CHAPTER 8: The Border of Smoke

POV: Rhydian

Three months of dirt, pine needles, and stale bread. That was what the border between Thornwood and Blackthorn Valley amounted to. I took whatever jobs came down the line, so long as the coin was heavy enough to buy oats for the horse and a hot meal for me once a week.

Security details, shaking down merchants who forgot their taxes, delivering sealed letters to people who didn't want to be found. A good chunk of it went through middlemen who clearly answered to Zevren’s network, but I didn't care.

I’d never seen the Alpha’s face, and I wasn't looking to start.

I didn't ask questions about the money. I learned that lesson the hard way a year ago, back when I still had ideas about right and wrong. A simple delivery turned into a bloodbath, people died who had no business dying, and I woke up with a scar across my arm and a complete lack of curiosity.

Now? I just took the coin.

Today was supposed to be another boring sweep through the brush, but the universe loves a joke.

We ran into six rogues near the old stone marker. They looked miserable—ribs showing through their dirty clothes, skin grey from hunger, and completely desperate.

Right in the middle of them was a woman, shivering, clutching a tiny, crying wolf pup hard against her chest.

My commander pulled his steel, his face going hard. “Take them down.”

My boots moved before my brain could stop them. I stepped right into the space between my squad and the rogues, blocking the path, my own hand resting on the hilt of my blade. It was a monumentally stupid gamble.

“Drop the iron,” I shouted at the rogues, keeping my voice loud enough to drown out my commander's swearing behind me. “Drop the weapons, turn around, and get back across the marker. You do it right now, and nobody has to die today.”

The commander yelled at me to get out of the way, but I didn't budge. I stood there, ready to take a hit from either side if it meant avoiding another massacre and it worked.

Not because I was some great negotiator, but because I looked willing to bleed to make them leave, and because the rogues were way more terrified of a fight than the commander thought they’d be. They threw down two rusted knives, grabbed the woman, and scrambled back into the trees like ghosts.

The commander didn't waste any time. He logged the whole thing, and by noon, I was hauled in front of the alliance council. They didn't care about the woman or the pup. They just saw a grunt who couldn't follow a simple order.

They stripped me of my patrol duties right there, handed me a piece of paper, and told me to report directly to Blackthorn Valley for reassignment.

It was a punishment wrapped up as a test. They were handing me right to Zevren Ashmoor.

I rolled into the main gates by dusk, my shoulder still throbbing from where one of my own squad mates had shoved past me during the mess, and my pride looking a whole lot worse than the bruise.

I figured I’d get dumped on some low-level captain, but Zevren met me himself. That was the first surprise. The guy was tall, taller than he looked in the rumors, with silver streaks running through his dark hair that caught the torchlight.

He had these bright green eyes that looked entirely warm, but if you looked closer, that warmth didn't actually reach the rest of his face. It was just a mask.

“Tell me about the border,” Zevren said. He sounded genuinely interested, like my little act of mutiny was some fascinating philosophical choice instead of a massive screw-up that got me kicked off the line.

I kept it brief. “They were starving, I didn't see the point in wasting blades on them.”

Zevren let out a quiet sound that might have been a laugh. He didn't chew me out. Instead, he handed down my new assignment: guard duty.

“There's a woman,” Zevren said, his voice dropping low. “She trains in the gardens at dawn and dusk. She's incredibly valuable to me, Rhydian. Keep her safe and keep everyone else away from her. And do not get attached. She isn't for you.”

I figured I was guarding a prisoner. A political hostage from some rival pack Zevren wanted to use as leverage.

The next morning, I was out in the treeline before the sun even hit the grass. I kept myself hidden in the shadows, waiting to see what kind of high-maintenance captive I was dealing with. Then she walked out.

He called her…Freya.

She sat down right in the middle of the grass, her dark hair completely loose, and started doing these slow, careful breathing exercises. Her movements were totally determined, even though I could tell she was working through some old injury. But that wasn't what made me freeze.

The wind shifted. I caught her scent, and it hit me right in the face. It was sweet…

She was pregnant.

The second I realized it, this weird, sudden protective instinct flared up under my ribs. It was annoying because I didn't even know her. But there was something else about her, too.

The rumors always said she was some weak, useless omega, but watching her now, that felt like a flat-out lie. Her wolf didn't feel weak at all. It felt compressed, held back. Like a massive storm someone had tried to shove inside a tiny bottle, just waiting for the glass to crack.

I stayed back in the brush, invisible, watching her chest rise and fall with every breath as curiousty tugged at me.

She was a massive puzzle, and for the first time in a year, I actually wanted to figure out the answers.

A young omega hurried out onto the grass, carrying a small pitcher of water. The second she approached, Freya smiled. It completely transformed her face, breaking right through that careful, tense look she had been wearing and turning into something radiant.

It caught me off guard and without even thinking, I found myself smiling back, even though she couldn't see me through the brush.

I leaned back against a tree trunk and settled into the watch.

“It's just a job,” I told myself.

“I just need to watch the perimeter, get paid, and not get involved.” The same old lies I always told myself whenever things started getting complicated.

The peace didn't last. By midnight, the garden wasn't quiet anymore.

Three rogues breached the stone wall, dropping into the dark grass with blades drawn. They were moving fast, heading straight for the window to Freya’s room. I didn't wait for backup. I intercepted them right in the middle of the courtyard before they could even get close to the glass.

It was a messy, brutal scramble. I fought dirty, throwing dirt, tracking their movements by the dull glint of their knives. One of them managed to catch me, his blade sinking deep into my shoulder.

I gritted my teeth in pain but ignored it and drove my weight forward, taking two of them down for good. The third one took one look at his friends on the ground and bolted back over the wall into the dark.

The noise woke the whole house.

Zevren came tearing out first, but right behind him was Freya. She had a heavy shawl wrapped tight around her shoulders, her eyes wide with shock. She looked down at the dead rogues, the dark blood pooling on the stone path, and then her gaze snapped right to my bleeding shoulder.

Something in her face shifted, the fear vanished, replaced by this sudden look of recognition, even though we’d never set eyes on each other before today.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice steady despite the mess around us. She took a step closer. “What's your name?”

“Rhydian,” I muttered, my hand clamped over the wound to stop the leaking.

“Rhydian,” she repeated slowly, like she was testing the sound of the syllables, rolling them across her tongue to see how they fit. I liked the way it sounded coming from her. Way more than I had any business liking it.

Zevren stood right between us, his eyes moving from her face to mine, unreadable. He didn't say a word until he turned to her.

She hesitated, gave me one last look, and slipped back through the doors. Zevren watched her go before turning his full attention back to me.

“You did well,” the Alpha said, his voice flat. “Clean the blood off the stone, then get yourself to the healer. You're staying on this detail.”

He left me alone with the bodies. I grabbed a bucket and a brush, scrubbing the dark stains off the path while my shoulder throbbed in time with my pulse. My mind wouldn't shut up. I kept thinking about the way she’d said my name.

I thought about the way Zevren had been watching the two of us just a little too carefully. And then my mind drifted back to the rogue woman on the border with her pup.

Sometimes, some things are actually worth disobeying orders for. I had no clue what kind of mess I was walking into here, but for the first time in months, I didn't feel like a ghost just drifting through the trees. I felt like I was doing something that actually mattered.