The Debt He Owed My Wolf

Wren's POV The council dinner starts in an hour, and I still have forty plates to carry. I balance the tray against my hip and push through the kitchen door with my shoulder, careful not to let the good silverware clatter against itself. It's the set Selene only brings out twice a year, gold-rimmed and older than I am, and if a single piece so much as chips, I'll be the one paying for it, one way or another. She's been screeching about napkin folds since sunrise, pacing the dining hall in her robe with her hair still in curlers, snapping at anyone who moved too slowly or too quickly or simply moved within her line of sight. Some Alpha from a pack twice our size is coming to talk business with Corwin tomorrow night, and for the last week, that single fact has swallowed every other conversation in this house. I don't know the details. Nobody tells me details. I only know that whatever this Alpha wants, my brother wants it badly enough to have the whole packhouse scrubbed floor to ceiling and every omega on double shifts. Little Tessa trails behind me with a stack of side plates, her thin arms shaking under even that small weight. She's only twelve, too young by any decent standard to be working a formal dinner shift, but Selene doesn't care whose hands carry the trays as long as they're carried, and Tessa's mother is too afraid of losing her own place in the pack to argue. "Slow down," I whisper, glancing back at her. "If you drop one, let me take the blame. It won't be the first time." She nods, eyes wide and grateful, the kind of grateful that makes my chest ache a little, because I remember being exactly her age and exactly that frightened, back before I learned which corners of this house were safest to disappear into. We're halfway through setting the long table when Tessa's foot catches the leg of a chair. I hear the plate leave her hands before I even fully turn around, and I lunge without thinking, catching it against my forearm instead of letting it hit the floor. It still shatters just against my skin instead of the tile. A thin, stinging line opens up along my arm, and I press my sleeve to it fast, before anyone at the head of the table looks over. "Wren, you clumsy—" Selene starts, then catches herself mid-word, glancing toward the guests already arriving through the front hall. She always forgets my name is worth remembering correctly until there's an audience to perform politeness for. "Watch what you're doing." "Sorry, Luna. I slipped." I keep my eyes down, my arm hidden behind the tray, willing the sting to fade before it shows on my face. Tessa is frozen behind me, terrified, clutching the rest of her stack like it might shatter from fear alone. Headlights sweep across the dining room windows before Selene can say anything else, cutting through the dusk a full day earlier than anyone expected. "That can't be him," Corwin mutters from his seat at the head of the table, setting down his glass with more force than necessary. "He isn't due until tomorrow." I don't wait to be told what to do. Years of practice have taught me exactly how fast to move when trouble arrives unannounced, and I herd Tessa back toward the kitchen doorway, out of sight, the way I've trained myself to vanish the second something shifts in this house. But the front door swings open before Corwin even makes it halfway across the room, and a man steps into the hall like he's already decided the place belongs to him. He's enormous; broad enough to fill the doorway completely, dark hair cut close to his skull, and eyes the deep, unnatural red of a wound that never quite closed. He doesn't look at Corwin first. His gaze sweeps the room once, slow and deliberate, cataloguing every face in it, and it lands on me before I manage to duck fully behind the kitchen door frame. My heart slams hard against my ribs. Every instinct screams ‘don't be seen’, but it's already too late for that. "You're early, Alpha Kade," Corwin says, plastering on the smile he only wears for people he's afraid of. "We weren't expecting you until tomorrow evening." "Change of plans." Kade's voice is low and unhurried, and his attention hasn't shifted off me yet, not even slightly. "You've got someone bleeding in your kitchen doorway." Every head at the table turns at once. I feel heat crawl up my neck as Selene's mouth thins into a hard, furious line, already livid that I've been noticed at all, let alone by the guest of honor. "That's just the help," Corwin says, waving a hand like I'm nothing more than a fly he'd like swatted from the room. "Ignore her." "I didn't ask what she was." Kade steps further inside, and the whole table seems to shrink back from him without a single person actually moving. "I asked why she's bleeding." I press my sleeve tighter over the cut, mortified beyond words. "It's nothing, sir. I'm sorry for the disturbance." I dip my head and start backing toward the kitchen, dragging Tessa along by the wrist, desperate to be anywhere else. "Wait." The single word stops me cold. I don't know this man. I owe him nothing. And yet my feet stop moving before my brain has even finished deciding whether to listen. He crosses the room in a handful of long strides, and up close, the power radiating off him makes the air itself feel thinner, harder to pull into my lungs. He doesn't touch me. He simply studies my face, then my arm, then for one long, deeply uncomfortable second the collar of my dress, like he's searching for something specific and already half expects to find it. "What's your name?" he asks. "Wren." My voice comes out smaller than I intend. "Wren." He repeats it slowly, testing the shape of the word in his mouth. Then his brow furrows, just slightly, like something about me isn't adding up the way he expected it to. "You're pack. Ashgrove blood, unmistakably. So why does my wolf want to put you behind me and never let you out of his sight again?" The room goes utterly, completely silent. Somewhere behind me, I hear a fork clatter softly against a plate. Corwin's smile cracks visibly at the edges. "I'm sure Alpha Kade is simply tired from the drive. Wren, get back to the kitchen where you belong." But Kade doesn't move out of my way. His eyes stay locked on mine, red and unreadable, and for the first time in longer than I can remember, someone in this house is looking at me like I'm a puzzle worth solving, instead of a problem that only needs managing. "Corwin," he says, without once breaking eye contact with me, "why does your sister serve dinner instead of sitting at your table?"