Silverblood Mate

Chapter Five: The Alpha Who Didn't Ask Why

I run because I can't shift, my wolf is worn thin and I won't risk what I'm carrying — so I go on human legs through the dark with the crashing behind me getting closer, and some functioning corner of my brain thinks: exiled at dawn, dead before breakfast. At least it's efficient.

I trip on a root. I go down hard, hands out, and some instinct twists me sideways at the last second so I take the fall on my hip instead of my stomach. It still knocks the air out of me. I scramble upright anyway.

They break from the trees… three of them, shifted, eyes wrong in that particular way wolves get when they've been outside pack law long enough to forget they were ever under it. I back against a tree trunk. My hip is screaming. My palms are torn open. I have no wolf, no weapon, and nowhere left to go.

Then something happens that I don't have words for.

The moonlight, already too bright for this close to dawn, seems to move. Not the clouds, the light itself, gathering around me like it's been waiting for an invitation. For one second I'm not afraid. I'm lit up from the inside, silver and warm and certain, and the rogues hesitate.

Something large hits the nearest one from the side. Not light… a wolf, brown-grey, fast and furious, and the fight is over inside a minute.

I sit where I fell. My hip throbs. The strange light has already faded back into ordinary moonlight and I can't be sure any of it happened at all.

The wolf that saved me shifts between one breath and the next into a man: broad-shouldered, sandy-haired, a healed-over scar cutting through one eyebrow and he looks at me like I matter, like he's relieved I'm still upright and not on the ground for worse reasons.

"Are you hurt?" His voice is calm. Not the calm of someone reminding you who holds the power. Just a man who wants the actual answer.

"My hip. I'm fine."

"You're bleeding."

"I said I'm fine."

Something almost like a smile crosses his face. He crouches down to my level instead of standing over me, which is such a small thing that I notice it, the way you notice small things you're not used to being given. "You're past the Hollow Pine border. This is Vantry land."

"I know. Hollow Pine and Vantry aren't exactly friendly."

"I know that too." He glances at the sky. "So what's a Hollow Pine wolf doing bleeding on my border at dawn, running from rogues?"

I decide, with the particular clarity of someone who has nothing left to lose, to just tell him the truth. "My pack cast me out. The rogues found me before I'd even finished crossing."

He studies me a moment. "What's your name?"

"Wren Sorrel."

"Caius Vantry."

I know that name. Every wolf in two territories knows that name. I look at him properly now, and I see it, the ease in how he moves, the way the wolves who arrived with him fell into place around him without being told, the particular quality of his stillness. He's an Alpha. Not the kind I've spent my life learning to be invisible around.

"I'll go," I say, starting to push myself upright. "I'm sorry to have…"

"You're not going anywhere tonight."

I stop. "I beg your pardon."

"You're hurt. It's dawn. There are still rogues out there." He straightens and offers his hand. "Come inside. We'll sort the rest out in the morning."

I look at his hand. I look at his face. I have been offered help before that wasn't really help, help with a cost hidden underneath it, waiting to be named and collected later with interest. I don't feel that here. I feel a man who found someone hurt on his land and decided that was reason enough.

I take his hand. He pulls me up carefully, mindful of my hip, and keeps a steadying grip under my elbow until I'm sure of my feet.

"Thank you," I say.

"Don't thank me yet. My cook is going to have opinions about the hour."

I almost smile. It surprises me more than it should.

We're halfway to the Vantry pack house when a messenger wolf breaks from the trees at a dead run and skids to a stop in front of Caius, breathless, holding out a folded note. He reads it. His face doesn't change, but something in his jaw does.

He folds the note back up and looks at me.

"This came from the Thornecrown Kingdom," he says carefully. "The Wolf King is asking every neighboring pack to report any Hollow Pine wolf found crossing their land." He pauses. "Specifically an unmated female."

The cold comes back into my chest all at once.

"With silver eyes," he finishes.

We look at each other for a long second. "My eyes are grey," I say.

The pause is exactly one beat too long. "That's true," he says. "Grey. Completely different. Come on, then."

I follow him toward the warm lights of the Vantry pack house, and behind us, somewhere in his pocket, the Wolf King's message sits folded and waiting, and I don't ask why Alaric Thorne is looking for me.

I don't need to know yet. I need to sit down. I need to eat something. I need to figure out what comes next, and if there's one thing nineteen years of Hollow Pine taught me how to do, it's that.

Behind me the forest has gone quiet. The rogues are gone. The border I grew up behind is gone too, and I won't be crossing it again. Ahead, the lights glow warm and steady through the trees, and beside me walks a man who crouched to my level and offered his hand without naming a price for it.

I hold all of that carefully, the way you hold something you're not sure you're allowed to keep.

For now, it's enough that I'm still here. Still moving. Still breathing.