The Alpha Who Chose Me

Chapter 3: Sent to Serve

Wren's POV

"You will not speak unless spoken to," Garrick said, straightening his collar in the hallway mirror. "You will not make eye contact for longer than necessary. You will pour, you will clear, and you will disappear the moment dinner ends. Do you understand me?"

"I understand."

"I mean it, Wren." He turned to look at me properly, something sharp behind his eyes. "Alpha Cassius is not a man to be trifled with. If you embarrass this pack in front of him, I will make sure you regret it for a very long time."

I kept my eyes down, the way I'd learned to years ago. "I won't embarrass you."

"See that you don't." He adjusted his cuffs one more time, checking his reflection like a man preparing for a performance rather than a business dinner. "This contract could double our trade income for the next decade. I've waited over a year for Stonemere to even consider meeting with us. You will not be the reason it falls apart."

"I know how to pour a glass of wine, Garrick. I've done it a hundred times."

"This isn't the same as serving the pack council," he snapped. "Alpha Cassius has a reputation for noticing things other people miss. Keep your head down and give him nothing to notice."

I'd spent the entire morning being fitted into a plain grey servant's dress, hair pulled back tight enough to ache, hands scrubbed raw so there'd be no dirt under my nails for anyone important to notice. It was strange, being dressed up carefully just to be made invisible. Garrick wanted his guests to see a well-run pack house. He didn't want them to see me, not really. Just an efficient, silent shape moving in the background, refilling glasses and clearing plates like furniture that happened to walk.

That suited me fine. Invisible was safe. Invisible meant no one asked questions I couldn't answer.

The dining hall had been polished within an inch of its life, the good silverware brought out for the first time in years, candles lit along the long table where Garrick would sit across from a man I'd only heard described in hushed, careful tones. I stood near the kitchen doorway with two other servants, waiting for the signal to bring out the first course, my stomach tight with nerves I told myself were only about disappointing Garrick.

Then the doors opened, and Alpha Cassius walked in.

I understood immediately why people spoke about him like a force of nature instead of a man. He filled the doorway completely, broad enough that his escort had to step around him rather than beside him, dark hair, sharp grey eyes that swept the room once and seemed to catalog every detail before he'd even taken a single step inside. He wasn't handsome in the soft way the pack boys back home used to be. He was something else entirely — carved, deliberate, the kind of presence that made the whole room quietly straighten its spine.

Garrick rose to greet him with the practiced warmth of a man who'd spent days rehearsing exactly this moment. "Alpha Cassius. Welcome to Thornridge. We're honored."

Cassius said something polite in return, his voice low and even, but his eyes had already moved past Garrick, sweeping the room the way a soldier checks an unfamiliar building for exits. For half a second, his gaze landed directly on me.

I looked down immediately, heart hammering. It was nothing. Alphas noticed everything; that didn't mean anything. I told myself that twice before I believed it enough to breathe normally again.

Dinner began, and I moved the way I'd been trained to — pouring wine, clearing plates, staying near the wall until I was needed, disappearing the moment I wasn't. Garrick talked at length about trade routes and steel quotas, his voice warm and confident in a way it never was when we were alone. Cassius mostly listened, asking sharp, precise questions that made Garrick pause before answering more than once.

"Your winter shipping schedule," Cassius said at one point, cutting through Garrick's rehearsed pitch. "You're proposing we move steel through the northern pass in January. That route floods every year without fail."

"We've made improvements," Garrick said smoothly.

"What improvements?"

Garrick hesitated half a second too long before answering, and I saw something behind Cassius's eyes sharpen, filing the hesitation away. I had learned long ago to read the small cracks in Garrick's confidence, the same way I'd learned to read weather before a storm. Whatever Cassius was doing, he was doing it well. My brother rarely stumbled in front of company.

I was refilling Cassius's glass near the end of the second course when it happened.

His hand, resting on the table, went suddenly still. Not moving toward the glass, not reaching for anything — just still, in a way that felt deliberate, like he was holding himself in place on purpose. I glanced up without meaning to and found his eyes already on me, sharper now, focused in a way that made my skin prickle.

I finished pouring as quickly as I could and stepped back toward the wall, pulse thudding.

"Something wrong, Alpha Cassius?" Garrick asked, following his guest's gaze.

Cassius's expression smoothed over instantly, unreadable again. "Nothing," he said. "Just admiring how well-run your household is."

Garrick preened at the compliment, already turning back to his notes on shipping schedules. I stayed against the wall, hands folded, eyes down, trying to convince myself I'd imagined the way his gaze had locked onto me like he'd recognized something.

It didn't feel like imagination. It felt like being seen for the first time in eleven years, by exactly the wrong person, at exactly the wrong moment.

Garrick's warning echoed in my head. Don't embarrass me. I hadn't said a word. I hadn't done anything except pour a glass of wine the way I'd poured a hundred glasses before. And still, some instinct buried deep beneath my collar's chemical fog was screaming that something had shifted in that room, some balance I didn't understand yet.

The other servants near the kitchen door didn't seem to notice anything unusual. Ivy passed close enough to whisper, "You've gone pale, are you alright?" and I nodded without trusting my voice enough to answer out loud. Whatever was happening, it was happening only to me, some private earthquake no one else in the room could feel.

I risked one more glance toward the head of the table.

Alpha Cassius wasn't looking at Garrick's shipping charts anymore. He was looking directly at me again, and this time, he didn't look away. His expression gave away nothing — no warmth, no anger, nothing I could name — but the sheer weight of his attention pinned me to the wall like a physical thing. Garrick was still talking, oblivious, his voice rising and falling over numbers that meant nothing to me in that moment.

I forced myself to look down at the tray in my hands, my pulse loud in my own ears, and prayed that whatever had just happened would pass before Garrick noticed anything at all.