BOUND BY BLOOD AND THE MOON

ASHWORTH WOLVES

The rain hadn't stopped by the time Elira woke the next morning, and neither had the strange, unsettled hum under her skin the thing Kade had finally named the day before. Mate. She kept turning the word over like a stone in her pocket, testing its weight, unsure if it fit.

Priya found her in the kitchen an hour after sunrise, staring at a cup of tea she hadn't touched.

"You've got the face," Priya said, dropping into the seat across from her.

"What face?"

"The 'I was told a life-altering truth yesterday and haven't processed any of it' face. I've seen it on my brother a lot this week." She studied Elira for a beat. "He told you. About the mate thing."

"He told me a lot of things." Elira wrapped her hands around the mug for warmth she didn't need. "My father. The letters. Someone inside Larkspur feeding information out for years. And yes the bond."

Priya's teasing dropped away. "That's a lot for one conversation."

"It was." Elira exhaled. "I keep waiting to feel something simple about any of it. I don't. Everything's tangled with everything else. I don't know how to grieve my father without also being angry that no one ever told me who he really was. I don't know how to feel about the bond without wondering if this pack sees me as anything other than a security risk with a convenient side effect."

"For what it's worth," Priya said, "Kade doesn't see you that way. I've watched him turn down mate-matches with actual princesses of actual packs without blinking. He's not soft for convenience. He's soft for you, specifically, which trust me is new."

Before Elira could answer, the kitchen door swung open and a woman she didn't recognize walked in like she owned the room. Tall, dark-haired, dressed for the weather in a way that suggested she'd been out running the perimeter rather than sleeping in. She stopped short at the sight of Elira, eyes flicking over her with an assessment so unguarded it bordered on rudeness.

"So it's true," the woman said. "The scent-shift wasn't a rumor."

"Nadia." Priya's voice carried a warning edge Elira was starting to recognize as an Ashworth family trait. "This is Elira."

"I know who she is. The whole territory knows who she is by now." Nadia's gaze didn't soften. "Larkspur's last Voss, mate-bonded to our Alpha the same week her pack burns to the ground. Convenient timing, don't you think?"

"Nadia." Priya's tone sharpened further.

"I'm just saying what half the pack's already thinking." Nadia crossed her arms, unbothered. "Kade turned down my sister eighteen months ago. Politely. Formally. Told the whole gathering he wasn't interested in a bond built on alliance instead of fate. And now fate hands him a stranger with a dead father who apparently knew all our old secrets, walking straight through our border on the one night her own pack conveniently burns. Forgive me for asking questions."

Elira felt heat climb up the back of her neck not embarrassment, something closer to anger. "I didn't ask for any of this. I watched my home burn. I don't know if my mother's alive. I didn't choose a bond, and I certainly didn't orchestrate my own pack's destruction to land myself an Alpha."

"Didn't say you did," Nadia said, though her tone suggested otherwise. "Just find it interesting how neatly it's all lined up."

"That's enough." Kade's voice cut through the kitchen from the doorway, low and absolute, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees. He hadn't raised his voice at all he hadn't needed to. Nadia straightened immediately, some of her bravado visibly receding under the weight of his stare. "You'll speak to my mate with respect, Nadia, or you won't speak to her at all."

Mate. He'd said it out loud, in front of someone else, without hesitation this time. Elira felt the word land somewhere unexpected in her chest.

"Understood, Alpha." Nadia's jaw was tight, but she inclined her head, the challenge in her posture folding down into something more careful. She left without another word, though her eyes cut toward Elira one more time on her way out, not apologetic, just recalibrating.

Silence settled over the kitchen. Priya, with the tact of someone who'd clearly decided this was not her scene to referee, mumbled something about checking on patrol schedules and slipped out after Nadia, leaving Kade and Elira alone.

"I'm sorry," Kade said. "That shouldn't have happened."

"Is she right?" Elira asked, quieter than she meant to. "That people think this is convenient. That I'm suspicious."

"Some will think that no matter what I say." Kade crossed the kitchen, close enough now that she had to tilt her head back to hold his gaze. "It doesn't change what I know to be true. You didn't orchestrate anything, Elira. You ran from a fire with nothing but your own skin, and you've spent every hour since fighting for answers instead of falling apart, which is more than most people could manage." His voice dropped. "And you're not suspicious of me. You're just you."

The word sat heavier between them than either of them acknowledged out loud.

"Nadia mentioned your sister," Elira said, if only to have something safer to focus on than the way his eyes hadn't left hers. "The match you turned down."

"Nadia's sister, Yasmin. Our fathers arranged it when we were children, the kind of match that made sense on paper and nowhere else." Kade's mouth twisted, not quite a smile. "I turned it down publicly, which embarrassed her family more than I intended. Nadia's held a grudge ever since. It has nothing to do with you specifically. You just happened to become the reason the door closed permanently."

"That's not nothing," Elira said. "That's a whole pack's worth of politics I just walked into without knowing the rules."

"You don't have to know the rules yet." Something in his expression eased, softened at the edges. "You have to survive today. That's all I'm asking of you right now."

Outside, the rain had finally started to ease, thin grey light breaking weakly through the clouds. Elira looked at him really, the way she had in the war room the night before and felt the strange, unwanted certainty settle further into her bones: whatever this bond was, whatever war it had dropped her into, it wasn't going away, and neither, it seemed, was he.

"For what it's worth," she said, "I don't think it's convenient either. Losing everything in one night. Gaining a mate who apparently comes with his own pack full of politics I didn't sign up for." A ghost of something that might have been a smile pulled at her mouth, the first in two days. "Fate has a strange sense of humor."

Kade's almost-smile was small, but real. "Cruelest joke I've ever survived," he agreed. "So far."