Chapter 5

Bree found me before I found her.

I was walking out of the training grounds the next afternoon, arms aching, still replaying the morning's session on a loop in my head, when a familiar voice sliced clean through my thoughts.

"Well, look who decided to come back to the land of the living."

I turned. She was leaning against the fence, arms crossed, dark eyes unreadable at first, hair cropped short where I remembered a long braid. Bree Owusu. My best friend before I traded her for a boy who was never worth the trade.

"Bree." My mouth went dry. "I'm sorry. For all of it. For choosing him over you. I don't have an excuse."

I braced my feet against the ground and waited for her to walk away. She would have had every right to.

Instead, she pushed off the fence and crashed into me, arms wrapping so tight it knocked half the breath from my already tired lungs.

"I know." Her voice came muffled against my shoulder. "I forgave you a long time ago, idiot. When I heard what happened at that party, I almost drove out to your grandma's just to shred every shirt Ren owns for you."

"I would have let you."

She laughed, loud and unguarded, and something behind my ribs finally loosened, just a fraction, for the first time since I'd stepped back onto this land.

We fell into step side by side, and she talked while I listened, which parts of the territory Ashwood had rebuilt, who had stayed, who had run, the slow, unglamorous work of a pack stitching itself back together after its own leadership had failed it. She mentioned, quiet, almost offhand, that people still left flowers near the old border line where my mother used to walk.

"Did Ash know her?" The question left my mouth before I'd fully decided to ask it. Something about the way he'd said my name that first night, like a fact he already carried instead of one he'd just learned, had been picking at me since I got back.

Bree's face flickered, just barely, a shadow passing behind her eyes and gone again. It was the same flicker I'd seen cross Grandma Ruth's face over tea a year ago, and I was starting to recognize the shape of it. People in my life kept almost telling me something and then folding it back up before it reached their mouths.

"I don't know. Why?"

"No reason." I tucked the flicker away somewhere safe, a loose thread I fully intended to pull loose later, and I meant it this time.

We were still walking when Ethan Marsh materialized out of nowhere, grinning like a year hadn't touched him at all.

"Well, well. Nora Bishop, back from the dead." He fell into step beside us, uninvited, hands stuffed in his pockets. "Heard about Ren finding his mate right in front of you. Bet that stung, watching him run off with someone else after everything."

"Watching him run off saved me a lot of grief, actually." I didn't break stride. "Turns out I dodged something a lot worse than heartbreak."

"Feisty." Ethan's grin only widened, like my anger was a show put on for his personal entertainment. "You've changed."

"You haven't." I stopped dead and turned on him, close enough now that his grin finally faltered. "Get out of my way, Ethan, before I remember how much I never liked you."

He raised both hands and backed off, still grinning, and Bree rolled her eyes so hard I heard it in her voice. "He really hasn't changed one bit."

"Small mercies," I muttered, though something about the way his eyes had lingered on me a beat too long before he backed off stayed with me longer than I wanted it to.

We ended up back at my place for dinner, Bree sliding into a chair at our table like the year apart had never happened at all. My father looked lighter than he had since I'd walked back through that door, watching Bree and me needle each other the way we used to as kids. Colt teased me about being paired with Ash again, and Dad's face pulled tight with worry until Colt assured him, not entirely convincingly, that Ash wasn't actually going to hurt me.

I didn't mention the bruise darkening along my ribs. Some things a father doesn't need to know.

That night, once Bree had gone home and the house had settled into quiet, I lay flat on my back staring at the ceiling, turning the day over piece by piece. The flicker crossing Bree's face when I mentioned my mother and Ash. The way Ash had said my name that first night, like a fact he already possessed instead of one he'd just learned. My father's strange comment about Ashwood never abandoning what's his, delivered with something close to respect buried under all that grief. Colt's word: he usually rotates.

None of it added up to anything solid on its own. Just a handful of small wrongnesses, the kind that mean nothing alone but start weighing something the second you notice how many there are, and how many people are working very hard to make sure I don't notice all of them at once.

My phone buzzed against the nightstand. An unknown number. Something in my stomach dropped cold before I'd even unlocked the screen.

Welcome home, Nora. Your mother would be proud of how far you have come. There is more to her story than your family has told you, and more to mine, if you are brave enough to ask the right questions.

No name. No number I recognized. I sat straight up, blanket sliding off my shoulders, reading the message three times through while my pulse hammered loud enough to fill the whole room.

I thought about waking Colt. I thought about walking straight down the hall to my father's door. Instead I saved the number, turned the phone face down on the nightstand, and lay back in the dark with my heart still slamming against my ribs.

Someone in this territory knew something about my mother that my own family had never told me. And whoever it was had been watching me long enough to know exactly which words would keep me from sleeping.