The Rejected Heir Of Greywake

Chapter 4: Before the Bond

POV: Mera

He was closer than I expected, and I hadn't heard him move at all.

"You're the one from the ravine," Vane said. Not a question. Just a fact he was setting down between us, careful, like he wasn't sure how it would land.

"I am."

"You caught him. Toren." He said the name like he'd had to reach for it, like it hadn't stuck the way mine apparently had. "That was a good catch."

"It was a scared catch. There's a difference." I don't know why I said that. Maybe because I've never known what to do with a compliment, so I hand it back unopened, still wrapped, like it might be a trick if I let myself unwrap it in front of him.

He almost smiled. Almost. His mouth started something and stopped it halfway, like he'd caught himself doing it and wasn't sure it was allowed. "Still. Nobody else moved."

"Nobody else was close enough."

"I was close enough." He said it quiet, not looking at me when he said it, looking instead at the torches lining the hall like they were more comfortable to talk to. "I didn't move either."

I hadn't expected that. I'd expected him to explain it away, tell me it wasn't his place, tell me trainees handle trainees, all the reasons people give for standing still while someone else does the work of not letting a person die. He didn't do any of that. He just said it plain, like a fact he wasn't proud of and wasn't going to dress up.

"Why are you telling me that."

"I don't know." He looked at me then, and it wasn't the flat, careful look I'd gotten used to seeing on him from a distance. It had something moving underneath it, something I didn't have a name for yet. "Guess I wanted you to hear it from me instead of guessing."

Around us the hall kept filling, torches throwing long gold light across the floor, someone's laugh cutting sharp over the noise, a fiddle finally finding its tune somewhere near the front. None of it seemed to be happening to us. We'd found some small pocket of quiet in the middle of all that noise, and neither of us moved to leave it.

His eyes dropped to my wrist. I followed where he was looking and found the old scar there, pale and thin, the one I usually keep covered without thinking about it, the sleeve always falling just right, second nature by now. Tonight the dress had no sleeves at all, and I hadn't thought about that until this exact moment.

"What happened," he asked, careful, like the question itself might hurt me.

"It's old." That's what I always say. It's true, technically. Doesn't mean it's the whole truth.

"Didn't ask how old." His thumb hovered near it, not touching, just close enough that I felt the heat of his hand anyway. "Asked what happened."

"Training accident. Same as most of my scars." Another half truth. The real one has a foster mother's name attached to it, a door that locked from the outside, a night I spent counting cracks in a ceiling instead of crying, and I wasn't handing any of that to a stranger in a hallway, heir or not.

He didn't push. That surprised me more than the question had. Most people push, or worse, they nod like they believe you and file the lie away as proof you're fragile, something to be handled instead of talked to. He just let it sit there between us, unfinished, and moved on like he understood some things don't get handed over on a first conversation.

"You're a Guardian trainee," he said.

"I am."

"You're good at it."

"I'm alive at it. Those aren't always the same thing here."

That almost got the smile all the way out. He caught it again before it finished, jaw tightening back into that careful stillness everyone mistakes for cold, but I'd seen it start, and something in my chest did something stupid and warm about having seen it.

I want to say I stayed guarded. I want to say I remembered every lesson I've ever taught myself about not needing anyone's attention to know my own worth. The truth is smaller and more embarrassing than that. The truth is I stood there in a dress that didn't fit right, talking to the alpha-heir of Ashwood pack, and some locked-up part of me, the seven-year-old part, the part still waiting on a porch for someone to come back for her, thought, maybe.

Maybe tonight is the night someone chooses me on purpose. Not because I saved anyone. Not because I stayed useful. Just because.

I hated how much I wanted that. I let myself want it anyway, just for a minute, just standing there in the noise with his eyes still half on my wrist like he hadn't finished being curious about it.

Across the hall, past his shoulder, I caught Draeus watching us. Not glancing, not passing his eyes over the crowd the way you do when you're just checking a room. Watching. Steady and specific, the kind of look that makes you feel like you've already been measured and found either useful or in the way, and he hadn't decided yet which one I was.

Vane didn't notice. Or he noticed and decided not to react, which with him, I was starting to realize, might amount to the same careful thing.

"I should get back to the line," I said, because someone had to say something, and my hope was getting loud enough that I didn't trust my own mouth much longer.

"Right. Yeah." He stepped back, gave me that small space again, the same restraint I'd watched from across a ravine three days ago, hands loose at his sides like he was making himself let go of something he hadn't quite picked up yet. "Good luck tonight."

"You too."

I walked back toward the Omega line with my pulse doing something unfamiliar, some strange, hopeful stumble I didn't have a name for and didn't want to examine too closely, in case examining it made it disappear.

I decided, right there, walking back into that line of women standing straighter than they felt, that if the bond named someone tonight, I wasn't going to run from it. Not this once. Not after a conversation that felt more honest than anything I'd gotten from this pack in fourteen years.

The horns sounded from the front of the hall.

The ceremony was starting.