Chapter 3

LYRA

He still hadn't let go of my arm.

Kael stood there staring at my scars like they had personally offended him, his grip loose now, his thumb resting against the worst one without realizing it.

"Who did this to you?" His voice came out rough around the edges, like the words had caught on something on the way out.

I opened my mouth.

"Brother?" The door opened and Selene appeared in the doorway like she had been standing just behind it this whole time.

Which, knowing Selene, she probably had. She was wrapped in cream silk, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, her eyes doing that thing where they managed to look both innocent and deeply concerned at the same time.

She was annoyingly good at it. I would give her that.

I watched Kael's entire demeanor shift in real time. The crack in his expression sealed itself shut. His shoulders dropped from tense to relaxed. The hand holding my wrist loosened and fell away entirely, like he had simply forgotten it was there.

He turned toward her voice the way a plant turned toward sunlight.

"Why aren't you in bed?" He was already moving toward her, already reaching for her elbow. "The healer said you need rest, Selene, if you're not sleeping properly your body won't—"

"I heard voices.m." She let him fuss, tilting her face up at him with a small grateful smile. "I just wanted to make sure everything was okay."

Her eyes drifted past his shoulder and found mine across the room. "And to welcome Lyra home properly." Her voice softened on my name like she was handling something delicate. "I'm so glad she's finally back."

Her eyes filled with tears and I scoffed. I had to hand it to her. Three years and she had only gotten better at it.

Kael turned back to look at me and every scrap of warmth he'd just given her was completely gone from his face. Wiped clean.

"You see that?" He said it quietly, like he was sharing something obvious. "She's not well. She dragged herself out of bed just to welcome you home." He shook his head slowly. "She never stopped thinking about you, not even once."

I looked at my brother's face and thought about seven hundred and forty two mornings on a stone floor and pressed my back teeth together and said absolutely nothing.

Selene stepped forward, already unwrapping the silk from her shoulders. "She looks freezing. She should take this, I have plenty of—"

"She's fine." Kael caught the fabric and tucked it back around her firmly, his hands gentle in a way they had never once been with me.

"She ran six hour border patrols in the middle of winter. A little cold won't kill her." He looked at me with that flat expression that said this conversation was already over. "Put it back on."

Selene obeyed with the gracious smile of someone who knew they had already won.

She moved to the side table then, quiet and unhurried, pouring tea like we were all here for a perfectly normal evening.

She arranged a small plate of food beside it, carried both across the room and set them down in front of me without a single word. Just a gentle look.

The look of a woman performing kindness for an audience.

I stared at the food and my stomach turned, and it's not from hunger, the hunger I was used to, I had made a kind of peace with that particular ache over three years.

I stepped back before I could stop myself.

And Selene's hand slipped.

The teacup left her fingers and hit the stone floor like a small explosion, ceramic cracking apart, hot tea splashing in every direction between us.

Selene gasped, her knees dipping slightly, one hand flying to her chest.

Kael crossed the room in four strides. Both hands on her shoulders, his head dipping to look at her face, his voice dropping into something low and careful. "Are you hurt? Did any of it catch you? Let me see—"

Something sharp drove straight up through my heel.

The pain was white and hot, I pressed my lips together and locked every muscle in my face and did not make a single sound. Blood welled up fast and dark beneath my foot, spreading slowly across the stone.

Not one person in that room looked at me. Kael was turning Selene's hands over one by one, checking her palms, her fingers, the inside of her wrists, asking her was she dizzy, had she eaten, she needed to tell him these things, she couldn't just—

"She did that on purpose."

He said it over his shoulder. Just a fact he was tired of repeating.

"Classic Lyra." A short humorless sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "Always finding a way to make you look bad. Three years away and nothing's changed." He pulled Selene into his side like he was shielding her from weather. "I'm sorry. I should have thought this through before bringing her back."

Selene looked at me over his shoulder.

That flicker behind her eyes. That quick unguarded flash of something she never let anyone see on her face on purpose. Pure satisfaction then it was gone.

She pressed her cheek against Kael's arm and closed her eyes. "She didn't mean it," she murmured. "She's been through so much. We have to be patient with her."

I bent down, gripped the glass shard between two fingers and pulled it free in one clean motion. Pressed my sleeve against the wound. Straightened back up.

Nobody noticed I had moved.

Kael's jaw went tight suddenly. His eyes glazed over the way they did when a mind link came through on the Alpha frequency. Someone talking directly into his head. I watched the message land, watched his expression shift from worried brother to Alpha in under three seconds.

"Selene." Sharp. Decisive. "Go get ready. We need to make a good impression tomorrow." He glanced at me briefly and there was nothing behind it. Whatever had cracked open in his face upstairs was sealed and buried and gone. "The Alpha King is three days out. He's sensed his mate somewhere in this pack and he wants to meet every eligible female before he makes any formal decisions."

Selene pulled back from his arm.

Her face before she arranged it.

I caught it for half a breath. That smile she hadn't decided to perform yet. The real one. Slow and certain and deeply satisfied, the smile of a woman who had been waiting for a specific door to open and had just heard the handle turn.

Then she pressed her fingers to her lips, wide-eyed, perfectly surprised. "Oh." A soft breath. "Of course. I'll be ready."

Kael was already on his phone, already somewhere else, already three steps into a conversation I wasn't part of.

I stood in the middle of the room with blood soaking through my sleeve and glass around my feet and the quiet understanding settling into my chest that I could disappear entirely in this moment and nobody in this room would notice until morning.

I turned and walked out.

~~~~

ZAREN’S POV

I felt my mate the second we crossed the boundary and I sat forward in my seat.

"Sir?" Cade looked up from his tablet across from me.

I pressed two fingers to my sternum and said nothing. The convoy kept moving through the dark. Silvercrest's pine forest pushed in close on both sides of the road, the ancient sentinel stones rising at the boundary with their moon runes burning faint amber in my headlights.

The pull strengthened with every mile.

She was close but I couldn't reach her Wolf, something was wrong.

"The Silvercrest Alpha's daughter," Cade continued, watching me carefully now. "Comes from a noble bloodline. Strong pack standing. Everyone seems to think she's the obvious choice for—"

"Go in without the title." I turned from the window. "Get me something low ranking to put on. Civilian....or a Rogue if you can pull it together quickly till I get my mate."

Cade set the tablet flat on his knee and gasped. "..but...If the Silvercrest Alpha finds out you entered his territory without announcing yourself he'll take it as a direct—"

"Oh Cade….you know why I'm here but I can feel her…Mine… but she doesn't know I'm coming. No one needs to know. I feel something is wrong with her." I held his gaze and kept my voice even.

"Get me the clothes, Cade. I'm not wasting a single moment."