Mine In Every lifetime

Chapter 2

Chapter Two — *The Warning*

Mara did not sleep.

She lay on her back and stared at the ceiling and listened to her wolf pace.

That was the only way she could describe it. Something moving inside her chest, back and forth, back and forth, restless and awake and completely indifferent to the fact that she needed to be at the records hall by seven.

At four in the morning she sat up and said out loud to the empty room: "Stop."

It did not stop.

She arrived at work early.

Sali was in the corridor when she left and opened her mouth to say something and Mara walked past her before the first word came out.

She did not have the energy for a conversation she could already predict.

The records hall was empty at six thirty. She liked it empty. She moved through the shelves pulling the morning files, stacking them in order, doing the thing her hands knew how to do without her brain being involved.

It almost worked.

Then the door opened and she turned around and it was not Deon and it was not Petra.

It was the Beta.

He looked different in the morning.

Less composed. Like he had also not slept and was less good at hiding it than he wanted to be. He was still in the clothes from last night dark shirt, collar open and he stopped just inside the doorway and looked at her like he had not fully decided what he was going to say before he came.

Mara put the file in her hand down on the shelf.

"You are not supposed to be in this section," she said. "Ranked access is the east wing."

"I know."

"So."

He looked at her. "So I am not here for the files."

Silence.

Mara crossed her arms. "You told me to stay away. I stayed away. I went home. I did not go back into that hall." She paused. "You came to me."

Something moved across his face. Not guilt exactly. Something more complicated than guilt.

"I know," he said again.

"Then why are you here."

He was quiet for a moment. He looked at the floor, then back at her. When he spoke his voice was lower.

"Because I needed to know you were real," he said. "Last night felt like something I imagined."

Mara stared at him.

Of all the things she had prepared herself for this morning Deon Petra, another grey Tuesday it was not this. It was not a Beta standing in the Hollow section of the records hall at six thirty in the morning telling her she felt real.

"I am very real," she said. "I have been real in this hall for four years. Nobody noticed."

He looked at her for a long moment.

"I noticed," he said quietly. "I just did not know it yet."

Mara uncrossed her arms. She picked the file back up. She needed something to do with her hands.

"What is your name," she said.

"Zane."

"Zane." She filed the document without looking at him. "What happened last night. What was that."

He did not answer immediately.

She turned around.

His jaw was tight. He was looking at her with that expression again the desperate one from the doorway last night. The one that looked like a man watching a door close that he could not reach in time.

"I cannot tell you," he said.

"Cannot or will not."

"Both."

Mara looked at him steadily. "Someone should tell me something. My wolf woke up last night for the first time in my life. I felt it in my bones. I still feel it right now standing in front of you." She paused. "And I felt it last night standing in front of him."

Zane went very still.

"Do not say that to anyone else," he said. His voice had changed. Quieter. More serious.

"Why."

"Because the wrong person hears that and you are not safe."

"I am a Hollow wolf in the lowest rank of Ironveil." Mara tilted her head slightly. "I have never been safe."

Something in his expression broke open for just a second. Gone before she could fully see it.

He took one step toward her. Then stopped himself.

"Last night," he said carefully, "something happened that has not happened in this pack in a very long time. I need you to trust me when I tell you that you need to be careful until I figure out how to handle it."

"Handle it," she repeated.

"Mara"

"I am not a situation to be handled." Her voice was flat. "I have been handled my whole life. Moved out of the way. Filed under the wrong category. Handled." She looked at him directly. "Tell me the truth or leave."

Zane looked at her.

For a long moment the only sound was the filing system humming above them.

Then he said: "It is called a mate bond."

Mara's hands went still on the shelf.

"I know what a mate bond is," she said slowly.

"I know you do."

"One wolf. One mate." She turned around fully. "That is how it works."

Zane held her gaze and said nothing.

And in his silence she heard the thing he was not saying.

The air in the room changed.

"No," she said.

He said nothing.

"That is not possible."

"I know."

"Both of you." Her voice was very quiet now. "At the same time."

