REJECTED BY THE ALPHA, CLAIMED BY HIS FATHER

Boundaries

They settled into an uneasy rhythm over the following days, the pack house adjusting around the strange new shape of its household the way water adjusts around a stone dropped into a still pond, rippling outward before finally going quiet again.

Zariah and Cassian set ground rules for the joint duties the council required, mostly practical matters, separate schedules where possible, shared meals kept brief and businesslike when staff or council observers were present. It was Zariah’s idea, mostly. She needed the structure to keep her thoughts from wandering somewhere she wasn’t ready to follow them.

The structure didn’t hold as well as she’d hoped.

They were reviewing the pack’s quarterly ledgers together on the fifth morning, an assignment from the council meant to test whether Zariah could handle the practical responsibilities of a Luna, when their hands both reached for the same column of figures at once.

Neither pulled away immediately.

Zariah felt the warmth of his skin against hers, brief and entirely too significant for such an ordinary moment, and looked up to find Cassian already watching her rather than the ledger.

“Sorry,” she said, finally drawing her hand back.

“Don’t be,” he said, and the low, quiet way he said it did something to her composure that a whole council chamber of scrutiny hadn’t managed.

She cleared her throat and returned her attention to the numbers, though she found herself reading the same line three times without absorbing a word of it.

“You’re better at this than the council expected,” Cassian said after a moment, nodding at the ledger. “Barrow assumed you’d need weeks of instruction on pack finances.”

“My grandmother taught me to manage accounts for the apothecary trade since I was twelve,” Zariah said. “Numbers aren’t intimidating. People, occasionally, are.”

“You didn’t seem intimidated by Barrow.”

“I was furious,” she admitted. “Different thing entirely.”

Cassian’s mouth curved, something rare and unguarded crossing his face. “I’ve noticed you handle fury rather well. Better than most people twice your age.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“It’s an observation,” he said. “Though I suppose it functions as both.”

They worked in comfortable silence for a while after that, the kind of quiet that didn’t need filling, and Zariah found herself sneaking glances at him when she thought he wasn’t looking, at the careful way he handled the pack’s business, patient and thorough, nothing like the cold, distant Alpha the pack gossip had always painted him as before all of this began.

Staff gossip, meanwhile, had reached a fever pitch by the end of the week. Zariah overheard two guards near the kitchen entrance one evening, their voices low but not nearly low enough.

“She’s got him wrapped around her finger already,” one said. “Never seen the Alpha this distracted in twenty years of service.”

“Council’s not going to let it go that easily,” the other replied. “Thorne’s been sending messengers off pack lands more than usual lately. My cousin works the eastern gate. Says there’s been at least three unmarked riders through this week alone.”

“Messengers to where?”

“Didn’t say. But my cousin thought it was strange, given the timing.”

Zariah slowed her steps, listening without meaning to eavesdrop quite so thoroughly, her pulse picking up at the mention of Thorne and unmarked riders leaving pack territory during exactly the week her own presence had thrown the council into disarray.

She didn’t mention it to Cassian immediately. Not because she meant to keep it from him, but because she wanted to be certain of what she’d actually heard before turning it into something that sounded like an accusation against a man who’d sat across from her at dinner and objected, on principle, to Barrow’s insinuations.

Instead she found Thalia the next morning, catching her during a break from her own duties at the pack house.

“Does Edrick Thorne have reason to be in regular contact with anyone outside pack territory,” Zariah asked, keeping her voice low.

Thalia’s brow furrowed. “Not that I know of. He’s always been strictly Blackthorn business, as far as I’ve ever heard. Why?”

Zariah relayed what she’d overheard, watching Thalia’s expression shift from curiosity to genuine concern.

“That does sound strange,” Thalia agreed. “Especially now, of all times. You think it’s connected to you? To the trial?”

“I don’t know,” Zariah admitted. “It might be nothing.”

“Or it might not be,” Thalia said. “You should tell Cassian.”

“I will,” Zariah said. “I just wanted to be sure first.”

She found her chance that evening, catching Cassian alone in his study after the household had largely settled for the night, and relayed what she’d heard as plainly as she could, careful not to embellish it into more than it currently was.

Cassian listened without interrupting, his expression growing sharper with every detail, and when she finished he was quiet for a long moment, weighing something she couldn’t guess at.

“Thorne has never been a man I trusted fully,” he said finally. “I’ve had my suspicions about his loyalties before, nothing concrete enough to act on. This is the first specific thread I’ve had to pull.”

“What will you do?”

“Watch,” Cassian said. “Quietly, for now. If he’s involved in something, alerting him too soon will only push it further underground.” He looked up at her, something warmer entering his expression despite the seriousness of the moment. “Thank you for telling me. Most people in your position might have kept it to themselves, given how little reason you have to trust anyone in this pack right now.”

“I trust you,” Zariah said, and heard the words leave her mouth before she’d fully decided to say them, surprised at how true they felt once spoken aloud.

Cassian’s gaze held hers, something unspoken passing between them in the quiet study, the ledgers and council business and Thorne’s unmarked riders momentarily forgotten in favor of something neither of them was ready to name yet.

“That means more to me than you likely realize,” he said finally, and the moment stretched a beat too long before Zariah forced herself to look away, unsettled by how badly she’d wanted it to stretch longer.