Chapter 2- Clara

The Alpha family's private wing occupied most of the third floor, separated from the guest corridors by a set of double doors that remained closed, but unlocked, unless security required otherwise. 

My father's suite sat at the far end. Mine was directly next to the double doors leading into the guest corridor, with Alexander's room across from mine and several smaller rooms between us that had never really served any purpose over the years after my mother had passed. 

Alex's door was closed. 

It always was when he was away. I couldn't remember the last time I'd gone inside. 

The hallway still carried traces of the house I'd grown up in despite how much of the building beyond it still belonged to the pack. Family photographs lined the walls. A narrow table outside my father's sitting room held a vase that had belonged to my grandmother. The rug beneath my feet had a faded patch where Alex had spilled grape juice when he was six and blamed me for it. 

Downstairs was different. 

Downstairs belonged to Westbrook. 

I reached the second-floor landing and immediately heard voices from one of the guest corridors. Housekeeping had already begun final checks. Somewhere below, a cart rattled across the marble entrance hall, followed by the muffled complaint of someone discovering that whatever they'd ordered had arrived at the wrong door. 

The packhouse was waking. 

By the time I reached the first floor, it was fully alive. 

The building had grown with the pack over generations, expanding outward from the original stone house until calling it a house became almost ridiculous. Administrative offices occupied much of the ground floor. There were formal reception rooms, the council chamber, communal spaces, a dining room large enough for pack events and kitchens that could feed several hundred people multiple times a day. The upper levels held the guest accommodations and the private residential wings for the senior leadership. Beyond the main building were the gardens, the greenhouse, training grounds and th rest of the cental facilities serving Westbrook. 

To me it was simply home. 

I'd learned to walk in these corridors. I'd hidden beneath the table when I was five because Alexander told me there were ghosts in the basement. I'd completed homework in the kitchen while Joanna cooked dinner for half the pack and spent more evenings than I could count curled into one of the library chairs waiting for my father to finish meetings he had promised wouldn't take long. 

Hundreds of pack members moved through the building every week. That had never made it feel less mine. 

Council week did. 

There were too many unfamiliar things already. Temporary security stations near the entrances. Floral arrangements where family photographs usually stood. Signs directing guests toward rooms nobody in Westbrook needed directions to find. Even the air smelled different from the buckets of fresh greenery waiting to be distributed downstairs. 

I paused on the final step and took it in. For seven days, this place would belong partly to strangers. 

Somewhere deep inside me, another presence stirred. 

Warmth unfurled beneath my ribs, followed by the sleepy impression of annoyance. 

I smiled. 

Lyra, my wolf, had finally woken up. 

She had been a concious part of me since I was twelve, although she'd existed long before she found her voice. Every wolf did. We were born with them woven into us, an inseparable second nature that emerged gradually as we grew. Before Lyra spoke, I'd known her as instinct, sudden emotion and the strange sensation that some reactions belonged to me without being entirely mine. 

The one afternoon, six motnsh before my first shift, she'd informed me that the boy sitting beside me in history class smelled terrible. 

I'd nearly fallen out of my chair. 

Six years later, hearing her inside my mind was natural as hearing my own thoughts. 

She stretched through our shared conciousness now, waking slowly enough that I felt the echo of it in my own body. 

Why are there flowers everywhere?

Her voice wasn't something I heard with my ears. It existed directly inside me, distinct from my own internal voice and familiar enough that I would have recognized here anywhere. 

Because it's council week. 

A pause. 

Still? Ugh. 

I bit back a laugh. Yes. It hasn't even started yet. 

Lyra's displeasure deepened. She had endured months of preparations without understanding why humans needed so many separate conversations to organize one gathering. Wolves, in her opinion, had the superior approach to most social problems: decide whether someone belonged, decide whether they were a threat, and move on with your life.

It was fortunate she wasn't in charge of diplomacy. 

I continued toward the ballroom. 

Rachel had asked for the revised diagram, but I wanted to see the room before handing it over. The florists had arrived early, and after the peony disaster last week, I wasn't trusting anyone's interpretation of white roses and greenery until I'd seen it myself. 

The ballroom doors stood open. I slowed as I approached them. 

Sunlight spilled through the tall windows overlooking the eastern gardens, catching on glassware and polished silver. The room had been transformed since I'd left it the night before. White roses softened the long tables without overwhelming them, greenery threaded between low arrangements and unlit candles, the dance floor gleamed beneath the chandeliers. Beyond the terrace doors, staff were arranging the outdoor seating we'd use if the weather held. 

For several seconds, I forgot to look for problems. Three months of emails, samples, sketches and last-minute changes had become something real. 

Something beautiful. Pride warmed through me before I could talk myself out of it. I'd done this. 

Not alone. An army of people had worked on the Packhouse for weeks. But I'd made the decisions. I'd chosen the arrangements, approved the layouts, built the schedule that determined when every room had to turn over and spent more hours than I wanted to calculate making sure the pieces fit together. 

