Chapter 2

The Alpha Who Came for Me’

I don’t know what I expected, honestly. Fangs maybe. Something in his face that just gave the whole thing away, some kind of proof for all those stories whole packs burned out over one bad season, men who crossed him once and just weren’t around to talk about it after. I’d built him up so big in my head on that walk down the stairs that by the time I actually got close enough to look at him properly, standing there in the torchlight with the rain just starting to come down soft behind him, it kind of knocked the breath right out of me all over again. Just not for the reason I thought it would.

He wasn’t smiling. Wasn’t sneering either, which honestly surprised me more than either one would have. Just looking at me the way you’d look at a ledger that wasn’t balancing right.

“Elira Vance.” Not really a question. Like he already had it filed away somewhere and was just confirming it matched.

“Yes.” Came out about half the size I wanted it to, if I’m being honest.

Roran was hovering off to my left someplace, practically bowing into the man’s shadow, and I remember thinking, real distant and useless-feeling, that I had never once in my whole life seen my own Alpha look small. Kaelan Thorne made everybody around him look small. Didn’t even seem like he was trying to do it either, that was the worst part.

“I’m told you refused this arrangement,” he said.

I lifted my chin up even though every single part of me wanted to do the opposite thing. “I did.”

Something moved behind his eyes right then, quick, gone before I could even properly name it. I wasn’t angry. Closer to I don’t know, interest maybe, like I was the first surprising thing that had happened to him in a good long while.

“Good,” he said. “I’d have thought less of you if you hadn’t.”

That was not what I expected him to say. Not even close, not in a hundred years. I just stood there, rain starting to catch in my hair now, and didn’t have one single thing ready to say back to that.

He turned to Roran before I could find my voice again anyway. “We leave within the hour. She rides with my personal guard.”

“Of course, Alpha.” Roran’s voice had gone all oily and eager in a way that honestly turned my stomach worse than anything Kaelan had said so far that night.

I made it about four steps toward the stairs, meaning to go grab what little I actually owned in this world, when his voice caught me from behind, easy as anything.

“Vance.”

I stopped. Turned around.

“A word. Alone.”

Roran’s eyes went back and forth between us and for one second I actually thought he might protest, might remember he was supposed to be looking out for his pack’s interests here at all. He didn’t, though. Just stepped back into the hall looking relieved to be let off the hook, honestly.

Kaelan waited till the door shut behind him before he said anything else. Then he just looked at me really looking, the kind of look that felt like it was cataloguing every single thing about me all at once, the state of my hands, the mend I’d done bad on my sleeve, the way I was probably standing like I expected to get hit any second.

“I didn’t ask for you,” he said. Plain as anything, no cruelty in it at all really, just laid out flat like a stone on a table. “Didn’t know your name till three days ago. Didn’t know your face till right now, this minute. This isn’t personal and it isn’t about you specifically, whatever you’ve heard. I need a political marriage that keeps three border packs from testing me this season, and your Alpha needed his debt gone. That’s the whole of it, far as I’m concerned.”

I don’t know why that stung the way it did, if I’m being real. It should’ve been a relief hearing it laid out so honestly like that. Instead it just made the whole thing feel smaller somehow, colder, like I really was just a line somebody was moving from one column of a ledger into another one.

“So I’m nothing to you,” I said, before I could stop the words coming out. “Just paperwork.”

“You’re a necessity.” Said it without one ounce of apology in it. “Same as I am to you, I’d imagine, if you’re being honest with yourself about it.”

Didn’t have an answer for that either, mostly on account of it being true, which I hated.

“I’ll say this once,” he went on, “so you understand where you’re standing, clear. You can refuse. Tonight, right now. I’m not gonna force you up onto that horse.”

That actually surprised me enough that I looked up at him proper for the first time since we’d started talking.

“But you understand what refusing means,” he said. “Roran’s debt doesn’t just vanish because you said no to it. It transfers. Onto your family. Immediate, and in full, same as he already told you it would. I’ve got no interest in your suffering, Vance, but I won’t pretend I’ve got much interest in stopping it either, if you go and choose a road that brings it on yourself. That part’s yours to decide. Not mine.”
Landed about as gentle as a slap, even with his voice never once going up.

