جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 30

ETHANThe second Freya stopped moving through the trees, my wolf felt it.I couldn't have explained the feeling to someone who'd never experienced it. It was like a wire pulled tight inside my chest, from a direction that didn't come from my head but from somewhere completely different. Before I knew it I was already moving without even making a decision. I was already at the trees when I heard the second wolf hit her.I rushed through the clearing fast and I didn't slow down.The two rogues scattered quickly when they saw me, but not fast enough. I took down the closest one before he made it three steps and the second one I caught at the edge of the tree line. I didn't kill them even though I wanted to. I made them understand very clearly that leaving was the only option they were going to get, and they took it immediately.Lena was already gone. I heard her crashing through the brush to the north and I marked the direction, filing it away for later. She wasn't my priority right now.

ETHANThe way she said my name made my stomach drop. Not because she was angry, though that would have come eventually. Not because she looked hurt, though it was already happening. It was the way she looked at me like she was bracing for something. Like she'd been let down enough times in her life that her body had learned to get ready for it automatically.I hated that look. I'd hated it every single time I'd seen it and this time it was pointed at me."Ethan." She didn't move. "What was Brian talking about?"I took a breath. "It's complicated.""Try me."I ran a hand through my hair. "Our fathers knew each other," I said. "Better than either pack ever made public. They used to meet out here—on the neutral land between both packs—about twice a year for almost a decade. I was twelve the first time my father took me to one of those meetings. Your father was there. You weren't."She was watching me without blinking. "Keep going.""The mines sit between Northern and Norwood Pack territ

ETHANThe archive break-in was clean. Too clean.Whoever had done it had known the layout, the guard rotation, and exactly which cabinet to go to. They'd taken physical copies of mating records going back forty years and pulled three important files from the digital system without triggering the main alert until they were already gone. That last part—the delayed alert—was what told me everything I needed to know. Only someone with internal access could have set that up.We had a traitor.Freya didn't flinch when I told her. She sat opposite me in the archive building's front office with coffee going cold in her hands and said, "Okay. Then we’ll find them." Just like that, like it was the obvious next step."You don't have to be part of this," I said.She looked at me over the cup. "My father's mating agreements are in those records. Whatever they were looking for is connected to everything. So yes, I do."We spent the next four days cross-referencing access logins, pulling security f

ETHANShe went quiet.Immediately I could tell this was the kind of silence where she was thinking something through and would tell me in a minute. This was the other kind where she was closing something off inside herself and she thought I couldn't see it.I could see it. I'd been watching her long enough to know the difference.She sat on the edge of the bed with her back straight, hands in her lap, and face completely still, and I knew her mind was somewhere far away from the room even though she was right here in front of me. The video had done that to her because it confirmed every fear she'd been keeping under control since Brian's statement dropped."Freya.""I'm fine.""You said that this morning too.""And I was fine this morning.""You were hiding under a blanket."She looked at me then, and for just a second I could see all of it right there on her face. The exhaustion. The hurt. The anger she hadn't let herself feel yet. She blinked and it went away, locked back behind th

ETHANThree days wasn't long but we used every hour of them.I started training Freya the morning after she issued the challenge, out in the open field behind the Northern Pack house where the trees were close and the ground was soft enough for a fall. She showed up at six in the morning in workout gear with her hair pulled back and the look on her face that meant she'd already been awake for a while thinking about it."You know I'm not going to go easy on you," I told her."Good," she said. "Don't."She wasn't wrong that she wasn't physically Brian's match, but she was faster than she thought she was, and she was smart in a way that mattered more than muscle most of the time. I spent the first day working on defense, how to detect a shift before it happened, how to use momentum instead of strength, and how to stay calm when something big was coming at you.She was a good student. She listened, she adjusted, and when she made a mistake it never happened again.By the second day, she