Hunted Mate

Chapter 3

NYRA

Her father was not in his study.

He was not in the preparation corridor or the reception hall or the courtyard. He was standing beside Alpha Tristan in the formal greeting line at the front entrance, exactly where Nyra could not reach him without walking through thirty feet of exposed open space while the Nightfang entourage completed its arrival.

She stood at the inner corridor window and watched Cassius move through the formal greeting line and shake her father's hand, and her father's face did not change in any way that meant he recognized the name, and Nyra understood that her father had either forgotten or had successfully convinced himself over three years that there had been nothing to remember.

That was his problem and hers both.

She felt the bond before she heard the footsteps.

Zayden came around the inner corridor from the direction of the reception stairs, alone again, which meant he had separated from his entourage on purpose, which meant the Alpha of Nightfang had deliberately left the formal welcome of his own visit to walk through Silver Moon's inner corridors looking for her.

She stayed where she was.

He stopped four feet from her and looked at the window she had been looking through, at the greeting line visible below, at the grey-haired elder currently exchanging polite words with her father. Then he looked at her.

His eyes were specific. Not warm, not hostile. The particular attention of someone gathering information.

She was gathering information too. She looked at his face and tried to understand whether this was a man who knew what Cassius was. Whether the cold precision of his reputation meant the kind of cruelty that kept a traitor close that kept a traitor close on purpose, or the kind of grief that came from being surrounded by people he could not fully trust.

She could not read the answer from his face alone.

He spoke first. He said he had been looking for her.

She told him she had been trying to avoid him.

He said he knew that. He said it without any of the wounded quality that statement usually carried in her experience. He said it the way you state a fact you have already processed and moved past.

She asked why he had come to find her instead of finishing the formal welcome.

He looked at the window again. At Cassius below, now moving toward the manor entrance. Then back at her.

He said, “because the bond found someone I was not expecting to find here, and that requires adjustment.”

She heard the specific phrasing. Not someone. Someone he was not expecting. Not the mate bond in general, but this particular person. Her specifically.

Something sharpened in her chest that had nothing to do with the bond.

She said, “you knew someone from Silver Moon had a connection to Nightfang's business.”

He did not answer.

She said, “and you came to the ball to find them.”

Still nothing.

She watched his face and understood that she had said something accurate, and that he was deciding in real time how to respond to the fact that she had arrived at it so quickly.

She had spent three years being underestimated. She was done performing it for strangers.

She said, “the person you were looking for was a witness. Not an agent, not an enemy. A witness. Someone who was in the wrong place and saw something and ran.”

Zayden's expression changed in a way she had not seen it change yet. Something moved behind his eyes that was not calculation.

She said, “I need to talk to my father tonight. Before your elder Cassius Vane sees my face clearly enough to recognize it.”

Zayden went very still.

Below them, through the window, Cassius stepped through the manor entrance and disappeared from view.

Zayden looked at Nyra.

She looked back at him.

The bond pulled between them like a current and she held it at a distance inside herself through sheer force of the same will that had kept her alive and invisible for three years, and she watched his face work through something that ended with his jaw setting and his eyes going to the corridor behind her and then back.

He said two words.

“Tell me.”