The Debt He Owed My Wolf

Chapter 6

Wren

There's a bonfire lit at the edge of the training field by the time the sun goes down, and half the pack seems to have gathered around it without anyone officially calling them there at all.

"Pack tradition," Faye explains, handing me a blanket to wrap around my shoulders against the evening chill. "Whenever something big happens, somebody lights a fire and everyone shows up with food. Nobody actually organizes it. It just happens, every single time, like clockwork."

"What counts as something big?" I ask, pulling the blanket tighter.

"New pup being born. Someone coming home from a long patrol." She glances at me sideways, a small smile tugging at her mouth. "Alpha bringing home his mate."

My face goes hot instantly. I still haven't fully wrapped my head around that word being mine to claim, even partially, even entirely on my own terms, and hearing it said so casually, like a simple fact rather than a threat, sends a strange, unfamiliar warmth through my chest.

Kade finds us a spot near enough to the fire to stay warm but far enough back that I'm not trapped in the center of everyone's attention. The flames crackle and pop, throwing long shadows across the grass, and somewhere off to the side, a group of younger pack members are tossing a ball back and forth in the dark, laughing every time someone misses the catch.

Rowan drops down across from me with a plate stacked embarrassingly high with food, grinning like he's just won some kind of prize nobody else knew was being awarded.

"So," he says, "you're the one who finally made my brother lose his mind over someone. I've been waiting ten years for this exact moment."

"Rowan," Kade says, in a tone that clearly means don't.

"What? I'm complimenting her." Rowan turns back to me, entirely unbothered by the warning. "He rejected the last bride his advisors lined up for him in under an hour. Didn't even sit down for the introduction dinner, just turned around and left. You've been here one day and he's already handing you your own room and glaring at anyone who looks at you too long."

I glance at Kade, who is very deliberately staring into the fire instead of at either of us, a faint flush creeping up the back of his neck that I wouldn't have believed possible an hour ago.

"I don't know whether to be flattered or worried," I say.

"Flattered," Rowan says immediately, without a shred of hesitation. "Definitely flattered. Trust me, I'd know. I've watched every single one of those disasters happen."

The food keeps coming, plate after plate passed around the fire. Someone's grandmother pressing a bowl of something warm and sweet into my hands before I can even ask what it is, a group of kids darting past chasing each other with sticks held like swords, a pair of omegas arguing good-naturedly about whose turn it is to add more wood to the fire before it burns too low. Nobody watches me like I'm about to do something wrong. Nobody flinches or braces when I reach for a second helping without asking permission first.

For the first time since I can remember, I let myself simply sit somewhere and exist, without calculating the cost of it, without running through every possible way the evening could turn against me before it happens.

"You're quiet," Faye says gently, settling beside me with her own plate.

"I'm not used to this," I admit. "Sitting somewhere and not being told to move."

Her expression softens, some of the earlier professional focus melting into something warmer. "You'll get used to it. Give it time."

I want to believe her. Some small, stubborn part of me still expects the fire to go out, the food to be snatched back, someone's hand to close around my wrist and drag me back toward a life I understand far better than this one.

Marek settles in beside Kade sometime later, his voice pitched low, but not low enough that I don't catch the sudden tension threading through it. "Sorry to interrupt," he says, "but we've got a problem."

Kade's easy posture stiffens instantly, the warmth draining out of his expression in an instant. "What kind."

"Ashgrove kind." Marek glances at me, then back at Kade, clearly weighing how much to say with me sitting right there listening. "Corwin's already sent word. He wants a formal visit. Says it's to check on his sister's welfare, now that the arrangement's been made public."

The warmth of the fire suddenly feels very far away, like it belongs to some other night entirely.

"He's never once checked on my welfare," I say quietly, setting down my bowl. "Not in sixteen years. Not a single letter. Not a single visit."

"I know," Kade says, and the grim look settling over his face tells me he's already thinking the exact same thing I am, that whatever Corwin actually wants, it has nothing whatsoever to do with genuine concern for me.

"When?" I ask.

"Three days," Marek says.

Kade's eyes find mine across the firelight, steady in a way that almost, almost makes the sudden cold spreading through my chest bearable. "You don't have to see him if you don't want to. I can turn him away at the gate myself and he'll never set foot on this land."

I think of sixteen years of silence, of a brother who never once asked whether I was alive, let alone well and now, the very moment I'm out of his direct reach, he suddenly wants back in, dressed up as concern.

"No," I say slowly, feeling something steadier settle into my spine as I say it. "I want to know exactly what he thinks he still has a claim to."

Because whatever Corwin is planning, I have a feeling it isn't an apology. It never has been, not once, and I doubt three days is enough time for that to suddenly change now.

Rowan, for once, doesn't c***k a joke. He just watches the fire, jaw tight, and I sense the history between Ironfall and Ashgrove runs deeper than a single trade deal gone sideways.

"We'll prepare properly," Kade says finally, more to Marek than to me. "Extra guards at the border starting tomorrow. I want to know who's in his party before they reach the gate."

"Already on it," Marek says, and slips into the dark to give orders, leaving the three of us with the fire crackling between us and the night pressing close around the edges of the light.

Faye reaches over and squeezes my hand once, briefly, before standing to help clear the plates. "Whatever he wants," she says, "you're not facing it alone this time. That's the difference now."

I hold onto that thought long after the fire burns down to embers and the last of the pack drifts off toward their beds. Kade walks me back to my room himself, quiet the whole way, and pauses at my door the way he did earlier, like he's leaving space for me to speak first if I want to.

"Get some sleep," he says. "Three days is enough time to prepare for almost anything."

I nod, though sleep feels impossibly far away with my brother's name sitting heavy in my chest again, dragging up sixteen years of memories I'd rather have left buried at Ashgrove. Still, I close the door behind me, turn the lock myself for the first time in my life, and sit with the strange, unfamiliar comfort of that small click for a long moment before I finally let myself lie down.

Whatever Corwin brings with him in three days, I won't be facing it as the same girl who left that house yesterday.