chapter 4- Daphen
1420 Words
I knew Caden was in my territory before Lena told me.
I felt him the second he crossed my border. That specific pull - the mirror pull, my wolf called it - the way identical blood recognizes itself. Like looking at your own reflection and watching it do something you didn't choose.
I said nothing because I wanted to see what he would do.
Now I was standing in my office at four in the morning watching my brother lie to the woman he'd destroyed and I wanted to put my fist through his face.
"I did wrong by you, Lena," Caden said. That voice. That carefully measured voice he used when he wanted someone to believe him. "Everything I did was wrong. But this bond is real. I felt it when I marked you and I knew it wasn't for me. It was always meant to be him."
Lena stared at him.
"That," she said quietly, "is the most beautifully constructed lie I have ever heard."
I almost smiled. Almost.
"Get out," I said.
Caden's eyes moved to me. That look - the one he'd been giving me since we were children, the one that said you got the curse and I got everything else and we both know it.
"Daphen-"
"Get out of my pack house." I kept my voice low because when I go quiet is when things get dangerous and he knew that better than anyone. "If you're still on my territory by morning I'll take it as a declaration. You know what I do with declarations."
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then at Lena.
That almost-pain moved through his face again and I filed it away because Caden didn't feel pain without a reason and the reason was never what it looked like.
"You'll both understand eventually," he said.
He walked out.
The door clicked shut.
Lena stood completely still for three seconds. Then she turned to me and her eyes were dry and hard and furious and something about that - the fact that she wasn't crying, the fact that she was just angry - hit me somewhere I wasn't expecting.
"He's not done," she said.
"No."
"Whatever the real reason is - it's bigger than saving you."
"Yes."
"Then we need to figure it out." She stepped closer. "How long before the bond locks? Actually locks. Give me the real number."
I looked at her.
I didn't want to tell her. Not because I was managing her - I was done managing her - but because saying it out loud made it real in a way I wasn't ready for.
"The bond doesn't always need consummation," I said. "Sometimes proximity is enough. Emotional connection. Time." I held her gaze. "For some wolves it starts locking within days."
She went very still.
"Days," she said.
"Yes."
"How long have I been here."
"Three days."
The color left her face. Not fear exactly. Something worse than fear - the look of someone doing math they don't want to finish.
"So it might already be-"
"Starting. Yes."
She pressed both hands flat on the desk and breathed and I watched her pull herself together in real time. Piece by piece. No performance. Just a woman refusing to fall apart through sheer force of will.
I had watched three women stand in this room and break.
She was not breaking.
Something shifted in my chest. I ignored it.
"Okay," she said. "Okay. So we-"
The door crashed open so hard it bounced off the wall.
Vera stood in the frame breathing hard, blood on her hands, her face the color of ash.
"We have a problem," she said.
LENA
The body was in the east courtyard.
One of Daphen's border warriors - young, maybe twenty, someone who had probably been standing that post for years without incident. He was on the ground with his throat torn out and his eyes open and the grass black and wet around him.
I stood at the edge of the courtyard and stared and felt absolutely nothing because I had used up all my feeling in that office and there was nothing left.
"Caden did this," I said.
"We don't know that," Vera said.
"The hell we don't." I turned to look at her. "He was just here. He crossed this territory. And now one of your warriors is dead." I looked at Daphen. "This is a message. He's telling you something."
Daphen was crouched beside the body. His face was completely still - that deep cold stillness that I was starting to understand wasn't emptiness. It was fury so controlled it had nowhere to go yet.
He stood up.
"Get him inside," he said to Vera. Quiet. Absolute. "Don't let the pack see him like this. Not yet."
"Daphen-"
"Not yet, Vera."
She moved. The warriors with her moved. I stayed where I was and watched Daphen stand over his dead wolf and breathe and I saw his hands curl into fists at his sides and release and curl again.
"How many people knew Caden was here tonight," I said.
"Nobody. I didn't announce it."
"Then whoever told him where that warrior would be is inside this pack." I watched his face. "You have someone feeding information to your brother."
His jaw worked. "I know."
"Do you know who?"
"I have a suspicion."
"Then-"
"Not tonight." He turned to look at me and his eyes in the dark were so like Caden's it still knocked the air out of me every single time and I hated that. I hated that my body hadn't caught up to what my brain knew. "You need to go inside. Now."
"I'm not going anywhere-"
"Lena." He closed the distance between us in three steps and stopped close enough that I had to look up to hold his gaze. "I need you inside. Behind a locked door. With Vera." His voice was low and direct and not a performance. "Because if Caden killed that warrior as a message then the message is about you. And I need to know you're somewhere I can account for."
I looked at him.
At the fury he was holding in with both hands. At the guilt underneath it for the dead boy being carried inside right now. At the eight months ticking down behind his eyes every second of every day.
"Fine," I said. "But tomorrow you tell me everything. The suspicion. The informant. Everything."
"Tomorrow," he said.
I turned toward the door.
His hand caught my wrist.
Not hard. Just - caught it. And held.
I looked down at his hand on my wrist and then up at his face and something moved between us that I absolutely was not ready for and didn't have a name for.
The mark on my throat burned.
"Thank you," he said. Very quietly. "For not running."
I looked at him for a moment.
"Don't make me regret it," I said.
I walked inside.
Vera locked my door from inside and sat in the chair by the window with a knife across her knees and didn't say a word and I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling and thought about dead warriors and locked bonds and brothers who smiled while they destroyed things.
I thought about Daphen's hand on my wrist.
I thought about the way he said thank you like he hadn't said those words out loud in a very long time.
Stop it, Raya said inside me.
"I'm not doing anything."
You're doing the thing.
"I'm not."
You're looking for reasons to trust him.
"Maybe I already have reasons." I pressed my fingers to the mark on my throat. It was warm. It had been warm since the moment I heard Caden's voice in that corridor - like the bond had decided something my brain was still catching up to. "Maybe that's not the worst thing."
Raya went quiet.
I closed my eyes.
I was almost asleep when Vera's voice cut through the dark.
"Lena."
Something in her voice made me sit up immediately.
She was at the window. Looking down into the courtyard. Her face had gone the color of old bone.
"What," I said.
She turned to look at me.
"The Shaman," she said. "She's not in her room."
I was out of the bed before Vera finished the sentence.
"Her candles are still burning," Vera said. "Her door was open. But she's gone." She swallowed. "And there's blood on her floor."
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