Chapter 4

AN UNWANTED ALLIANCE:

Kade hadn’t stopped thinking about the sigil since Elena drew it in the dirt of her camp.

He’d spent the two days since the attack on the tracker’s homestead going through every report his warriors had filed over the past six years — every raid, every skirmish, every burned supply line he’d once laid at Elena’s feet without question. He was looking for a pattern he hadn’t let himself see before, because seeing it meant admitting how much he’d gotten wrong.

He found it faster than he wanted to.

“Here.” He spread the reports across his study table when Draven arrived, jabbing a finger at three separate incidents spanning four years.

“Warriors described here, here, and here. No pack colors. No sigil anyone recognized. We wrote them off as rogue raiders.”

Draven leaned over the table, frowning. “You think they’re connected to what hit Elena outside the tracker’s homestead.”

“I think whoever attacked her three days ago has been operating inside our territory for years, and we never once asked why.” Kade’s jaw tightened. “I think they’ve been feeding both of us just enough reason to keep hating each other while they worked in the spaces between.”

“That’s a significant leap from three unclaimed raids.”

“Then help me close the gap.” Kade straightened, meeting his Beta’s eyes. “Because if I’m right, this isn’t a war between my pack and hers. It never was. It’s something bigger, using both of us as cover, and it’s still out there.”

Draven was quiet a long moment. “You want to bring her in. Formally.”

“I want to stop losing warriors to an enemy neither of us can name.” Kade’s voice hardened. “Yes. I want an alliance.”

“She tried to kill you three weeks ago.”

“She had reason to think she should.”

Draven exhaled, long and slow, the particular sound of a man watching his Alpha do something he considered reckless and couldn’t quite argue against. “Your funeral,” he said finally. “Metaphorically. I hope.”

Elena’s camp had relocated twice since the attack, deeper into the ravines where unfamiliar warriors would have a harder time finding it twice. Kade tracked her anyway — the bond made sure of that — and arrived at dusk to find her sharpening a blade by the fire, Mara and a half dozen warriors watching him approach with open hostility.

“You have a habit,” Elena said without looking up, “of walking into my camp uninvited.”

“I have a proposal.”

That got her attention. She set the blade down, studying him with the wary, assessing look she’d worn since the ridge — the look that said she was still deciding, every single time, whether he deserved to be believed.

“I’ve spent two days going through six years of unclaimed attacks on my territory,” Kade said. “Raiders with no colors, no sigil, no claim of responsibility. I always assumed they were opportunists. I don’t think that anymore.”

“You think it’s the same people who hit me at the tracker’s.”

“I think it’s the same people who burned your pack six years ago and have been feeding this war between us ever since, one unclaimed raid at a time. Keeping us busy hating each other so neither of us looked past the smoke.” He held her gaze. “I want an alliance. Your warriors, mine, working together until we find whoever’s actually responsible.”

Silence spread through the camp. Mara’s hand drifted, unconsciously, toward the blade at her hip.

“An alliance.” Elena’s laugh had no humor in it. “With you.”

“With me.”

“You destroyed—” She stopped herself, some old habit catching in her throat before the accusation finished forming, and for the first time Kade watched her hear her own words and doubt them mid-sentence. She pressed her palm flat against her ribs instead, over the wound that was still healing. “I don’t trust you.”

“I’m not asking you to trust me. I’m asking you to work with me until this is finished.” Kade’s voice softened, just slightly. “Your enemy is my enemy, Elena. Whatever else is true between us, that much isn’t in question anymore.”

She looked at him for a long moment, torn between six years of certainty and three days of it cracking apart in her hands. Then she shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I’ve spent too long fighting my own battles to hand half of them to you now.”

Kade held her gaze a moment longer, then nodded once, sharp and final, and left without arguing further. He’d expected the refusal. It didn’t make it easier to walk away from.

The attack came two nights later, harder than anything before it — a coordinated strike against Elena’s camp itself, warriors flooding in from three directions at once while her people were still stumbling awake. 

Elena fought until her arm went numb and her voice went raw shouting orders, and even then it wasn’t enough. They were losing ground, losing people, when Kade’s warriors broke through the tree line behind the attackers and turned the tide before it could finish turning against her.

She found him afterward, breathing hard, blood on his knuckles that wasn’t his own, standing over the last of the retreating enemy with a fury that looked, for once, entirely on her side.

“You followed me,” she said.

“I told you. Your enemy is mine.” He turned to face her, chest heaving, something unspoken passing between them that had nothing to do with the bond and everything to do with two people who’d just watched each other’s backs and lived. “This isn’t going to stop, Elena. Not until we find who’s behind it. You know that now as well as I do.”

She looked around at the wreckage of her camp — the fires, the wounded, Mara pressing a hand hard against a warrior’s bleeding side — and felt the last of her resistance give way under the weight of it.

“Fine,” she said, low and rough. “An alliance. Until this is finished. Nothing more than that.”

“Nothing more than that,” Kade agreed, though something in his voice suggested he didn’t quite believe it either.

They shook on it, warily, two enemies agreeing to a truce neither of them fully trusted — and neither of them let go a moment longer than necessary, the bond humming low and insistent between their joined hands.

By morning, a message had been left staked at the edge of Elena’s ruined camp, in handwriting neither of them recognized.

You cannot save each other. Both your packs burn next.