Broken But Not Forgotten

CHAPTER 2

I was still thinking about it two hours later when I was scrubbing the kitchen floor on my hands and knees.

That was how I processed things. I scrubbed, I thought. The repetition of the brush against the tile gave my hands something to do while my brain worked through what it couldn't make sense of. Tonight it wasn't making sense of much.

A stranger, an Alpha, clearly, from the way every person in that room had stopped breathing when he walked in, had told Lena to stop.

Just like that. Like it was simple.

Like it was obvious.

Nobody had ever done that.

Not once in eighteen years.

I scrubbed harder.

My wolf was still unsettled in my chest, not in a bad way, more like the feeling of standing at the edge of something very high and not yet knowing whether you're about to jump or be pushed. She hadn't been this awake inside the pack house in years. She was usually so careful here, so quiet. She knew what I knew: that drawing attention to ourselves was dangerous.

But she was paying attention now.

I wrung out the scrubbing brush and moved to the next section of floor.

It doesn't mean anything, I told myself. He's a guest. He stepped in because a scene during his welcome visit was inconvenient for him. That's all.

That was the only explanation that made sense. Men like that, powerful, controlled, the kind of powerful that looks like calm, they didn't intervene out of kindness. They intervened out of strategy.

I had been watching pack politics from the floor my whole life. I knew how it worked.

I just had to make sure I didn't confuse his self-interest with something it wasn't.

The kitchen was quiet now. Everyone had gone to bed or to their rooms. I could hear the low murmur of voices from the west wing, my father's study, probably him and Beta Rowan running through the agenda for tomorrow's summit. Once in a while my mother's voice cut through, precise and short, and then went quiet again.

I finished the floor, dried my hands, and sat down on the back step to press my palm gently against my ribs.

Still broken. I'd had worse. They'd be mended in two days, faster, if I let my wolf help, but for now every breath was a reminder.

I pressed harder.

Pain was useful sometimes. It kept you honest.

I was up before four the next morning.

The guest pack members would want breakfast, and my father had made clear last night, in the twenty-second conversation we had in the corridor after dinner, where he grabbed my arm hard enough to leave a mark and said the words through his teeth, that everything had to go perfectly.

I moved through the kitchen quietly, pulling out the cast iron pans, setting the coffee to brew. I had gotten good at this years ago: cooking for a large group, fast, without waste, without anyone being in the room to supervise. I moved from station to station by feel more than thought. Eggs, meat, bread. Hot enough, fast enough, enough of it.

By the time the first pack members drifted into the dining room I had a full spread laid out and was moving through the room refilling cups before anyone had to ask.

I kept my head down.

I was almost invisible.

Almost.

I felt the moment he walked in before I heard him. My wolf straightened in my chest like a dog hearing a sound at the door, alert, ears up, whole body oriented toward the entrance without meaning to be.

I kept moving. I did not look up. I poured coffee into my father's cup and moved to the next seat without breaking pace.

But I was aware of exactly where he sat. Left side of the table, near the window. His Beta sat next to him, lighter-skinned, with warm eyes and the relaxed posture of someone who was comfortable everywhere. The Beta accepted his coffee with a genuine thank you, which was so unusual I almost broke stride.

The Alpha, Damon, I had heard his name by now, had caught it from three separate conversations I was apparently not meant to hear, did not speak. He ate efficiently and watched the room. Not in a restless way. In the way that people do when processing is their default state.

I refilled the juice. I replaced an empty bread basket. I stayed quiet and kept moving.

I was three feet behind him reaching for a serving dish when he said, without turning around:

"How's the rib?"

I froze.

Just for a second. Less than a second.

"Fine," I said. "Thank you."

He didn't respond. He didn't turn around. He just picked up his coffee and went back to looking out the window.

Across the table, his Beta watched me with the kind of careful curiosity that meant he had noticed, and filed it away, and would absolutely have opinions about it later.

I collected the serving dish and went back to the kitchen.

My hands were steady. I made sure of it.

But my wolf was doing something I hadn't felt her do in years.

She was humming.