“That’s not a choice,” I said, quietly. “That’s just you telling me what happens if I pick wrong.”

Something almost like respect went across his face then, quick as a flinch and gone just as fast. “Most choices are like that,” he said.

“Never met a real one yet.”

Didn’t say anything back to that, couldn’t really, if I’m honest. Just stood there in the rain with my arms wrapped around my own middle, hating how much sense he was making, hating worse that some small stupid part of me had almost wanted him to just be the monster everybody said he was. Would’ve been easier. Easier to hate a monster than stand here soaked clean through, arguing logic with a man who wasn’t wrong about one single thing he’d said to me yet.

“I need your answer before we ride,” he said. Not impatient about it. Just final, same as everything about him seemed to be.

I thought about my mother’s medicine. My sister’s face. The roof that kept my brothers dry came in winter.

“I’ll go,” I said.

He nodded once, like that had never really been in question to begin with, and turned back toward his horse without saying one more word to me.

The ride out was long and wet and mostly quiet, which honestly suited me fine, I didn’t have it in me to make conversation with anybody just then, least of all him. He rode up front the whole way, back straight as a rod, never once turned around to check on me, and I told myself that didn’t bother me. It kind of did, though. Not gonna pretend it didn’t. What I noticed instead because noticing things was about the only real skill I actually had going for me was his men. They didn’t flinch around him. That was the first thing I clocked. Back home, when Roran walked through a room, people got small, got quiet real fast, kept their eyes down and their hands busy so as not to get noticed by him. Kaelan’s warriors weren’t like that at all, not one bit. One of them, a big scared-up fella who looked like he could snap me clean in half without hardly trying, actually laughed at something another rider said, right there not ten feet off from their own Alpha, and nobody so much as glanced over worried about being overheard or nothing.

Another time, maybe two hours in, one of the younger ones misjudged a stretch of muddy road and nearly went down, horse and all. Kaelan didn’t shout. Didn’t even react much, far as I could tell from where I was riding. Just slowed his own horse a little, waited till the kid got himself sorted back out, and kept on going. And the kid red in the face, embarrassed plain as day didn’t look scared after. Looked more like somebody who’d let down a teacher he actually respected, which was a whole different animal entirely from what I was used to seeing.
I’d spent my whole life around fear dressed up to look like loyalty. This wasn’t that. I didn’t know what it was yet, honestly, but it wasn’t that, and it sat wrong in my chest the rest of the ride, this itch of a question I couldn’t quite let go of no matter how hard I tried.

We crossed into his territory a little before dawn, and even half dead on my feet, tired the way I was, I could tell the difference the second we crossed over. Better roads. Fields that actually looked tended to instead of just scraped bare and forgotten. A watchtower that had guards up in it who were actually awake and alert, calling greetings down at us instead of just standing there half asleep at their post the way ours always did back home.

Whatever else Kaelan Thorne was, monster or not, he ran things well. Couldn’t argue that, even angry and soaked through and half sick with dread the way I was feeling right about then.
We got to the main estate as the sky was going gray around the edges, this huge stone place that looked more like it grew up out the hillside than got built there by anybody’s hands. I slid off my horse clumsy, legs barely holding me up under me, and Kaelan was there almost before I’d finished the thought of it, like he’d been watching for that exact moment, though his face didn’t give away one thing about why.

“You’ll be shown to your rooms,” he said. “Rest. Eat something.” Paused a second, brief enough I nearly missed it happening at all. “You’ll need your strength.”

“For what,” I said, though some cold part of me had already guessed the answer before I’d even finished getting the question all the way out my mouth.

“The mating ceremony,” he said, easy as anything, like he was mentioning the weather instead of the whole rest of my life laid out in front of me. “Three days from now.”

Didn’t wait around to see how I took that news. Just turned and walked off toward the hall, warriors falling in step behind him, easy as breathing, and left me standing there in the mud and the gray cold dawn with my whole future just collapsed down into three words and three days, and not one single say in either one of them.