Chapter 4

Chapter 4

KADE

My mother told me to find you.

I didn't have time to ask what that meant.

I bit into my own wrist, pressed it to hers, and said the old words. The silver light came up between us, bright enough to push back the dark of the cellar. She screamed once. Then she fell against my chest and went still.

For a terrible second I thought I had been too late.

Then I felt it. Her heartbeat, suddenly steady and strong. Beating right alongside mine.

I carried her out of that burning house and all the way home.

A knock at my study door pulled me back to the present.

"Alpha?" It was Tobias, one of my young guards. "The council is waiting in the great hall. You called the meeting for this morning."

I had. I had forgotten.

"I'm coming," I said.

I opened the top drawer of my desk and looked at the strip of black cloth lying inside. The red thorn stared back at me.

This was why I couldn't tell her. Not all of it. Not yet.

I could tell her I didn't give the order. I could tell her I found her dying and saved her life. But the moment she asked who did it, what would I say?

My wolves. Wolves wearing my colors. Wolves I trained and fed and trusted. I didn't know which ones. I didn't know why. But they were mine, and I was their alpha. What they did, I did. That was the law I had lived by my whole life.

Her people's blood was on my hands, whether I held the knife or not.

I closed the drawer and went to the great hall.

The hall was full. The six elders sat at the long table near the fire. Behind them, my warriors stood along the walls, maybe forty of them. More than usual. Word had spread fast. Everyone wanted to see what the alpha would do with the human girl.

The noise dropped the moment I walked in. I took my seat at the head of the table.

"Speak," I said.

Garrett stood up first. Of course he did. He was the oldest elder, with a gray beard and a voice like gravel. He had never liked change, and he had never liked humans.

"Alpha," he said. "With respect. What have you done?"

"I saved a life."

"You bonded a human. A human from Willowbrook, the same village that just burned. Do you know what the other villages are saying? They're saying the Blackthorn pack did it. They're sharpening their pitchforks as we speak. And now we have one of their daughters locked in your room."

"She isn't locked in."

"Then she's a hostage. Call her what she is." Garrett slapped his hand on the table. "Keep her. Use her. If the humans come for us, we show them she's alive and in our hands. That might make them think twice."

Some of the warriors along the wall nodded. I saw it. I remembered their faces.

Then Maren stood up. She was younger than Garrett, with sharp eyes and a sharp tongue.

"She's not a hostage," Maren said. "She's his mate. The bond took. You all saw the light from the south that night. The moon blessed it. That makes her our future Luna."

"A human Luna?" someone laughed from the back. I didn't need to look to know it was Vera. Her voice always carried. "A human who can't shift, can't fight, and fainted the moment she was touched? That's our Luna now?"

"Enough," I said.

The room went quiet.

"Nobody touches her," I said. "Nobody threatens her. She is under my protection. Anyone who forgets that answers to me."

Garrett sat down, but his face said he wasn't done. Vera folded her arms and smiled at me in a way I didn't like.

The side door opened, and Silas walked in.

He was late, which wasn't like him. He came across the hall with an easy smile and sat down in his seat at my right hand, where he always sat. My beta. My oldest friend. We had grown up together in this house. We had learned to shift together, learned to fight together. When my father died, it was Silas who stood beside me while I took the alpha's oath.

"Sorry," he said. "I was down in the training yard."

I noticed his left hand. There was a fresh white bandage wrapped around the palm, tight and neat. A little blood had soaked through near the thumb.

"What happened?" I asked.

He looked at it and laughed. "Sparring with the new pups. Tobias got in a lucky swing with a practice blade. Don't tell him it hurt, he'll never stop bragging."

Tobias, standing by the door, grinned and ducked his head.

"What did I miss?" Silas asked.

"Garrett wants to keep the human as a hostage," Maren said. "Vera thinks she's useless. I think she's our Luna."

Silas turned to me. His face was calm. Kind.

"And what do you think, Kade?"

"I think she just lost everything she had," I said. "I think she's scared and angry and she wants me dead."

"Can you blame her?" Silas said quietly.

The hall was silent.

Silas leaned forward and looked around the table at the elders.

"Whatever she is," he said, "a hostage, a Luna, or just a frightened girl, one thing is true. She's in danger. The humans want revenge. Some of our own might want her gone. If anything happens to her, it happens to our alpha too. We all know how the bond works." He looked at my bloody sleeve, and his eyebrows rose a little. "It seems she knows too."

A few people laughed. Even I almost smiled.

"So we protect her," Silas said. "That's all. Whatever we decide later, right now we keep her safe." He turned back to me. "Let me guard her door myself. Tonight and every night until she's settled. I'll pick the men. Nobody gets close to her without going through me."

I looked at him. My brother in everything but blood.

Relief loosened something tight in my chest. For the first time in two days, I didn't feel completely alone.

"Thank you," I said.

"Always," Silas said, and he meant it. I was sure he meant it.

After the meeting ended and the hall began to empty, I pulled Silas aside near the fire. I kept my voice low.

"There's something else," I said. "Something I haven't told the council."

He waited.

"The wolves who burned Willowbrook," I said. "They wore our colors. I found a band in the street. Black cloth. Red thorn."

Silas went still. His face went pale. "That's not possible."

"I held it in my hand."

"Kade." He shook his head slowly. "None of our wolves would do that. Not without your order."

"Then someone did it without my order."

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he put his good hand on my shoulder and squeezed.

"I'll find them," he said. "Whoever they are. I swear it."

I nodded. I believed him.

He turned to leave, then stopped. "Does she know? About the colors?"

"No."

"Good," Silas said softly. "Keep it that way. For now. She's not strong enough to hear it."

He walked out. I stayed by the fire, staring into it, thinking about a cellar full of smoke and a girl on her knees in the dirt, begging me to save her.

My mother told me to find you.

That was when the pain hit my hand.

It came out of nowhere. A sharp, slicing sting right across my left palm, deep enough to make me hiss and grab my wrist. I looked down.

My palm was fine. No cut. No blood.

It wasn't my pain.

It was hers.

I was already moving toward the door when it flew open. Tobias burst into the hall, out of breath, his eyes wide.

"Alpha!" he shouted. "It's the human. Her room is empty. The window is smashed, and there's blood all over the glass."