"Half a breath apart," he said. "But yes."

Mara turned back to the shelf. She put both hands flat on the wood and stared at the files and breathed.

Her wolf, which had been pacing since last night, went completely still.

Like it was listening.

Like it already knew and had been waiting for her to catch up.

"What happens now," she said.

"Caius is deciding."

She turned around slowly. "He is deciding."

"He is the future Alpha. He has"

"He is deciding," she said again, "what happens to me."

Zane looked at her. "That is not what I meant."

"Is it not." She picked up her cart. She was done with this shelf. She moved to the next one. "Tell Caius Vane that I have been surviving without anyone's decisions for twenty-two years. He does not need to rush on my account."

"Mara."

"You should go. Ranked wolves in the Hollow section before seven draws attention."

"I do not care about"

"I care." She looked at him over her shoulder. "I have to live here after you leave. So please go."

Zane stood in the doorway for a long moment.

Then quietly: "This is not going to go away."

"I know."

"He knows it too. He just has not admitted it yet."

Mara filed the last document on the shelf.

"Then we have something in common," she said. "Goodnight Zane."

"It is morning."

"Then good morning." She moved to the next shelf. "Close the door on your way out."

He left.

She waited until she heard the door click shut.

Then she put both hands on the shelf and pressed her forehead against the cool wood and closed her eyes.

Her wolf pressed back against her chest like a hand against a hand through glass.

Two men.

One bond.

And somewhere in this mountain, the future Alpha of Ironveil was deciding what to do about the Hollow girl his wolf had chosen without his permission.

She straightened up.

She picked up the next file.

If Caius Vane thought he was the only one making decisions here, he was about to find out something about Hollow girls that ranked wolves never bothered to learn.

They were very good at surviving things that were

supposed to break them.

The door opened again.

She did not turn around.

"I said close the........."

"It is not him."

The voice was different.

Lower. Quieter. The kind of quiet that was not soft. The kind that had weight behind it.

Mara turned around.

Caius Vane was standing inside the records hall with his hands in his pockets and his grey eyes on her face and an expression that gave absolutely nothing away.

He looked at the door Zane had just walked out of.

Then back at her.

"How much did he tell you," he said.

Mara looked at him for a long moment.

Then she said: "Enough."

His jaw tightened.

"Good," he said. "Then I do not have to explain why this cannot happen."

Mara tilted her head. "Which part cannot happen."

"Any of it."

She looked at him steadily. "Your wolf disagrees."

The room went very quiet.

Caius looked at her with those unreadable grey eyes and for one second,one single second, something moved behind them. Something that looked nothing like the cold controlled future Alpha the pack feared.

Then it was gone.

"My wolf," he said carefully, "does not run this pack."

Mara nodded slowly.

"Okay," she said.

He blinked. Like he expected more.

"Okay," he repeated.

"You came here to tell me it cannot happen. I heard you." She turned back to the shelf. "You can leave now."

Silence.

She filed three documents.

He was still there.

She could feel him the way she could feel a fire in a cold room without looking, without touching. Just heat and presence and the pull that had not stopped since last night.

"You are not afraid of me," he said. Like it was a fact he was still processing.

"Should I be."

"Most people are."

"I am not most people." She pulled the next file. "I am a Hollow girl in a grey dress in a records hall. You are the future Alpha of Ironveil. By every rule of this pack you should not be standing in this room right now." She glanced at him over her shoulder. "So maybe you are not most people either."

Caius looked at her.

Something shifted in his face.

Not warmth. Not softness.

But something.

"Stay out of the Gathering tonight," he said quietly.

"Your Beta said the same thing."

"My Beta is right."

"And if I come anyway."

He was quiet for a long moment.

"Then something will happen that I cannot take back," he said. "And I am not ready for that."

He walked out.

The door closed.

Mara stood in the empty records hall with a file in her hand and two different men's warnings sitting in her chest next to a wolf that was done being quiet.

She put the file away.

She picked up the next one.

She was going to destroy something tonight.