Chapter 20 – Bait
889 Words
The number wouldn’t leave Amara’s head.
She kept seeing it overlaid on faces in the pack, on strangers’ silhouettes in her memory. How many debts. How many reasons.
“Stop,” Nira said, shoving a mug into her hands in the kitchen. “You’re going to stink of fear for a week.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re vibrating.” Nira’s eyes narrowed. “Drink.”
It tasted like chamomile and annoyance. Amara drank anyway.
“You’re not going out alone,” Nira added. “Swear.”
“Already have two shadows,” Amara said. “You want to make it three?”
“I’d rather sew you up after a bar brawl than after a tranquilizer dart,” Nira said. “Call me if anything feels wrong. Anything.”
“Everything feels wrong,” Amara muttered, but she nodded.
Tamsin and Sorrel were waiting by the door, mid‑argument, both shutting up when Amara stepped out.
“Big meeting,” Tamsin said. “War room.”
“Of course.” Amara blew out a breath. “Why whisper when we can be collectively uncomfortable.”
The room was packed: Silverpine on one side, Blackridge on the other. Rowan and Lysander at the head of the table. A printout of the email pinned above the map, the bounty line fuzzed for the room.
Amara hung at the back, Sorrel and Tamsin bracketing her.
“We’ll keep this brief,” Rowan said. “Someone out there put a price on a wolf’s head. That’s now everyone’s problem.”
Low growls. Mutters.
“We are not,” Lysander said, “turning into the kind of people who take that money. Anybody even jokes about collecting, they answer to me.”
“And to me,” Gideon added. “I’ve been looking for an excuse.”
A few strained chuckles.
“They didn’t just send a number,” Rowan went on. “They picked a face. They made it personal.”
Eyes slid, quick and guilty, toward the back.
Elias’s voice cut through. “Amara. You’ve been the center of too many stories this week. How do we not hand them another?”
He’d dragged her into the circle. Amara swallowed, then stepped forward into the narrow aisle.
“They want me scared,” she said. “They want you either wrapping me in bubble wrap or pretending I don’t exist. Both make it easier to move me like a piece.”
Silence. Watching.
“So we don’t do that,” she went on. “I don’t go lone, but I don’t hide. I stay on my routes. I sit in the hall. If they try to snatch me, they have to do it with both packs watching and teeth ready.”
A young voice blurted, “But if they come—”
“Then we see who they are,” Amara said. “Humans, wolves, rogues. We learn. We hit back. We use the fact that they told us exactly who they’re aiming at.”
“That’s bait,” someone muttered.
“Yeah,” she said. “Unfortunately, that part’s not up to me anymore. What is up to me is whether I stand there shaking or with my claws out.”
Gideon’s mouth twitched. “Use the bait, don’t be the hook.”
“Exactly.”
From the side, Nira called, “Still not thrilled.”
“Me neither,” Amara said. “But ignoring the price tag won’t make it vanish.”
Rowan stepped back up, gaze skimming the room. “From now on, any move against her is an attack on both packs,” he said. “We treat it that way. Whoever’s running ‘Subject Zero’ picked the wrong valley.”
The room rumbled.
Meeting broke. Wolves filed out in knots; the air stayed sharp and unsettled.
“Stay,” Rowan said quietly as Amara turned to go.
Sorrel and Tamsin bristled. Amara jerked her chin. “Two minutes. Hall. Ears open.”
They took posts outside the door.
Inside, with just him and the map, the room felt too big.
“You were right about the hall,” Rowan said without preamble. “I hid behind you. Behind your silence. I told myself it was for the treaty. It was also for me.”
“Self‑awareness looks good on you,” she said. “Still ugly, though.”
“I can’t undo it,” he said. “Any of it. But I can decide what I do now.”
“And now?” she asked.
“Now someone’s put a bounty on the one wolf who knows exactly what it feels like to be treated like a lab sample,” he said. “I’d rather have you fighting on my side than at my throat.”
“You’re still on probation,” she said.
“I know.”
Before she could answer, a runner slid in, breathless, holding a crumpled paper.
“Found this at the creek,” he panted. “Wedged under a rock. Smelled wrong.”
Rowan unfolded it.
A crescent over a cage. Underneath, in neat human type:
PHASE ONE COMPLETE.
SUBJECT ZERO VIABLE.
STANDBY FOR EXTRACTION WINDOW.
Amara’s skin went cold.
“Looks like they’re done watching,” she said. “Next round, they come get me.”
- Writer
