CHAPTER 4

Nobody spoke on the ride back to Ashveil.

Lucien rode at the front. Alira was somewhere behind him, between two of his wolves, with her travel case strapped to the side of the second horse. 

He did not look back. He had made that decision at Greymist Ridge, and he was keeping it.

The forest road was long, and the afternoon was getting cold. He kept his eyes forward and his mind on nothing useful. Every time his thoughts drifted toward what had happened during the rite, he pulled them back. Hard.

It meant nothing, he told himself.

The mate bond was an old pack myth dressed up as biology. Wolves felt things. Wolves misread those feelings all the time, especially in high-pressure situations. A formal rite, a political handover, six years of built-up tension about the Oakshade Packs. Of course, his body had responded strangely. It was stress. It was anger finding the wrong outlet.

It was not what Draven thought it was.

It was not what he knew it was.

He dug his heels in and pushed his horse faster.

***

Ashveil's gates opened before they reached them. The wolves on watch knew the sound of their Alpha returning.

The pack was out in the yard when they rode in. Not gathered for a ceremony, just present the way wolves always were when something significant came through the gates. They stood in loose groups as they watched. Some of them stared openly at Alira. Others made a point of not looking at her, which was its own kind of staring.

Alira said nothing. She dismounted without help and stood with her hand on her travel case and her back straight, and she let them look.

Lucien swung down from his horse and turned to face the yard. "She is here under the Council's alliance," he said, loud enough for all of them to hear. "Basic courtesy. Nothing more, nothing less." He looked at no one in particular. "Any questions?"

Nobody had questions. Nobody ever did when he used that voice.

He turned to Sera, his Second Beta, who was standing near the main door. "Show her to the east room," he said.

Sera looked at him. The east room was the furthest guest quarter from the main hall. From everything, really. It was where they put people they wanted to contain.

She did not say any of that out loud. She said, "Of course," and turned to Alira. "This way."

Alira followed without a word. But as she passed him, close enough that he caught the faint smell of something clean and herbal, she glanced at him once.

Not angry. Not afraid.

Just steady, the way she had been steady at Greymist Ridge, and he hated it a little because it gave him nothing to push against.

He went inside before she was through the door.

***

He made it to his chambers before it hit him properly.

He stood in the middle of the room and tried to breathe normally, but could not. His chest felt wrong. Too tight on the left side, right where the pull had started during the rite, like something was pressing outward from the inside and had not stopped pressing since he let go of her hand.

His wolf was still restless. That was the worst part. The part of him that had been cold and quiet and focused for six years, the part that had never once turned toward anything except vengeance, was now pacing in circles and pointing in the direction of the east wing.

He turned and put his fist through the bookcase.

Books hit the floor. A small clay figure his brother had made him, years ago, toppled off the shelf, and he caught it before it could break. He stood there with it in his hand, breathing hard, staring at the mess he had made.

He set the figure down carefully on his desk.

Then he sat down, pressed both hands flat on the desk, looked at the wall and made himself be very still.

She was Roric Vael's daughter.

She was in his territory because the Council had forced it. She was a name on a document. She was the seal of an arrangement he was going to use and dissolve the moment he had what he needed from it.

She was not his mate.

She was not anything.

He said it firmly enough inside his own head that he almost believed it. Then his wolf turned toward the east wing again, deliberate and certain, and the belief cracked straight down the middle.

He was still staring at the wall when Draven knocked.

He did not say come in. Draven came in anyway. That was the thing about a Beta who had served you for six years. They developed opinions about when to wait and when not to.

Draven looked at the books on the floor. He looked at the broken shelf. He looked at Lucien sitting at his desk with both hands flat on the wood and the expression of a man holding himself together by force.

He pulled a chair out and sat down.

"Don't," said Lucien.

"I haven't said anything," said Draven.

"You're about to." Lucien replied with certainty

Draven leaned back in the chair. He was quiet for long enough that Lucien almost thought he had won. Then Draven said, simply and carefully, "You know what that was."

The room felt very small.

"It was nothing," said Lucien.

Draven said nothing.

"It was a reaction," said Lucien. "Stress. The situation. I hadn't touched a Oakshade Pack wolf in six years and the body responds to that kind of tension in unpredictable—"

"Lucien," said Draven.

Lucien stopped talking.

Draven looked at him with the patient, steady expression of someone who had known him long enough to see straight through every version of a lie he was capable of telling. He did not argue. He did not push. He just sat there and let the silence do the work, and the silence was devastating.

"She's Roric's daughter," said Lucien. His voice came out lower than he intended.

"I know," said Draven.

"She is here as a political arrangement. She is here because I am going to use this alliance to take apart everything her father built. She is not—" He stopped. Pressed his hands harder into the desk. "She cannot be."

Draven was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "What do you want me to do?"

"Nothing," said Lucien. "There is nothing to do. Because it is nothing. And I want you to let it stay nothing."

Draven held his gaze for a moment longer. Then he stood, pushed the chair back in, and walked to the door.

He paused with his hand on the frame. "The east room," he said quietly. "That was a bit far, Lucien."

Lucien did not answer.

Draven left.

***

Lucien did not sleep.

He tried. He lay down, stared at the ceiling, and willed his mind to go quiet the way it usually could when he ordered it to. His mind did not cooperate. His wolf did not cooperate. The left side of his chest kept its low, persistent pressure, not painful, just present, like a hand resting there that he could not shake off.

He lasted until midnight. Then he got up, put his boots back on, and went to stand on the outer wall where the wind was cold enough to be useful.

He stood there for a long time.

At some point, without deciding to, he looked toward the east wing.

Her light was on.

A single window, pale and steady in the dark. Not flickering the way a lamp does when someone is moving around. It was just constant. She was awake too.

He told himself it was a coincidence. That she was probably just restless in a new place, a new bed, surrounded by wolves who had every reason to resent her. That it had nothing to do with him.

Across the territory, in the east room she had not chosen and had not complained about, Alira sat on the edge of an unfamiliar bed with her hand resting in her lap, fingers slightly curled.

The hand he had held.

It was still warm.