Not His First Choice

chapter 3: The Homecoming

Mira pov

A year is a long time to be angry at the same person every single day.

I spent it moving between border towns that didn't ask questions, taking work where I could find it — hauling firewood, tracking lost livestock, sparring with anyone willing to teach me something useful. I learned how to throw a punch that actually landed. I learned how to read a person's shoulders before they moved. I learned how to sleep with one ear open and how to go three days on very little food without my hands shaking.

I did not learn how to stop thinking about Deacon's face turning toward someone else. Some wounds don't close just because you keep moving. They just stop bleeding quite so loud.

By the end of that year, I barely recognized the girl who'd left Ashwood in a flower crown and a party dress. My hands were rougher. My shoulders were wider. I'd cut my hair short because long hair gets grabbed in a real fight, and somewhere along the way I'd stopped flinching when people raised their voice near me.

I told myself I was healed. I wasn't. I was just harder to knock over.

The message came on an ordinary Tuesday, carried by a runner from a neighboring territory who barely knew my name. My father had been hurt badly in a border skirmish. Ashwood needed me home.

I didn't stop to think. I packed what little I had and ran the whole way back to Blackridge Territory, three days of hard travel that I did in two, sleeping only when my body gave me no other choice.

Nothing prepared me for what I found when I crossed back into the territory I grew up in.

The old Ashwood markers — the carved wolf posts that lined the border since before I was born — were gone. In their place stood new markers, unfamiliar symbols burned into fresh wood. The scent in the air was different too, sharper, unfamiliar, layered over the pine and cedar I knew like my own heartbeat.

I found my mother first, in the healer's house near the center of what used to be our pack grounds. She looked older than a year should have made her, deep lines carved around her eyes that hadn't been there before.

"What happened here?" I asked, after I'd hugged her hard enough to feel her ribs. "Where's Dad? What's going on with the territory?"

She sat me down before she'd say anything, which told me it was bad.

"Six months ago, Ashwood lost a border war," she said quietly. "The Ironwood Pack overwhelmed us at the eastern ridge. Alpha Voss surrendered the territory to avoid losing more of our people." She paused, choosing her next words carefully. "Your father was hurt defending that ridge. He's healing, but slowly. He'll want to see you."

I sat with that for a long moment, my mind trying to catch up. "Ashwood lost the territory? We're not — we don't have our own pack anymore?"

"We're part of Ironwood territory now," my mother said. "Under Alpha Kade Ryer."

I'd heard that name before, whispered in border towns like a warning. Kade Ryer. The Alpha who'd expanded Ironwood's territory three times over in the last five years, who ran his pack with rules so strict some called him a tyrant and others called him the only reason Ironwood hadn't been swallowed up by bigger packs first.

"He's in charge here now," my mother continued. "New patrol schedules, new training requirements, new rules about who can leave the territory and when. It's been an adjustment."

I felt something cold and furious settle low in my stomach. This was my home. My father had bled for this ridge. And now some stranger's name was carved into the border markers instead of the ones I'd grown up under.

"I want to see Dad," I said.

My father was thinner than I remembered, a long scar cutting across his ribs where I could see it above his blanket, but his eyes lit up the moment I walked into the room.

"There she is," he rasped, reaching for my hand. "Look at you. Came back stronger, just like I told you to."

I held his hand and didn't trust myself to speak for a moment. "You're going to be okay," I said finally. "I'm here now."

"Territory's different," he warned me, echoing my mother. "New Alpha's got his hand in everything. Training's mandatory again, even for those of us who thought our training days were behind us. He doesn't play favorites and he doesn't tolerate excuses. You'll want to keep your head down until you understand how things work now."

I nodded, but something in me was already bristling at the idea of keeping my head down. I'd spent a year learning not to shrink myself for anyone. I wasn't in a hurry to start again just because some new Alpha had planted his flag on my family's land.

I didn't know yet how quickly that particular stubbornness was going to get me in trouble.