The Debt I Never Chose

Chapter 2: A Stranger's Wolf Reacts

The whole pack is buzzing by the time I finish the morning floors, and for once, none of it is about me.

"Alpha Draven Cole is coming," someone says in the hallway, voice pitched high with excitement. "Ironwood Ridge. The big trade deal Renner's been talking about for months."

I don't know much about Ironwood Ridge, except that it's rich, and strict, and sits high up in the mountains, days away from the gray flatness of Thornfield. Renner has been talking about this deal for weeks like it's the thing that's finally going to fix everything — his temper, his debts, the way the older pack members whisper behind his back about how he's run this territory into the ground.

I don't ask questions about any of it. I just get handed a silver tray before breakfast and told, in the flat voice Renner uses when he's already decided I'm not worth more words than necessary, to stand in the corner of the meeting room and stay quiet.

Staying quiet is the one thing I'm actually good at. Years of practice will do that to a person.

The meeting room fills up fast after that, warriors and advisors finding their seats along the long table, papers stacked neatly in front of each chair. Renner sits at the head of it in his best suit, the dark gray one he only wears when he wants something from someone more powerful than him. He's smiling the fake smile he saves for exactly those moments, the one that never quite reaches his eyes.

I keep my own eyes down and my tray steady in my hands, counting the seconds until I can slip back out and disappear into the kitchen where nobody bothers to look for me.

Then the door opens, and the whole room seems to shrink.

I've never seen a man built like the one who walks in. He's tall taller than anyone I've ever stood near, tall enough that he has to duck slightly under the doorframe with black hair cut short and clean, and eyes the color of a storm right before it finally breaks open over the mountains. He doesn't smile when he enters. He doesn't need to. Every warrior at that table straightens their spine without being told, the way you do around someone whose rank isn't just a title, but something you can feel pressing against the air in the room.

Alpha Draven Cole.

He shakes Renner's outstretched hand and says something polite and short about the drive up from the coast, then takes the seat across the table like he owns whatever ground he happens to be standing on. I stay in my corner, tray balanced carefully, trying my best to be furniture. Trying my best to be nothing at all.

Then his head turns.

It happens fast, almost violently, like something physically pulled it in my direction. His eyes lock onto me from across the room, and for one long second just one they flash gold instead of storm-gray, the color bleeding through like something underneath him just woke up and took the wheel. His nostrils flare, once, twice. He goes completely still, the particular kind of still a wolf goes right before it decides something important.

I freeze too, tray shaking slightly in my raw, red hands, heart suddenly loud in my own ears.

Nobody else in the room seems to notice. Renner keeps talking, voice smooth and confident, laying out trade routes and profit margins and percentages like the numbers themselves are a kind of music. But Draven isn't looking at Renner anymore. He isn't looking at the papers, or the room, or anything at all except me, like he's trying to solve a puzzle using only his eyes.

I drop my gaze to the floor fast, cheeks burning, the tray suddenly the most important object in the entire world.

A minute passes. Maybe two. I risk one more glance up, telling myself I imagined the whole thing, that it was a trick of the light or my own tired mind playing games with me the way it sometimes does after a bad night.

He's still watching me.

Not the way the other warriors sometimes look at me when they think Renner isn't paying attention — not with pity, and not with the cruel curiosity of people wondering what a girl with a collar around her neck did to deserve one. This is something else entirely. Something careful. Something that looks almost like he's trying not to frighten me, even from across a crowded room.

I don't understand it, and not understanding it scares me more than anything Renner has ever done.

The meeting drags on around us — numbers, terms, handshakes that don't mean anything yet — but I feel Draven's attention on me like a second collar, invisible and impossible to shrug off. Every few minutes his eyes drift back, quick and controlled, like he's checking to make sure I'm actually still there.

By the time Renner finally calls for a break so the staff can bring in lunch, my arms are aching from holding the tray steady for so long, and my mind is racing with questions I know better than to ask out loud. Who is this man. Why did his eyes change color the moment he saw me. Why does a stranger with more power than anyone I've ever met look at me like I matter, when even my own brother has spent years making sure I understand exactly how little I do.

I slip out of the room the second I'm allowed to, tray empty, hands still shaking. I don't look back to see if he's watching me go.

I don't need to. I can feel it anyway.