The morning passed in a blur of tasks. I had a running list of what needed to be done before the afternoon summit meeting, and I worked through it methodically: the meeting hall, the guest bathrooms, the corridor floors, re-stocking the linens closet.

I was changing the towels in the washroom attached to the green guest room when I heard footsteps stop in the doorway.

I didn't turn around.

"You were at the river yesterday morning."

It wasn't a question.

I kept my hands moving, folding the edge of the towel over the bar. "I go there every morning. I didn't know you were a guest. I would have stayed further back if I had known."

"That's not what I meant."

I turned around then, because his tone required it. He was standing in the doorway with his shoulder against the frame, arms loosely crossed. Not aggressive. Just taking up space the way powerful people do, like the room arranges itself around them without them asking.

In the daylight, in a small room, he was more than just tall and broad-shouldered. He was the kind of person who looked like every decision they'd ever made had left a mark, the scar through his brow, the set of his jaw, the dark eyes that were doing the same thing they had been doing at breakfast. Processing. Watching.

"I meant," he said carefully, "that you ran."

"I didn't know who you were."

"You still ran."

I held his gaze for a moment. "Most things that come out of nowhere at a riverbank at four in the morning are worth running from."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. Almost.

"That's fair," he said.

He looked around the room, at the fresh linens, the open French doors, the mountain view. "You cleaned this room."

"I clean all the rooms."

"I know." He looked back at me. "I could smell you in here last night."

My wolf went very, very still.

I kept my face neutral. "I'll make sure to leave the window open longer next time. In case it bothers you."

"It doesn't bother me."

The way he said it made the air in the room feel different. I couldn't have explained it. It was like something pressurized, not in a dangerous way, in the way of weather changing, of pressure building before rain.

I picked up the pile of old towels and moved toward the door. He stepped aside without me having to ask, which was something small and shouldn't have meant anything, but did, because nobody in this pack moved out of my way. They moved into my way. They planted themselves in doorways and corridors just to make me navigate around them.

I walked past him.

"Mara."

I stopped.

I hadn't told him my name.

I turned slowly.

"The summit starts at three," he said. "You'll be serving at the formal dinner tonight." It wasn't a question. He already knew. "Don't stand close to Lena Kade."

I searched his face for the angle. For the reason. For what he got out of this.

I couldn't find it.

"Noted," I said.

I walked down the corridor and didn't let myself look back.

But my wolf was fully awake now, and she was not going to be quiet about it.

The afternoon summit was held in the meeting hall. I was not in the room, I was never in the room for things like that, but I served the refreshments before it started and caught fragments through the heavy door as I moved back and forth.

Iron Crest Pack. Biggest territory in the northwest. Known for something to do with their training program and their trade agreements. Alpha Damon had taken over at sixteen after his parents were killed. His pack had tripled in size under his leadership.

I heard Lena's voice, too bright and too careful, when she crossed the corridor ahead of me on her way to the meeting hall.

"He's not mated," she was saying to her mother, low and fast. "Theo confirmed it. He's been unmated for over two years and it's making his wolf unstable. He needs someone. If I can just get close enough…"

They turned the corner and I lost the rest of it.

I stood there in the corridor with a tray of water glasses.

He's unmated.

I didn't know why that information settled in my chest like something heavy and significant.

I told myself it didn't matter. It had nothing to do with me. The Alpha of Iron Crest Pack finding his mate at the Crimson Ridge Harvest Gathering had absolutely zero relevance to a girl whose only job tonight was to carry plates and not be noticed.

I believed it, too.

Right up until the moment I walked through the meeting hall doorway with a tray of refreshments and every wolf in the room looked at me, and Alpha Damon's dark eyes found mine across the full length of the room and didn't move.

And I felt something in my chest c***k open like a door I had welded shut a very long time ago.

I looked away first.

But not before I saw his jaw tighten.

Not before I saw his Beta look between us and go very, very still.

I set down the tray and walked back out.

But whatever had just happened in that room, I couldn't put it back.

And somewhere in the deep part of me where my wolf lived, she was absolutely certain she didn't want to.