MARKED BY REJECTION

CHAPTER 4

Selene's POV

The fire lights up the whole northern sky by the time we reach the supply stores, orange and furious against the dark, smoke rolling thick enough to taste at the back of my throat. My people are already there, forming a bucket line down to the river, but the wooden storehouse is too far gone to save. Years of stockpiled grain, medicine, and winter supplies for my entire pack, burning down to nothing in front of me while I stand there useless for one terrible second before my training kicks back in.

"Get the wounded clear!" I shout, shrugging out of my coat and running toward the heat, Kael's guards and mine moving together without anyone having to say so.

Kael is beside me the whole way, barking orders to his own wolves like he has every right to be here which, now that our territories are technically allied, he does. Two of my people stumble out of the smoke, coughing, faces streaked black with soot, and I catch one before she falls, her weight heavier than I expect, her breath ragged against my shoulder.

We work until the fire burns itself down to embers and ash, until my arms ache from hauling buckets and my lungs burn from the smoke. By the time it's over, half our stores for the coming season are gone, three wolves are injured, and I'm covered in soot and sweat and a fury that has nowhere to go yet.

"Who did this," I say to Marisol, not really a question, more a demand for a name I can put my hands around.

She hesitates, and that hesitation tells me everything before she even opens her mouth. "Selene. A witness saw one of our own near the storehouse right before it started. Deja. Says she was carrying something that smelled like oil."

Deja is one of mine. One of the very first wolves who joined Ashgrove Pack, back when it was nothing but me and six other outcasts crowded into a half-collapsed cabin with more holes than roof, back when we shared one blanket between three people and called it a good night. Loyal to the bone. Family, in every way that matters more than blood.

"That's not possible," I say, and I mean it with everything in me.

"I know it sounds impossible. But there are three witnesses, and Deja can't explain where she was during the fire, or why her clothes smell like accelerant when we found her an hour ago."

My chest tightens painfully. If word spreads that a wolf from my own pack sabotaged Blackthorn's supplies during a fragile truce meeting, it won't just hurt Deja. It will make every wolf in this territory look at Ashgrove Pack like we brought war into their home the same week I brought my son inside their walls, the same week I was supposed to be proving we could be trusted.

"Bring her to me," I say. "Quietly, before anyone else sees, before this gets twisted into something it isn't."

Kael steps closer, low enough that only I can hear him over the crackle of dying flames. "Selene, if this gets out before you have answers, my father's old advisors are going to use it against you. There are wolves in this pack who never wanted an alliance with an Ashgrove Alpha to begin with. They'll say you're unstable, that you can't control your own people. They'll push the council to cancel the treaty by morning, and they won't wait for proof."

"I know exactly how it looks," I snap, more out of fear than anger, my voice tighter than I want it to be.

"I'm not saying I believe it," he says quickly, holding up a hand like he's trying to slow me down before I bolt. "I'm saying let me help you get ahead of it before someone else writes the story for you, before Deja becomes a scapegoat for something bigger than either of us understands yet."

I want to refuse just to spite him, out of pure stubborn habit built over five years of not needing anyone. But he's right, and I hate that he's right, and I don't have the luxury of pride tonight with half my winter supplies turned to smoke and my people watching to see what kind of leader I really am.

"Fine. But I lead. This is my wolf, my mess to untangle."

He nods once, and for a second, standing in the smoke with the fire dying behind us, it almost feels like five years never happened like we're just two people trying to solve something together, the way we should have been able to from the start, before everything broke.

Then Deja is brought forward, hands bound, eyes wide and wet with terror, her whole body shaking, and she says the words that turn my blood to ice.

"I didn't do it, Alpha. I swear on my life. But Elena Voss found me this morning. She said if I didn't carry a package to the storehouse for her, she'd make sure my little brother's territory application got denied for good, that she'd make sure he never had a place anywhere. I didn't know what was inside it. I swear to you, I didn't know."

The fire crackles behind us, softer now, dying down to a sullen red glow. Kael goes very still beside me, his whole body coiling like something about to spring.

"Elena," he says, low and dangerous, like he already suspected and hoped with everything in him that he'd be wrong.

Before either of us can respond, a guard comes sprinting through the smoke, face pale as bone, boots skidding on the wet ground.

"Alpha Thorne. Alpha Ashford. You need to come to the east hall. Now."

"What happened," Kael demands, already moving, already three steps ahead of the guard's answer.

The guard's eyes flick toward me, uncertain, like he isn't sure I'm meant to hear it, like the words themselves are too dangerous to say out loud.

"It's the boy," he says. "Ronan. He's gone. Someone took him from his room."

The ground tilts under my feet. Every ounce of anger and exhaustion burns away instantly into something older, sharper, purely animal, a scream building in my chest that hasn't found its way out yet.

"WHAT!."