CHAPTER 2

The soldier winced when the needle went in.

"Hold still," said Alira. "You're making it worse."

He obeyed. They always did, in the end. Not because they respected her, but because she was the only one in Oakshade Pack territory who could stitch a wound without leaving half of it infected. That was the one thing her father had never been able to take from her. She was useful, and useful things were allowed to exist.

The cut on the soldier's arm was deep but clean. A border patrol fight, he had told her. She had not asked with whom. She had stopped asking those questions a long time ago.

The infirmary door opened. She did not look up. "Miss Vael."

The voice belonged to Gorran, her father's head guard. She knew his voice the way she knew the smell of rain before a storm. It never brought good news.

"I'm in the middle of something," said Alira.

"The Alpha is waiting," said Gorran.

She tied off the last stitch, cut the thread, and pressed a clean cloth into the soldier's hand. "Keep it dry for two days," she told him. "Come back if the skin around it turns yellow." The soldier nodded, already pulling his sleeve down.

Alira set her tools aside and followed Gorran out of the infirmary without a word.

***

Her father's study was at the top of the main hall. It always smelled like pine resin and old paper. Roric Vael stood with his back to her when she entered, looking out the window at the training yard below.

He did not turn around.

"Close the door," he said.

She did.

The silence lasted long enough that Alira counted her own heartbeats. Six. Seven. Eight.

"The High Council has issued a mandate," said Roric. "A bonding alliance between Oakshade Pack and Ashveil."

Alira kept her face still. "I see," she said.

"You will be the seal of that alliance." He finally turned. His eyes were the same dark grey as hers, and just as flat. "You will go to Ashveil and bond with their Alpha."

She had known, when Gorran came for her, that something like this was coming. She had learned early that the things her father summoned her for were never small. But hearing the words out loud still felt like cold water hitting bare skin.

"Alpha Lucien Dravon," she said quietly.

"Yes."

Lucien Dravon. The wolf who had rebuilt a destroyed pack into one of the most feared in the North. The wolf whose name people said carefully, the way you say the name of something with teeth.

"He lost his pack to us," said Alira.

"He lost his pack to war," said Roric. "That is what the alliance is meant to resolve."

She looked at her father. He was not a man who explained himself, and he was not explaining himself now. He was telling her what would happen, the way he always had, and waiting for her to accept it.

She thought about begging. The thought came and went in less than a second.

There was no point. She had learned that at nine years old, when she had begged him not to send her old nursemaid away, and he had looked at her with those flat eyes and done it anyway.

She had not begged him for anything since.

"When?" she asked.

"The end of the week," said Roric.

"I need three days," said Alira.

He raised an eyebrow. "For what?"

"To prepare my medical supplies," she said. "I will not go to a new territory without my kit. And I need time to write instructions for the wolves I am currently treating. Some of them are midway through care."

It was all true. It was also not the only reason she needed the time, but he did not need to know that.

Roric looked at her for a moment. Then he said, "Two days. Not four."

"Three," she agreed.

She turned to leave. 

"Alira," Roric called out, causing Alira to stop with her hand on the door frame.

"You represent this pack," said Roric. "Whatever you think of the arrangement, you will conduct yourself accordingly."

She did not turn around. "I always do, Father."

She walked out and closed the door softly behind her. Not a slam. Never a slam. She had learned that, too. 

***

Aliira did not go back to the infirmary.

Instead, she walked to the far end of the compound, past the storage rooms and the empty pen where they kept the horses in winter, until she reached the small yard behind the east wall. Nobody came here. That was why she liked it.

She sat down on the low stone step and put her face in her hands.

She was not going to cry.

She just needed a moment where no one could see her face, and she did not have to hold it steady.

Ashveil. She was being sent to Ashveil.

She knew what the wolves there thought of her bloodline. She knew what they had every right to think. Ironmoor had been her father's doing, even if she had been just a child when it happened, even if she had only understood the full weight of it years later. It did not matter how old she had been. Her name was Vael. That was enough.

She sat there until the sky started to darken. Then she stood, brushed the dust off her skirt, and went back inside.

There was work to do.

***

She packed her medical kit first.

It was a real task, not an excuse. She had herbs in paper bundles, tinctures wrapped in cloth, needles and thread and small bone tools she had made herself. She laid them all out on her bed and sorted through them carefully, deciding what to bring and what to leave behind for whoever replaced her in the infirmary.

She hoped they would replace her. She hoped her father would find someone else to treat his wolves and not just leave them to manage on their own.

She almost laughed at herself for still worrying about that.

When the kit was packed, she sat on the edge of her bed and looked at the floor.

Specifically, at the loose board beneath the left leg of her wardrobe.

She had been seventeen when she started. It had begun with small things, things she noticed and could not un-notice. A name mentioned in a meeting she was not supposed to hear. A document left out on her father's desk when he stepped away. Letters that passed through the compound in sealed pouches but sometimes arrived already opened.

She had written everything down. Dates, names, conversations, the things she witnessed and the things she could only piece together. She had kept the journal hidden under the floor, in a box wrapped in oilskin, for eight years.

She got up and moved the wardrobe.

The board came up easily. She had loosened it so many times that it barely needed lifting.

The journal was exactly where she had left it. Thick and dark, its leather cover was soft from years of handling. She picked it up and held it for a moment, feeling the weight of it.

Eight years of quiet, careful truth.

Her father's crimes. The Consortium's reach. Ironmoor. Everything she had gathered, one piece at a time, too afraid to act on it and too stubborn to stop collecting it.

She opened her travel case.

The false bottom was something she had built herself, two years ago, when she had first started thinking that one day she might need to leave. It was not complicated. Just a thin panel of wood cut to fit the interior exactly, sitting half an inch above the real base.

She lifted the panel, set the journal inside, and pressed the panel back down.

Then she placed her folded clothes on top, neat and ordinary, and closed the clasps.

She sat back down on the bed.

Ashveil. A pack built by a man who had every reason to hate her. A territory she had never seen. A life she had not chosen.

But she had not chosen this life either. She had been born into it the same way she had been born into her name, and she had spent twenty-five years making the best of what she was given.

She could do it again.

She lay down without changing her clothes and stared at the ceiling.

Whatever Ashveil was, it could not be worse than this.

She told herself that, and almost believed it.