Chapter 4

Tory POV

"Open the door, Tory."

The voice hit me before the knock even finished.

The same voice that had spent six years teaching me exactly how small I was allowed to be.

My whole body went rigid at the sound of it, even after everything I'd seen that morning.

Even after ice had poured out of my own palms like I was something out of a myth.

I wondered, hand hovering over the handle, what exactly Aldrich thought he still had the right to demand from me.

I opened the door. And there he was, Sabine tucked against his side like she'd grown roots there, her fingers curled possessively into the fabric of his shirt.

"How can I help you, Aldrich?" I kept my voice even, though my heart was doing something violent behind my ribs.

"It's Alpha to you." The correction landed like a slap, sharp and deliberate, meant to remind me exactly where I stood now.

I swallowed the retort that rose in my throat and let my gaze drop to the floor, more out of pity for the man he'd become than actual respect. "How can I help you, Alpha?"

"Where is it. The vault."

My stomach dropped clean through the floorboards.

How could he possibly know about the vault? I'd told no one.

I'd seen no one except the footsteps. The ones that had chased me through Sorrel Ridge with a hunger I still hadn't shaken off.

Someone had been watching me. The realization settled over me like frost.

I forced my face into something blank, something bored.

Whoever had sold me out, I couldn't let them see they'd rattled me.

"What vault?"

"We're not fools, Tory." Sabine's voice cracked across the doorway before Aldrich could even respond, sharp and triumphant, like she'd been waiting years for an excuse to speak to me like this.

Like she couldn't wait for me gone so she could finally stop pretending to smile at me over breakfast.

"Excuse me?" I turned on her fully, and something hot and furious surged up through my chest, every memory of my first life crashing into me at once.

Her, safe in his arms while I burned. Her mouth on his while mine filled with smoke.

I had opened my home to her.

I had fed her, laughed with her, defended her when the other wolves whispered that something about her didn't sit right.

And she had smiled at me every single morning like none of it was a performance.

Never again. My guard was staying up for good.

"She's right." Aldrich's voice cut cold and final through the tension, and I slid both hands behind my back before either of them could notice the pale blue vapor still curling faintly off my fingertips.

It hadn't stopped since the forest.

I had no idea how to make it stop, and even less idea what it meant that I could do this at all.

"Give me the vault, Tory. Or I'll...."

"Or what, Alpha?" The words flew out of me before I could stop them, sharper than I meant, edged with a fury I'd been swallowing for six straight years.

His face flinched. Actual, visible shock.

In all the time he'd worn that title, he'd never once seen me speak to him like that, never seen me speak to anyone like that. Good. Let him choke on it.

His jaw hardened. "Or I'll take it myself."

"You wouldn't dare." My voice didn't shake this time. "You have no claim to anything that belongs to me, Alpha."

"It was found on pack territory, Tory." His eyes blazed, that familiar fury I used to mistake for passion. "I am the Alpha here."

I laughed. I couldn't help it, a short, humorless sound that startled even me.

Unapologetic. Loud enough that Sabine's grip on his arm tightened.

"Well, Mr. Alpha," I said, letting the title drip with everything he'd stripped from mine, "whoever ran to whisper in your ear probably also told you exactly where I found it."

I paused, letting my eyes drag over him slowly, deliberately, the way he used to look at me when he wanted me to feel small.

I felt the disrespect of it settle in my own chest, hot and satisfying, before I reeled myself back in.

There was a colder way to win this. A quieter one.

I lowered my voice instead. Let the silence do the cutting my anger couldn't.

"They told you I found it beyond Sorrel Ridge." I watched every trace of certainty drain out of his expression as I spoke. "And during my reign as your Luna, Sorrel Ridge marked the edge of pack territory. Not the middle of it. The edge. Which means it isn't yours, Alpha. It never was."

I heard it before I saw the grind of his teeth, jaw clenched so tight I thought it might crack.

I didn't care anymore. Let it crack.

For the first time since I'd known him, his confidence buckled.

I watched the certainty drain out of his face, watched something close to humiliation creep into eyes that used to look at me like I was furniture.

mHe should have felt exactly this small the day he chose Sabine over the woman who'd bled for his pack.

He straightened, gathering whatever scraps of composure he had left, and when he spoke again, his voice had gone quiet in a way that scared me more than his shouting ever had.

"You have ninety days left within my pack's territory before your rejection is even legally recognized." A pause, deliberate, cruel. "A lot can happen in ninety days, Tory."

The words landed somewhere I wasn't prepared for. Not pride. Not anger. Something deeper, older, a wound I thought I'd already finished bleeding out of.

I held his gaze and refused to let him see it land.