Scent of Forever

The Alpha With Iron Eyes

Callan wanted me at the meeting. That alone should have warned me.

"You'll serve," he said, catching my arm outside the kitchen an hour later, his public smile already gone. "Tea, water, whatever they ask for. Eyes down, mouth shut."

"I always do," I said.

"Good girl," he said in the way you'd praise a dog.

The great hall had been set for a formal meeting — the long table down the centre, Ashwood's council on one side, three Silverleaf wolves on the other. I recognized the Alpha by the way the air in the room leaned toward him without him doing a thing to earn it.

I kept my head down and poured water, quiet and quick, until I reached his glass. His hand moved to steady it before I'd even set it down, like he expected me to spill. I hadn't spilt anything in years. But our fingers brushed at the base of the glass, and the same tight, pulled-string feeling shot through me, sharper this time.

I pulled my hand back too fast. Water sloshed over the rim after all.

"Careful," Callan said smoothly, not looking at me. "She's clumsy. Lack of discipline."

I said nothing. But the Alpha's eyes had followed my hand back to my side and stayed there a moment too long.

"What's her name?" he asked.

Callan blinked. "Who, her? That's just staff, Alpha Renner. Not pack business."

"Her name," Ronan Renner said again. Not a question this time.

Every eye at the table shifted toward me.

"Elara," I said before Callan could answer for me.

Something crossed Ronan's face — a man confirming something he'd already suspected. "Elara Calder," he said. "Alpha Calder's sister."

The room went quiet. Callan's jaw tightened, just enough that I saw it.

"She was," Callan said carefully. "Before the accident. Unstable temperament. We manage her condition for the pack's safety."

I stared at the water pitcher and said nothing.

"She doesn't smell unstable to me," Ronan said. "She smells like someone who's been kept quiet a long time."

"With respect, Alpha Renner, my sister's condition is an internal matter."

Ronan held his gaze on me a moment longer. Then he looked back at Callan, and the moment closed like a door.

"Fine," he said. "The treaty."

I finished pouring with my hands, not quite steady. When I reached the end of the table, Callan's eyes cut to me — a warning, clear as a slap.

I retreated to the wall by the kitchen door and watched the meeting continue. None of it meant anything to me. But every few minutes, Ronan Renner's eyes found me against that wall. Not staring. Checking. Like he was making sure something hadn't moved or broken since the last time he'd looked.

Nobody had checked on me like that in six years.

When the meeting broke, Callan crossed the hall in three fast steps and gripped my elbow hard enough to bruise.

"Whatever that was," he hissed, "it ends now. You do not speak unless spoken to. You do not look an alpha in the eye. Do you understand what you could cost this pack?"

"I didn't do anything," I said.

"You never do," he said, real fear in his anger now. "That's exactly the problem."

He let go and walked away. I stood by the wall, rubbing the sore spot on my arm, and across the hall, Ronan Renner watched the whole thing without saying a word.

But I saw his jaw tighten. And for the first time in six years, someone besides me was angry on my behalf.