numbers. He knew it, I also knew it.

"Fine." He bit the word off like it tasted bad. "Take her. But I want it in writing that she cannot come back here and make claims against this pack."

"I will draw up the papers tonight." I moved to the door. "Have her ready to leave at first light."

I stepped out into the corridor and stood there for a moment in the dark.

Caius was still satisfied. For the first time in a long time, he settled inside me like something had been put right.

She did not know yet.

She was probably in whatever small room they kept her in, trying to sleep, assuming tomorrow would be the same as every other day of her life.

It would not be.

And somewhere, buried under sixteen years of silence and shame, I suspected her wolf already knew it too. Because when I had looked at her in that garden, when our eyes had met for the second time just for a moment, just for a breath, I had seen something flicker in her gaze that did not belong to a girl who had given up.

It looked a lot like fire.

Adam was waiting by the car when I stepped back outside. He had his arms folded and that look on his face, the one that meant he had questions he was smart enough not to ask out loud yet.

"Everything sorted?" he said.

"The paperwork will be ready tonight." I moved past him. "She leaves with us at first light."

He fell into step beside me. "You want to tell me what is really going on?"

"No."

"Lucas."

I stopped walking. The night air was cold and still around us. Somewhere in the trees beyond the packhouse wall, an owl called once and went quiet.

"She is mine, Adam." I said it simply. No decoration, no explanation wrapped around it. Just the truth, flat and final. "Caius has known it since the moment she walked into that room. I am not leaving her here."

Adam was quiet for a long moment. I could hear him working through it — the implications, the complications, the questions it would raise back home.

"She has a bound wolf," he said carefully.

"I know."

"The pack will talk."

"They always do."

Another silence.

Then he nodded once, slowly. "Alright." That was all. No argument. That was why I trusted him above every other man I knew.

I looked up at the packhouse windows. One light still burned on the upper floor. Her room, I assumed. Still awake, still waiting to find out what her life was about to become.

I turned away.

There was something else bothering me. Something Aden had said during the signing, a single sentence, thrown out casually, that had snagged on something in my memory and refused to let go.

She has always been more trouble than she is worth.

Not grief, not guilt, not even anger.

Just calculation.

Like she was a problem he had been managing for a very long time.

I pulled out my phone and dialled the one person who could help me dig into a sixteen year old secret without leaving a trace.

It rang twice before he picked up.

"I need you to find everything you can about a fire," I said quietly. "Sixteen years ago. A pack called Ashveil. Two Alpha-blooded wolves died in their sacred hall." I paused. "And I need to know who was really responsible."

There was a long silence on the other end.

Then, "Lucas. That pack was wiped out. Every record of Ashveil was destroyed. Someone made very sure of that."

I gritted my teeth.

"Then find out who," I said. "And find out why they left the girl alive.”