Chapter 3

Grandma Ruth's old truck rattled over every rut in the road, and I spent the whole drive turning Colt's words over and over: there's a lot you don't know yet, like a stone I couldn't stop rubbing between my fingers until the edges wore smooth and still meant nothing.

"You don't have to have it figured out before we get there." She kept both hands steady on the wheel, eyes flicking to me every few miles like she was checking a wound for bleeding. "Whatever's waiting for us, we handle it when we see it."

The checkpoint appeared at the edge of Hollow Pine territory just as the sky started bruising toward evening, and my stomach dropped before my brain caught up with why. There had never been a checkpoint there before. Two wolves stood beside a marked post in dark grey jackets, a crescent stitched over a bare branch on each shoulder, a symbol I'd never once seen on our land.

One of them leaned down to the window, forearm scarred long and pale, built like something you'd have to go through a doorframe to get past.

"State your business."

"We're here to see family." I leaned across the seat to be seen. "My brother's the Beta."

His brow pulled down. "Beta under who?"

"Under who? Under Hale." My hands curled in my lap. "Colt Bishop."

He glanced at his partner. Something passed between them, quick and wordless, and then he stepped back and waved us through without another word.

"Well, that was strange," Grandma Ruth muttered once we'd pulled away.

"Very." I watched the checkpoint shrink in the side mirror until it disappeared, a cold itch crawling slow up the back of my neck.

Hollow Pine smelled wrong. Not bad, just different, layered with scents I didn't recognize threading through the trees, strangers' faces moving through the market square where I used to know every single one. One year. It felt like five.

My childhood home looked tired in a way that made my throat go tight. The paint my mother repainted every summer had gone grey and peeling at the edges. Weeds choked the flower beds she used to kneel over for hours. I stood on the porch a full ten seconds, hand raised and not knocking, until Grandma Ruth walked straight past me and pushed the door open like she'd never left.

My father sat folded into his recliner, smaller than I remembered, like grief had eaten the space that used to belong to muscle and posture. Colt shot up off the couch too fast, arms half raised, like he couldn't decide whether to hug me or brace for impact.

"Lola." My father's voice broke clean down the middle of the old nickname he hadn't used in years.

"Hi, Dad." I crossed the room in three steps and let him fold me into his chest, breathing in cologne and cedar, the same smell I'd known my whole life, and for one second the whole year apart just fell away.

"You got tall." Colt looked me up and down once Dad finally let go, the same slow, measuring look Chris used to give me. "And you look like you could actually hurt somebody now."

"I could hurt you right now if you don't tell me what happened to Mom."

Dad sank back into the recliner. Colt lowered himself beside him. Grandma Ruth crossed the room and set a hand on her son's shoulder, silent, solid, a wall he could lean his weight against if his legs gave out.

"Go on." Dad's eyes stayed fixed on the floor. "Tell her."

Colt dragged a hand down his face before he spoke. "You remember Ren's father was in a dispute with Ashwood territory before you left?"

"Vaguely. Ren called it boring."

"It wasn't boring." Colt's jaw worked. "Ashwood's Alpha wanted old terms honored, promises Hale's family had ignored for two generations. When Ashwood finally came to collect, Ren's father refused to negotiate. Provoked them instead, thinking they'd back down." He stopped, throat working. "They didn't back down. Turned into a real fight right at the border. Every warrior we had got pulled in, our whole family included. Mom went out there that night, nobody's sure why, she wasn't supposed to be anywhere near the front line. She didn't make it out."

The floor tilted under me. My fingers dug into the arm of the couch, knuckles white, holding on like the room might actually flip.

"And Ren?" The words came out flat, scraped hollow.

Dad's jaw clicked, tight enough to hear across the room. "Ran. Grabbed his mate and fled the second things turned bad, left his own father's warriors to fight without him. Left this whole territory to hold the wreckage alone."

I waited to feel something enormous crack open in my chest. Instead what settled there was cold and quiet, a confirmation of something I'd already half known a year ago and hadn't let myself say out loud. The boy I'd loved had never once been built to stand and hold a line for anybody but himself.

"So who's running things now?" My eyes flicked between them. "That checkpoint back there, those weren't Hale colors."

"That's the other part." Colt exchanged a glance with Dad. "Once Ren ran and his father's authority collapsed, the only way to keep the whole territory from getting wiped out was to surrender to Ashwood outright. We're not Hollow Pine anymore, Nora. Not really. We got absorbed. Alpha Ashwood rules it all now."

"They just took over? Just like that?"

"Wasn't much choice." Dad's voice dropped low. "At least Ashwood didn't run. Whatever else people say about him, Kade Ashwood held that line himself when Ren's father wouldn't. He's ruthless. Doesn't forgive a broken promise easy. But he doesn't abandon what's his, either. That's more than I can say for the man we used to answer to."

Something in the careful, almost respectful way my father said his name snagged in my mind and refused to let go. I filed it next to the shadow that had crossed Grandma Ruth's face, next to Colt's flattened voice on the phone all those months, a small growing pile of things that didn't quite add up.

I sat with that, chest heavy, hands still curled tight in my lap. My mother was gone. My home belonged to a stranger. Ren was somewhere far away, probably still telling himself he'd made the smart choice.

Grandma Ruth took over the kitchen that evening despite Dad's half hearted grumbling, and I was pushing food around a plate I couldn't taste when a voice cut straight through my skull, cold and unfamiliar, the way a strong Alpha's mind link cuts through a wolf whether they invite it in or not.

"Nora Bishop. Report to the training grounds at ten tomorrow morning. Do not be late. I look forward to meeting you."

The line snapped shut before I could even shape a reply.

I looked up. My father's tired eyes. Colt's carefully blank face. Grandma Ruth's eyebrow lifted halfway to her hairline. Something cold settled low in my stomach and stayed there, a feeling I couldn't yet name, except to know it had Kade Ashwood's voice attached to it, and except to notice that he already knew my full name before anyone in this house had said it to him.