Then I counted the tables. My smile faded. There were fourteen. There should have been twelve. 

I stepped farther into the ballroom, folder tucked beneath my arm and looked toward the terrace. Two additional rounds had appeared overnight, and whoever had added them had shifted the original layout inward to make space. 

"Morning," Rachel's voice came from behind me. 

I turned. She entered carrying a stack of folded linens, took one look at my face and followed my gaze toward the terrace. Understanding appeared almost immediately. 

I held up the blue folder she'd been harassaing me about. "Before I give you this, would you like to tell me why the diagram inside it no longer matches the room?" 

Rachel laughed, which was not the appropriate response. 

"It isn't funny. This took hours to set up." I sighed. 

"It is a little funny," she chuckled. 

She set the linens on the nearest table before joining me, and I waited while she looked over the new arrangement. Rachel had been with me the night before when we'd finished the original layout, so she knew perfectly well what had changed. 

"Catering came through after you went upstairs last night and tested the service route from the terrace. Once the drink stations were installed the original layout left too narrow a path between the doors and the nearest tables, especially if we had any guests congregating there. The extra rounds were moved off the wall and incorporated into the floor plan so the entire arrangement could shift inward without creating an obvious empty section." 

As she explained, we walked the route together. I could see the problem almost immediately. I hated that enough to make Rachel grin when she noticed. 

"Don't." 

He grin widened, but instead of delivering whatever smart-ass remark she'd been preparing, she took the folder from beneath my arm and opened it to the ballroom plan. We spent the next several minutes comparing the revised placement to the printed diagram, working out which table numbers needed to change and whether the new layout affected Saturday's ball. 

By the time we finished, I'd stopped caring that someone had changed the room without asking me. The service route was cleaner, the additional tables gave us more flexibility at dinner, and the dance floor remained untouched. 

"Keep it," I told her. "Update the diagrams before the staff packets go out, and make sure the seating chart gets changed too. I don't want someone looking for table seven and discovering we've moved it across the room." 

Rachel made a note in the margin. "I'll handle it." 

I thanked her and was reaching for the folder when she tucked it firmly against her chest instead, giving me a look that made it clear the paperwork was no longer the subject of her attention. 

Rachel and I weren't close enough that I would have called her one of my best friends, mostly because I wasn't sure I had anyone who qualified for that title, but three months of working side by side had taught her too much about my habits. 

"Have you eaten?" she asked. 

The question was casual, but her expression wasn't. I considered lying, but Rachel had seen me lie about breakfast before and often took it as a personal challenge. "I had a banana while I was answering emails earlier." 

"A whole one?" 

I started toward the ballroom doors rather than answering her immediately. "Most of one." 

Behind me she made a sound that carried considerably more judgment than a single exhale should have been capable of conveying. 

"Go. Eat something substantial enough that it can't be described as most of a fruit." 

I left before she could become more specific about my failures. 

Lyra, who had been following the exchange with increasing amusement, offered no support whatsoever. Instead, the moment I turned toward the kitchens, approval spread warmly through our shared conciousness. 

I like her.

I snorted. You like anyone who tries to feed us. 

That isn't true, and you know it. Lyra shook her head at me. 

I waited for the evidence she intended to provide, but none came. By then the smell from the back of the packhouse had reached us anyway, warm bread and butter, mingling with coffee and something sweet enough the Lyra's attention sharpened immediately. 

The kitchens were already operating a the particular level of controlled chaos Joanna seemed to enjoy most. Every prep counter had been claimed, overns opened and closed in a steady rhythm, and the long central island was covered with enough food to feed a wedding party before anyone had even started on lunch. Two younger Omegas were carrying crates in from the pantry, while somoene near the sinks argued that they had ordered twice as much rosemary as the delivery contained. 

Through all of it, Joanna moved with the ease of someone who didn't need to raise her voice to remain in charge. 

She had run Westbrook's kitchens since before I was born, although, run the kitchens, never quite covered what Joanna had been to me. She had bandaged my knees, taught me how to make biscuits, smuggled birthday cake into my bedroom when my father grounded me at fourteen and sat beside my bed through more childhood illnesses than I could remember. She had never once called herself family, and she had never tried to take my mother's place. 

Somehow, that had made room for her to become family anyway. 

She was speaking to one of the cooks when she noticed me. Her eyes dropped to the coffee in my hand, then returned to my face with the kind of patient disappointment that made me wonder whether Rachel had somehow beaten me here through a secret passage. 

"I have things to do," I protested, although I sat when she pulled out the chair. 

"So do I, and yet here we both are." She said. 

Joanna disappeared into the pantry before I could argue, issuing instructions to three different people on her way. She tasted something from one of the pots, frowned at it until the cook responsible looked nervous, added something herself, and then returned to me, carrying a plate with eggs, toast, berries and a cinnamon roll large enough to attract my undivided attention. 

