Marked By Silence

Chapter 2

The Weight I Carry

Kade

My Beta finds me in the training yard at six in the morning, which means whatever he's about to tell me is bad enough that it couldn't wait for a decent hour.

"Alpha. Got a minute?"

"Depends what it costs me," I say, and Wes almost smiles. Almost. He's been my Beta since we were both too young for the job, and he's the only person left who remembers what I was like before Mia. Before all of it.

"Contact from Widowmere," he says. "Nina Hale's daughter — the one who married into that pack. Her husband's reaching out. Says their Alpha's taken an unhealthy interest in an underage packmate. Warrior's daughter. Family wants out before it gets worse."

Something in my chest goes tight, and I don't examine it too closely. "How underage?"

"Seventeen. Month from her birthday."

"And their Alpha's doing what, exactly?"

"Touching her at gatherings. Talking about her like she's already claimed. Offered the father a promotion in exchange for her, from what I hear." Wes's mouth twists like the words taste bad. "You know how that story usually ends if nobody steps in."

I do know. I've buried enough of my own pack's history to know exactly how it ends when a man with power decides a girl too young to say no is his for the taking.

"Let them in," I say. "Give them the Hale place, or somewhere close to it if that's full. Quietly. I don't want this turning into a border incident before they've even unpacked."

"You want me to loop in the elders?"

"Not yet." I don't examine that instinct either, though I probably should. "Just get them settled first."

Wes studies me a beat too long, the way he does when he thinks I'm not being straight with him. He's usually right. "You're taking a personal interest in this one," he says. "That's not like you."

"It's a father protecting his kids from a predator," I say. "Any decent Alpha would care."

"Sure." He doesn't believe me, but he lets it go, because that's the deal we've had for five years now — he lets me keep my walls up as long as I keep making decisions that don't get anyone killed.

After he leaves, I go looking for Ivy, because I always feel steadier with her small hand in mine. I find her in the kitchen, four years old and covered in flour, informing the pack cook with total confidence that pancakes taste better shaped like stars.

"Daddy!" She launches herself at my legs. "Can we make star pancakes every day?"

"Every day," I promise, scooping her up, and for a second the weight in my chest eases.

It never eases for long. Not since Mia stood in our nursery doorway four years ago and told me, in front of our newborn daughter, that she didn't want either of us. Not since I felt the mate bond snap and had to learn how to be a father and an Alpha with half my heart gone.

I don't let myself want anything anymore. Wanting things is how you end up on your knees in a nursery, holding a screaming infant and realizing you have to be enough for both of you, alone.

So when Wes mentioned a seventeen-year-old girl fleeing a predator, I told myself my only interest was justice. A wrong I could right. Nothing more.

I believe that for almost the whole day.

Then, an hour before sunset, one of the border patrols mind-links me with three words that undo every bit of my careful calm.

They've crossed in.

I tell Ivy's nanny I need to check the perimeter, which isn't a lie, exactly. I shift before I'm fully out the back door, Titan already restless under my skin, some old instinct clawing to get loose that I haven't felt in four years.

Something's coming, Titan says, low and certain in my head.

It's a family. Refugees. Nothing more.

Something's coming, he says again, and doesn't explain, and I run toward the border with my heart pounding harder than the exercise should account for, already dreading — and wanting, God help me, wanting — whatever's waiting for me there.