BOUND BY BLOOD AND THE MOON

VOSS

The argument stopped the moment Elira reached the bottom of the stairs.

Not gradually instantly, like someone had cut the sound off at the source. Two men stood in what she guessed was some kind of war room: a long table scarred with old knife marks, a map of the territory pinned across one wall with red string running between points she didn't recognize yet. Kade stood at the head of the table, arms braced against it, shoulders set in a way that told her the conversation had been anything but calm. The other man, broad, older, a jagged scar cutting through one eyebrow turned first, and his eyes went straight to her with an intensity that made her stomach drop.

"That's her," he said. Not a question.

"Marcus." Kade's voice carried a warning in it, low and immediate.

"That's the Voss girl." Marcus straightened, ignoring the warning entirely, gaze fixed on Elira like she was a puzzle piece finally clicking into a picture he didn't like. "Elira Voss. Larkspur's Beta's daughter."

The words meant nothing and everything at once. Elira's father had died when she was young in a hunting accident, she'd always been told, nothing more. She hadn't known he'd been Beta. Larkspur had never treated her family like anything but ordinary, low-ranked, unremarkable. She'd grown up believing that.

"I don't understand," she said. "My father wasn't, we weren't pack leaders. We were nobody."

Marcus's laugh was short and humorless. "Your father was Daniel Voss. He ran security for the Larkspur Alpha for eleven years before he died. 'Nobody' isn't a word I'd have used." He looked at Kade. "You didn't tell her?"

"I didn't know myself until an hour ago," Kade said, tight. "Priya dug up the pack registry overnight. I was going to tell her when"

"When what? When was it convenient?" Marcus's scar pulled tight as his jaw clenched. "Kade, Larkspur didn't burn by accident. You know that. I know that. And now the one surviving Voss walks onto our land the same night, bonded to you, and you want to keep her in a guest room like she's an inconvenience instead of asking why she's really here."

"She's here," Kade said, voice dropping into something dangerous, "because she ran from a burning home in the middle of the night with nowhere else to go. Watch how you talk about her."

The room went silent in a different way, this time heavier, charged. Marcus studied Kade for a long moment, something calculating behind his eyes, and then, deliberately, inclined his head not quite a bow, but close enough to read as a concession.

"My apologies," he said, though his eyes didn't quite match the words when they moved back to Elira. "I meant no disrespect. But you should know what you walked into, Voss. Larkspur wasn't attacked by rogues or wandering wolves. That fire was set. Deliberately. By someone who knew exactly which buildings to burn first the armory, the Alpha's study, the record hall. Someone who wanted things destroyed, not just people."

Elira's chest tightened. "Who would do that?"

"That's what we're trying to determine," Kade said. "And why, days before the attack, half my border scouts reported wolves that didn't belong to any registered pack circling this territory too."

"You think it's connected."

"I think it's too convenient not to be." Kade's gold eyes found hers again, and for the first time since the forest, something in his expression softened not into warmth, exactly, but into something that looked like reluctant honesty. "Your father worked security. He would have known things about territory weaknesses, alliances, old debts. If someone wanted Larkspur gone and wanted to make sure no one asked the right questions afterward..."

"They'd want anyone who might know those things gone too," Elira finished, hollow.

The war room went quiet again.

"You're not safe going back," Kade said. "Not until we know who did this, and not until we know why. Which means, for now, you stay here."

"That's convenient for you too," Marcus said, low, though not unkindly, more like a man testing a theory out loud. "Mate-bonded to a Voss with insider knowledge on Larkspur's fall, right when this pack needs every advantage it can get."

"Careful," Kade said again, and this time his voice carried an edge sharp enough that Marcus actually took half a step back.

"I'm not a strategy," Elira said, before either of them could continue talking around her like she wasn't standing right there. "I'm not an advantage, or leverage, or a resource for whatever war you two think is coming. My home burned last night. My family might be dead. I didn't ask for a bond, I didn't ask to be a Voss with secrets I apparently didn't even know I had, and I'm getting real tired of being discussed instead of talked to."

Both men looked at her. Marcus, to her surprise, looked almost approving. Kade looked like something had hit him somewhere he hadn't braced for.

"You're right," Kade said quietly. "I'm sorry."

It wasn't the answer she expected. Marcus's eyebrows rose slightly, like he hadn't expected it either.

"I want to know what happened to my pack," Elira said. "All of it. Not the version you think I can handle everything. And I want to know why my father's death was never explained to us the way it apparently should have been. And then," she added, quieter, "we can talk about the bond. Because that's not nothing either, and I'm not pretending it is just because everyone in this room seems more comfortable discussing borders and strategy than the thing that's actually sitting in the middle of this room with us."

For a long moment, no one spoke.

Then Kade nodded, slow, like a man conceding ground he hadn't expected to have to give.

"Sit down, Voss," he said, gesturing to the chair at the table, not the doorway, not the guest room. The table. "Let's start from the beginning."

Marcus watched the exchange with an unreadable expression, then quietly excused himself, murmuring something about scouts and reports, leaving the war room and its long, red-stringed map, and its eleven years of a father's hidden work to the two of them alone.

Elira sat.

Outside, the morning had turned grey and heavy with the promise of rain, and somewhere past the tree line, smoke that didn't belong to Larkspur anymore drifted faint against the horizon, a reminder that whatever had happened last night wasn't finished happening yet.