What the Wolf Won't Report

Kieran’s POV

She goes still in my arms the second I lift her, all the fight going out of her body at once, and something in my chest tightens so hard it's almost pain.

"Easy," I say again, more to myself than to her now. "I've got you."

She doesn't answer. Can't, from the look of her — skin flushed too hot even through her cloak, breath coming shallow and fast, whatever strength got her this far into a dead-end courtyard clearly spent. I ease her up against my shoulder, careful, and turn back toward the gap between the buildings just as Wren's voice cuts down the alley behind me.

"Kieran." He's breathing hard, like he's run the last several streets trying to catch up. His eyes go straight to her, then to me, and I watch the color drain out of his face. "It's her. From the avenue."

"It's her."

"I told you not to say anything more, and you didn't, and I've spent the last hour telling myself I imagined what I felt sitting on that horse next to you."

He drags a hand down his face. "I didn't imagine it, did I?”

"No."

"Goddess help us both." He says it quiet, almost reverent, nothing like the shock I braced for. He's not surprised. He's been carrying this same suspicion since the avenue, same as I have, and watching it become real in front of him has knocked something loose in his voice instead of his composure. "You understand what you're holding, Kieran. Not just what she is. What she is to you."

"I understand it."

"Then you understand what it costs to be found with her three days before Selection, mate or not." His jaw is tight. "This isn't a hanging offense for an ordinary man. It's worse for an Alpha. Harboring an unclaimed Omega is one thing. Harboring your own fated mate and saying nothing to your council is another entirely — that's not a fine, Kieran, that's a challenge waiting to happen the second anyone finds out."

"Then make sure no one finds out." I shift her weight carefully, her head tucking against my shoulder without her seeming aware of it at all. "Clear a path back to my quarters. Nothing through the main courtyard."

He studies me a long moment, and I watch him run the same calculation he's clearly been running since the avenue — what he owes me as his Alpha, against everything he knows about pack law, about Selection, about exactly how much trouble I'm about to hand us both.

"I'll clear it," he says finally. "But you're going to have to face Alder tonight regardless, Kieran. Bond or not. The whole territory's watching to see if you walk into that hall."

"I know."

"Do you?" His eyes flick to her again, something almost gentle crossing his face despite everything else sitting in it. "Because I don't think you've thought past the next ten minutes yet. I don't think you can, right now."

He's not wrong. I don't answer, because there isn't one that helps either of us, and he falls into step ahead of me instead, clearing the narrow lane, checking the wider street before waving me through.

---

We make it back through the guest wing without passing more than two servants, both sent off on invented errands before they get close enough to see who I'm carrying. By the time I reach my door, her breathing has gone worse, ragged and uneven, heat coming off her skin enough that I can feel it through the wool between us.

"In here." Wren pushes the door open, then stops in the frame instead of following me through. "I'll stand outside. Tell anyone who asks you're resting before the feast."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet." His jaw is tight, worry plain now that there's no one else around to see it. "If Alder's men come looking before the feast starts, or if Crane's people trace her scent this far—"

"I know what happens."

"Then act like it." He pulls the door shut behind me before I can answer that, leaving me alone with her for the first time since the courtyard.

I carry her the rest of the way in and lay her down carefully on the bed against the far wall. Her scent fills the room in a way it never fully could out in the open street — unmasked now, whatever suppressant was left burned through completely, and it hits me at full strength for the first time. Cedar. Rain on warm stone. Something underneath both I don't have a word for yet, something that makes my wolf press so hard against my ribs I have to grip the bedpost to keep from closing the last few feet between us entirely.

*Mate.*

The word settles into me like it's always been there, waiting for the rest of me to catch up.

I make myself stay exactly where I am. Whatever the Goddess has decided about the two of us, she doesn't get a say in it right now, fevered and half-conscious in a stranger's room. If I touch her like this — if I do anything at all while she can't tell me whether she wants it — I become no different than every Alpha in this city who thinks an Omega's body belongs to whoever finds her first.

I won't be that. Not for her.

I cross instead to the small table by the window, pour water into a cup, and set it within her reach on the nightstand. Then I pull the single chair to the far wall, as much distance as four walls will allow, and sit down to wait, watching the fever move visibly under her skin, watching her hands twitch against the blanket like she's still running somewhere in whatever dream the heat's dragging her through.

The knock comes just as her eyes start to move behind closed lids.

"Alpha Voss." A runner's voice, young, nervous, muffled through the door. "The feast hall is asking for you. Alpha Alder specifically requested you arrive before the formal presentation begins."

I'm on my feet before I decide to be, caught between the door and the bed, unable to fully turn toward either.

"Alpha Voss?" The runner again, more nervous now. "They're asking me to bring word of when you'll arrive."

On the bed, Juni's breath catches, sharp and sudden, and her eyes come open all at once — glassy, fever-bright, fixed on nothing for one long second before they find me standing halfway across the room.

I don't answer the door.

"Where—" Her voice cracks, barely more than breath. "Where am I?"

"Alpha Voss," the runner tries again, sharper now, clearly under instruction not to leave without an answer. "Alpha Alder is waiting, sir."

I ignore him entirely.

"Somewhere safe," I tell her instead, my voice low, careful, every part of me wanting to close the distance between us and every part of me staying exactly where I am. "You're safe. I promise you that much."

Her eyes find mine properly then, focusing with visible effort, and something flickers across her face — recognition, maybe, or the first thread of real fear breaking through the fever now that she's lucid enough to feel it.

"I know you," she whispers. "The street. You were—"

"I was."

"Sir—" the runner, one more time, insistent.

"Tell them," I call out, not moving my eyes from her, "that I'm not feeling well. That I'll join when I can."

A pause, then footsteps retreating fast down the hall, clearly relieved to be away from whatever's making the Alpha of Voss sound like that through a locked door.

Juni's still watching me, chest rising too fast, fever burning behind her eyes, and I can feel exactly how much she wants to trust the words I just said and exactly how little her life has ever given her reason to.

"You don't have to be afraid of me," I say.

"Everyone says that." Her voice shakes, fever and fear tangled so tightly together I can't tell where one ends and the other starts. "Right before they aren't safe at all."

"I know." I don't move closer, though every instinct in me is screaming to. "I'm not asking you to believe me yet. I'm asking you to let me prove it instead."

"How."

"I'm not going to touch you." My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to, thick with everything I'm holding back to say it steady. "Not unless you ask me to. Not while you're like this, and not after, unless it's something you actually want — not something your body's telling you that you need right now because I'm the only one in the room."

Her breath catches, and for one long moment neither of us moves, the space between the bed and my chair stretched tight as a wire, her fever-bright eyes locked on mine like she's trying to find the lie in it and can't.

"Why," she whispers finally. "Why does it matter to you what I want."

I don't have an easy answer for that. I have a word sitting heavy in my chest that I'm not ready to hand her yet, not like this, not while she's burning and half-certain I'm still the danger she should be running from.

"It just does," I say instead. "Ask me again when the fever breaks. I'll still be here."