I stared at the plate. "Are you expecting me to feed another person?" 

"No. I am expecting you to eat your breakfast." 

"My breakfast was a banana." I chuckled at myself as she rolled her eyes. 

"Your half eaten banana doesn't count. This is breakfast."

There was enough affection behind the reprimand that I couldn't even pretend to be offended. I picked up the fork while she returned to work, and within minutes the kitchen resumed to swallowing her attention. 

I liked watching Joanna here. She knew every moving piece without appearing to keep track of any of them. A question from the pantry was answered while she checked a sauce; she redirected a tray heading toward the wrong refrigerator without interrupting the conversation she was having about the luncheon; and when one of the younger staff reached for a platter intended for dinner, Joanna somehow noticed from the opposite side of the room. 

She had always when been like that. 

Some of my earliest memories were tied to this kitchen and to her, sitting on a flour-dusted counter with my legs swinging while she rolled pastry, falling asleep at this same table while I waited for my father to finish a meeting, being slipped pieces of chocolate before dinner and then watching Joanna tell Marcus with a perfectly straight face that she couldn't imagine why I had no appetite. 

The humor disappeared from her face slowly enough that I followed her gaze before I realized what she was looking at. 

My bare throat. 

"Damn it." I reached automatically for the moonstone that wasn't there.

Joanna sighed. "Where is it?" 

"Somewhere in my room. It wasn't on the dresser this morning. I was going to look again when I went back upstairs." 

"When is that?" 

"Before the first arrivals." I saw the concern settle into her expression and knew where it was going before she spoke. "Jo, I haven't forgotten about it. I just haven't had time to tear my bedroom apart." 

"I know." She kept her voice low, not secretive so much as private in a kitchen where nearly every workstation was occupied. "But find it before your father sees you without it." 

The warning tightened something in me that had nothing to do with the necklace. 

I set my fork down. "I know." 

Joanna didn't rush to answer. She rested one hand against the back of the empty chair beside me and studied my face with the weary affection of someone who understood that I wasn't atually angry with her. 

What bothered me was that she was right. He would notice. He would make something of it, and whatever argument I constructed about ownership or reasonable expectations wouldn't change the fact that he could turn a forgotten necklae into a failure of respect if he decided to. 

The moment could have become heavier if my phone hadn't begun vibrating against the table. 

I answered, expecting a delivery issue. Instead, our receptionist informed me, with the careful tone of someone who had already decided that this was going to ruin my morning, that the Ashford Pack had called to add four people to it's delegation. 

I stopped halfway through reaching for my coffee. "Four?" 

"Yes. Two senior warriors and their mates. Alpha Ashford's office says the joined the trip this morning and he would prefer them housed inside the packhouse with the rest of his delegation." 

Of course he would. 

After promising I'd call Ashford's office back once I knew where we could put them, I ended the call and pulled the rooming chart from beneath the menu sheets. 

Joanna left me to solve it while I spread the chart across the table. 

Ashford already occupied most of the west guest corridor, and there was no way to put four more people there without breaking apart another delegation. The south cottages had space, but if Damien Ashford had specifically requested that his additional people remain inside the Packhouse, sending them to a cottage would only delay the argument until he arrived. 

The east corridor gave me more room to manuever. 

At the far end of it, just beyond the set of double doors was the Alpha's suite, including my own bedroom- I had deliberately kept the guest rooms nearest those doors unassigned to the larger delgations when I made the original rooming plan, mostly because I liked the idea of preserving at least a thin illusion of privacy while half of the regional leadership moved into my home. 

Blackstone's leadership delegation was originally scheduled in the west Alpha suite and the adjoining rooms: Alpha Kieran Blackstone, his Beta Maddox Prescott, and his younger brothers, Cole and Luca, who served as his Gammas. Their warriors were already assigned to two of the southern cottages. If I moved the four principals to Rooms Thirty through Thirty-Three at the end of the east corridor, I could shift one of the smaller delegations into Blackstone's former rooms and give Ashford the additional space he wanted without separating anyone. 

It would put Kieran Blackstone directly on the other side of the doors from the Alpha family wing, with the rest of his leadership stretching down the corridor next to him. Room Thirty was the exact other side from my room, they shared a wall. 

Not exactly the quiet buffer I had planned. 

Still, it was the cleanest, easiest solution available, and Blackstone wasn't due until ten-thirty, which gave me enough time to move the welcome baskets, notify housekeeping and correct the luggage assignments before anyone knew there had been a change. 

Joanna glanced at the chart when I stood. "Solved?" 

"I think so. Unless another Alpha discoveres several surprise guests on the highway." 

She laughed. "Don't say things like that outloud." 

"Fair point. That's reckless." I collected my papers and reached automatically for my coffee. 

I kissed her on the cheek before she could object and escaped the kitchen with my phone and coffee in one hand and the rooming chart in the other, calling Rachel before the doors had finished swinging shut behind me.