MARKED BY THE ENEMY

CHAPTER 2: ENEMY TERRITORY

Elira's POV

I woke up on a bed that wasn't mine, in a room that wasn't mine, with a headache that absolutely was. For a few seconds I just lay there, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling dark wood beams, nothing like the water-stained popcorn ceiling in my apartment back in Ashwood and let my brain slowly reassemble the night. Creek, Clearing, Fire. The sound I was never going to unhear as long as I lived.

“Kane.” I sat up too fast, and the room tilted. My hands went to my wrists on instinct no rope, no cuffs, nothing. Just faint bruising already going purple where his fingers had been. Small mercies, apparently. He'd knocked me out, not tied me up.

The door was closed. Not locked, I realized when I tried it which felt less like an oversight and more like a message, “Go ahead. See how far you get.” I got as far as the hallway before I heard voices. "You can't keep a human here, Kane, you know what the council will say if this gets back to them"

"The council isn't in this house." Kane's voice, flat, final, the same tone he had used on the man in the clearing right before he wasn't a man anymore. My stomach turned over. "She saw you shift. She saw the execution. Do you understand what that means if she tells anyone"

"I understand exactly what it means, That's why she's staying," Kane answered

A pause. When the second voice spoke again, it was quieter, careful in a way that told me whoever it was knew exactly how much they could push, "And if she doesn't want to stay?", He asked. "Then it's a good thing, that I didn't ask her." Kane said.

I'd heard enough. I pushed off the wall I'd been leaning against and walked into the room like I hadn't just been listening to two werewolves discuss what to do with me as if I were a piece of furniture with an inconvenient opinion.

The second voice belonged to a woman tall, dark-eyed, arms crossed, looking at me like I was a problem she hadn't finished solving yet. Kane stood by the window with his back half-turned, and in daylight, without the fire and the blood and the claws, he looked almost ordinary. Almost.

There was still something coiled under his stillness that made the room feel smaller than it was. "Good, You're awake" he said, not turning around. "You knocked me out," I answered boldly. "You were about to run into three of my enforcers in the dark, I did you a favor." Kane said plainly. "You could have just let me go." I told him sharply. Now he turned.

Whatever had flickered behind his eyes last night in the clearing that one unguarded second was gone completely, replaced with something colder and more careful. "No, I couldn't," he said. The woman uncrossed her arms. "I'm Naya," she said, like she'd decided someone in the room should be civil. "Beta of this pack. And you're a very large problem, in case nobody's told you that yet."

"I've gotten that impression." I looked at Kane. "So what happens now? You keep me locked in a room until I forget what I saw? That's not how memory works, in case nobody's told you that yet." Something almost like amusement crossed his face before he shut it down, "You're not locked in anything, The door wasn't locked. The house is a different question."

"The house," he said, "is surrounded by sixty miles of pack land, a territory line you'd need a death wish to cross without an escort, and about forty wolves who'd smell a human trying to run before she made it past the tree line. So no, You're not locked in a room. You just have nowhere to go." A beat dropped immediately he said those words.

I hated that he was right. I hated it more that he said it like a fact instead of a threat no cruelty in it, just math, which was somehow worse. "My sister is missing," I said, because it was the only card I had left to play, and I'd rather burn it now than let it rot in my pocket while he decided my future for me. "She went missing three weeks ago, half a mile inside your territory. That's why I was out there. Not to spy on you, not for whatever you think this is."

That landed. I watched it land, the smallest shift in his stance, weight moving off one foot, a stillness that was different from the stillness before. "Name," he said.

"You first," I told him not looking at his face. His jaw tightened, and for a second I thought he'd refuse just to prove he could. Then: "Mara Vance," he said. "Twenty-four, Reported missing by Ashwood pack three weeks ago."

The floor dropped out from under me. "You know her name." "I know everyone who's gone missing near my border in the last year." His eyes held mine, and there was nothing cold in them now something sharper, something that looked almost like he was deciding whether to trust me with the next sentence.

"You're not the first person to come looking. You're the first one who survived long enough to ask me about it." Naya went very still beside him, "Kane", she screamed like trying to warn him. "She deserves to know what she walked into," he said, still watching me. "More than she knows already."

My pulse was loud in my own ears. "Then tell me." He studied me for a long moment long enough that I understood, somewhere underneath the fear and the headache and the bruises on my wrists, that whatever he said next was going to change everything.

"Not tonight," he said finally, and something in his voice made it clear the conversation was over whether I liked it or not. "Tonight, you eat, you sleep, and you stay where I can see you. Tomorrow" His eyes flicked to Naya, some silent decision passing between them. "Tomorrow, we talk about your sister."

He walked out before I could argue, and I stood there in a stranger's house on enemy land, furious, terrified, and for the first time in three weeks closer to the truth than anyone in Ashwood had gotten.