The woman who came back

CHAPTER 4

The Woman Who Came Back

“You’re really going back?”

Tessa leaned in the doorway of Wren’s office, arms crossed, coffee in one hand. Behind her, through the glass wall, a dozen employees typed at their desks beneath a logo that read Hartley Rescue Consulting.

“I promised I would,” Wren said, not looking up from the signed papers in front of her. “Three years. I said three years.”

“You said you’d never set foot there again.”

“I said a lot of things at eighteen.”

Tessa watched her for a moment. “You know you don’t have to prove anything to those people, right? You built this from nothing. You’re rich, you’re brilliant, and you don’t owe them a thing.”

“I’m not going for them.” Wren closed the folder. “I’m going for Lily.”

The change in Wren was not subtle. The girl who had once flinched at raised voices now carried herself like someone who had finished flinching. Her hair was glossy and smartly cut. Her suit was tailored. She walked into rooms as if she had already bought them. Over three years in the human world, she had taken a failing consulting firm, rebuilt it from the bones, and turned it into the sort of company that rescued others. She had saved every cent that wasn’t spent on rent or Lily’s hidden medical fund, and now she had enough to buy her sister out of any debt Gideon dared to name.

And she still hadn’t forgotten the quiet thread in her chest, or the man who had left it slack.

*   *   *

Silverpine had not changed. The same gate, the same pines, the same smell of woodsmoke and old resentment. But the wolves that stared at Wren as she walked up the steps of the pack house were not looking at a wolfless waitress. They were looking at a woman in a cream coat and four-inch heels who moved like she owned the ground.

“Father,” she said, as Gideon opened his study door.

He had aged. There were more gray hairs, more lines around his mouth. For a flicker of a second, something that might have been regret crossed his face.

“Wren.” He cleared his throat. “You look well.”

“I have come for my sister. I can pay whatever you claim she cost.” She laid a check on his desk. “Name the sum.”

Gideon didn’t touch it. He was quiet for a long time, and when he finally spoke, it was in the soft, reasonable voice she had learned, as a child, to fear.

“It isn’t about money anymore.”

“Then what is it about?”

“Silverpine is dying.” He gestured at the ledgers stacked on his desk. “My investments failed. The mine collapsed last winter. We have debts to three neighboring packs, and without help, we will lose our land by spring.”

“That is not my problem.”

“No,” he agreed. “It’s your sister’s.” His eyes met hers. “Who do you think pays for her medicine now? Who do you think will keep paying if the pack loses everything?”

Wren’s blood went cold. “You wouldn’t.”

“I won’t need to, if you help me.” He slid a folded document across the desk. “An Alpha of a powerful pack needs a wife. A political marriage, three years, nothing more. In exchange, he will bring Silverpine the resources to survive. Marry him, and your sister’s treatment is guaranteed for life.”

She stared at the page. Every instinct screamed run.

But she had spent three years learning how to win, and she knew one thing for certain: you never fight the person who holds the leash. You pretend to hold it yourself.

“I’ll do it,” she said at last.

Gideon’s eyes narrowed. “That easy?”

“I have conditions. Lily stays here under guard. She keeps receiving her full treatment every week, and I’m allowed to see her. And in three years, when the contract ends, she leaves with me.”

“Agreed.”

He didn’t hesitate, which told her he had no intention of keeping it. Good. Neither did she.

Three years? I’ll be gone in three days, she thought, sliding the paper back toward him. You taught me to be a liar. Thank you.

*   *   *

“Look who crawled back.”

Wren was crossing the courtyard when the voice stopped her. She turned slowly.

Damien Blackthorne leaned against a stone pillar, hands in his pockets. He had grown broader in three years, harder, but there was a flicker in his eyes as they swept over her that she could only describe as hunger. Beside him, Vivienne hooked her arm through his, her smile like a blade.

“Wow,” Damien said slowly. “Wren. You look...”

“Better?” Wren offered.

“Different.” He came closer. “I heard about the marriage. Your father’s selling you off to some Alpha. Honestly, that suits you. It’s the only way a girl like you is worth anything. Political marriage is all you’re good for, isn’t it?”

Vivienne laughed. “Be nice. She’s finally found her purpose.”

“Leave her alone.”

The small voice came from behind them. Wren spun.

Lily stood at the edge of the courtyard in a pale blue cardigan, supported by a nurse. She was nineteen now, thin and fragile, but her chin was lifted, and her brown eyes were furious.

“You don’t get to talk to my sister like that,” Lily said, her voice trembling. “She’s worth ten of you.”

Damien’s face twisted. “Shut your mouth, you sickly little...”

He moved before anyone could stop him. His hand cracked across Lily’s face, and she crumpled with a gasp onto the stone.

The courtyard went dead silent.

Wren did not remember crossing the distance. She only knew that one moment she was standing there, and the next her fist was in Damien’s collar, her heel behind his knee, and he was on his back on the stone with her forearm pinned across his throat.

“Touch her again,” Wren said, very quietly, “and I’ll break more than your nose.”

“You can’t,” Damien wheezed, his nose already streaming blood. “You’re wolfless. You can’t even...”

“I don’t need a wolf to put you on the ground.” She pressed down until his eyes bulged. “I never did. You just never gave me the chance.”

Vivienne stepped forward, face pale. “Get off him!”

Wren released him and stood, wiping her hands on her coat. Every wolf in the courtyard stared at her, silent. She walked over to Lily, knelt, and gently helped her up.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, I should’ve been here.”

“You were,” Lily whispered back, with a watery smile. “You came back.”

Wren pressed her forehead against her sister’s. Now, she thought. It has to be now.

*   *   *

The car’s headlights tunneled through the dark pines. Lily was bundled in the passenger seat, wrapped in a blanket, a duffel of medicine at her feet. They were three miles from the gate when the road ahead lit up.

Wren slammed on the brakes.

Six black SUVs blocked the road, their headlights burning like predators’ eyes. Men in dark suits stepped out of each one, lined up with military precision.

“Wren?” Lily whispered. “Who are they?”

“I don’t know.”

The door of the center vehicle opened. A man stepped out into the glare, tall and broad-shouldered, in a charcoal coat that looked as if it had been cut from the night itself. He walked toward her car slowly, unhurried, with the confidence of someone who has never in his life been refused.

Wren’s hands tightened on the wheel.

Because she knew that walk.

She knew those shoulders. She knew the way his coat moved around him. She knew the cold, burning gold of the eyes that lifted to hers through the windshield and held.

The thread in her chest, silent for three years, snapped taut so hard that she gasped aloud.