HIS GENTLE CLAIM

CHAPTER TWO - ELARA'S POV

Dana holds up the dusty rose dress and tilts her head.

"This one."

"It's too pretty."

"That's the point."

"Dana—"

"Elara." She gives me the look. The one that means she's done negotiating. "You have money, I have a taste and we have forty minutes. Put the dress on."

I put the dress on.

It fits.

Not just fits it actually fits. Like it was made for someone my size instead of borrowed from someone three sizes bigger. The fabric sits right on my shoulders and falls clean to my knees and when I look in the mirror I almost don't recognize the girl looking back.

Dana appears behind me in the reflection with a satisfied expression.

"See?"

"Don't."

"I'm not saying anything."

"Your face is saying everything."

She laughs and I nearly smile and for exactly four minutes I feel like a normal twenty two year old getting ready for dinner instead of whatever I actually am.

Then she pins the last button and steps back.

"He looked at you."

My stomach drops.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Second floor window. You. Him." She raises an eyebrow. "The whole pack saw it Elara."

"He was scanning the compound."

"For four seconds? At one window? At you specifically?"

"Dana."

"I'm just saying—"

"Don't."

She holds her hands up in surrender but the smile stays and I spend the next ten minutes pretending I'm not thinking about dark steady eyes that didn't look away.

Cook pulls me aside at six.

"Two kitchen girls. Both sick." She shoves a serving tray into my hands before I finish walking through the door. "Last course. Main hall. Set it down and come straight back."

"Brendan said—"

"Brendan isn't the one short staffed." Already turning back to the stove. "In and out. Nobody will notice you."

I look at the tray.

Look at the door.

In and out.

The main hall is full.

Long table. Candles. Both packs seated across from each other in careful formation. Brendan at one end looking composed. His Beta and Gamma flanking him. Ironwood men down the other side broad, quiet, watchful.

And at the head.

Ryker.

Up close he's worse.

I don't mean worse like bad. I mean worse like more. More present. More still. More of everything that made me grip those lily stems too hard this afternoon. He's leaning back slightly in his chair with one hand resting flat on the table listening to something Brendan's Gamma is saying with the kind of focused patience that makes the Gamma visibly nervous.

I keep my eyes down.

Move to the far end of the table.

Set the tray down quietly.

Turn around.

Three steps to the door.

Two.

One.

"Who is she?"

Low. Calm. The kind of voice that doesn't need volume because every room it enters goes quiet on its own.

I stop.

The whole table stops.

I turn slowly.

Ryker is looking at me.

Not past me. Not through me. Directly at me. With those same dark steady eyes from the window and an expression I still cannot read and the full weight of his attention landing on me like something physical.

Brendan shifts beside him.

"Nobody important." Careful. Practiced. The voice he uses when he's managing a situation. "Kitchen staff."

Ryker's eyes don't move from my face.

"She's wearing your family crest."

Silence crashes over the table.

I look down.

The small embroidered patch on Dana's borrowed dress sits just below my collarbone. Brendan's family crest. A wolf mid-leap inside a silver circle. I didn't even notice it when I put the dress on.

Brendan clears his throat. "She lives in the pack house."

"Your sister."

Not a question.

The two words land in the middle of the table like something dropped from a great height and nobody moves to pick them up. I watch Brendan's jaw tighten. Watch him calculate. Watch him decide that denying it in front of witnesses would cost more than admitting it.

He says nothing.

That silence is its own answer.

Ryker looks at it for one long moment. Then he picks up his glass. Takes a slow sip. Sets it down with a quiet precision that somehow feels louder than anything else in the room.

His eyes come back to me.

Sit down.

I blink. Sorry?

There's an empty chair. He nods toward the seat three places from him. Sit.

That's really not

"Elara." Brendan's voice is a warning wrapped in silk.

"I wasn't speaking to you." Ryker doesn't look at Brendan. Doesn't raise his voice. Just says it the way you state a fact.

The room forgets how to breathe.

I look at the empty chair.

At Ryker.

At Brendan whose eyes are carving a very clear message into my face refuse, leave, disappear back into the east wing where I belong.

I pull out the chair and sit down.

I don't fully understand why.

Maybe because it's been three years since anyone at this table looked at me and saw something worth acknowledging.

Maybe because the way he said sit didn't feel like a command.

It felt like a choice he was handing me.

He doesn't speak to me for the rest of dinner.

But when my glass is empty it's refilled before I reach for it.

When the bread basket passes me by his hand stops it and sets it in front of me without a word.

When I finally push back my chair to leave his eyes find mine across the table for exactly one second.

Just one.

Like a period at the end of a sentence I didn't know was being written.

I walk back to the east wing telling myself it means nothing.

By the time I reach my door my hands are still warm.

I don't know why.

I don't let myself think about it.