Chapter 2

I HATE YOU.

Kade hadn’t slept in three days.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. Every time he closed his eyes, his wolf dragged him back to that ridge — to amber eyes going wide with recognition, to the way she’d wrenched her arm free of his grip like his touch had burned her. His wolf wanted to run south. Wanted to track her scent through every ravine and forest between here and wherever she’d vanished to, and drag her home whether she liked it or not.

His mind wanted something else entirely. His mind kept replaying six years of raids, six years of dead warriors, six years of a woman who’d sworn — publicly, repeatedly, to anyone who’d listen — that she would see him torn apart.

Mate or not, he told himself, pacing the length of his study for the hundredth time that morning, she is still the enemy.

Draven let himself in without knocking, which meant it was bad news, because Draven only skipped the courtesy when he didn’t want to waste time on formality before delivering something unpleasant.

“Scouts confirmed it,” Draven said. “The eastern grain stores. Burned last night.”

Kade’s hands curled into fists. “Her people?”

“Her signature is all over it. Same pattern as the supply raid in spring.” Draven crossed his arms. “Kade, I know what she is to you. But she just cost us six months of stored grain going into winter. Your wolf’s opinion doesn’t change what she’s doing to this pack.”

“I’m aware.” Kade’s voice came out lower than he meant it to, a warning growl he didn’t bother suppressing. “Find her. I want to know where she’s camped.”

It took two days.

Elena had gotten sloppy — or maybe she just hadn’t cared, in the wake of everything, whether she left a trail. He found her camp tucked into a limestone hollow a day’s run from his territory, small fires burning low, a handful of warriors on watch who clearly hadn’t expected an Alpha to walk into their camp alone and unannounced.

She was waiting for him before he even cleared the treeline. Of course she was. The bond made sure neither of them could hide from the other anymore, not really, not when their wolves kept straining toward each other like magnets no distance could weaken.

“You have some nerve,” she said, rising from where she’d been crouched by the fire. Her hand didn’t move to her blade, which he noted, though her posture stayed rigid enough to strike if she needed to. “Walking into my camp like you own it.” 

“You burned my grain stores.”

“I burned supplies.” She said it flatly, without apology. “The same way you burned my home.”

“I never burned your home.” Kade held his ground, jaw tight. “I don’t know where you got that story, but I never touched your pack.”

“Don’t.” Her voice cracked on the single syllable, more grief than fury. “Don’t stand there and lie to my face. I watched it burn, Kade. I watched the smoke from three miles out and I ran, and by the time I got there there was nothing left to save. I know exactly whose warriors did it.”

“Then you know wrong.” He stepped closer, close enough that her warriors around the fire tensed, hands drifting toward weapons. “I have never ordered an attack on your territory. Not once. Not in six years. Whatever you think you know—”

“I saw the marks. Your pack’s sigil, burned into what was left of the longhouse door.” She was shaking now, though whether from rage or something rawer, he couldn’t tell. “You think I made that up? You think I’ve spent six years hunting a ghost?”

Kade went still. A sigil. She’d seen his pack’s mark at the scene of her pack’s destruction — something he’d never known, never been told, in six years of assuming her hatred was simply misplaced rage looking for a target.

“Show me,” he said.

“What?”

“The mark. Draw it for me. Right now.”

She hesitated, thrown by the demand, then crouched and scratched a shape into the dirt with her blade — jagged, angular, three interlocking lines. Kade stared down at it and felt something cold settle in his stomach.

It wasn’t his sigil. It was close. Close enough to fool someone grieving and half out of their mind with shock, standing in the ashes of everything they’d ever loved. But it wasn’t his.

“That’s not my pack’s mark,” he said quietly.

“Don’t.”

“I mean it. Look closer. The lines curl the wrong way — mine curl inward, this curls out. Someone wanted you to think it was mine.”

For one unguarded second, doubt flickered across her face — real doubt, not the reflexive kind she’d been throwing at him since the ridge. Then it hardened over just as fast, like she’d caught herself believing him and couldn’t forgive the lapse.

“Clever,” she said. “Very clever. Almost had me.”

“Elena—”

“Don’t say my name like you know me.” She backed toward her warriors, blade rising. “You don’t get to walk in here and rewrite six years of my life because your wolf is inconvenienced by hating me.”

“This isn’t about the bond.”

“Everything about this is about the bond, and we both know it.” Her eyes glittered, fierce and wet at the same time. “If you want revenge for the grain, come and take it. Fight me properly. But stop pretending you’re here for the truth when we both know your wolf just can’t stand being away from me.”

Kade felt his temper fray at the edges, frustration and something far more dangerous tangled together in his chest. He wanted to shake her. He wanted to pull her against him and demand she stop fighting something that clearly terrified her more than she’d ever admit. He did neither.

“Fine,” he said instead, voice hard. “Have it your way.”

He turned to leave, then stopped, glancing back at her over his shoulder — at the woman his wolf refused to release even now, even furious, even certain she was wrong about him in every way that mattered.

“If you want revenge, come for me,” he said. 

“But stop pretending you know the whole truth. Because I don’t think you do. And I don’t think, deep down, you believe it either.”

He walked away before she could answer, and didn’t look back, though every step away from her felt like walking against a current that wanted him drowned.

Behind him, Elena stood frozen by the fire long after he’d disappeared into the trees, staring down at the crude sigil scratched into the dirt at her feet — and, for the first time in six years, letting herself wonder if she’d built her entire life on a lie someone else had told her.