The Alpha Who Broke Our Bond

Chapter 6 – Rules of the Game

The kitchen was already loud when I walked in.

Morning light spilled across long wooden tables, catching on steam from huge pots and on the polished curve of mugs in heavy hands. Pack wolves moved in practiced chaos—someone stirring porridge, someone hauling in bread, someone dodging a pup underfoot. The air was thick with the smells of coffee, meat, smoke, wet fur.

The moment I stepped over the threshold, the noise dipped.

Not silence. Just… a notch down. Enough to feel the weight of glances on my skin.

“Relax,” I muttered to my wolf. “They’re only wondering if I bite.”

We bite, she corrected.

I ignored her and headed for the side table where platters of food waited. I could feel him at my back before I saw him.

“Avoiding the main entrance?” Aren’s voice came from behind, low and rough with sleep—or lack of it.

I didn’t jump. I refused.

“I heard there was food,” I said, reaching for a mug. “Didn’t realize I needed an alpha escort to pour myself coffee.”

“You don’t,” he said. “You need one to keep the others from staring holes through you.”

I glanced over my shoulder then. He stood just inside the doorway, hair still damp from a wash, shirt dark blue instead of his usual black, sleeves rolled up, throat bare. No jewelry, no visible mark, just the weight of authority coiled in every careless line.

“If I cared about them staring,” I said, “I wouldn’t be here.”

“Fair,” he said.

He moved past me, close enough that his scent slid over my skin—pine, steel, the faintest warmth of wolf. My pulse stuttered. The bond-space between us, that old, torn place, gave a faint, unwelcome shiver.

I poured coffee with more force than necessary.

Gravik and Ivara were already at one end of the main table, arguing over a map spread between plates.

“…if you reroute that patrol, you open the eastern ridge,” Ivara was saying. “Unless that’s the point.”

“The point,” Gravik replied, “is not to run our wolves into the ground while we wait for the next i***t to snatch a child from under our noses.”

“Good morning,” I said, sliding onto the bench opposite them with my mug and plate. “Nothing like light, cheerful conversation to start the day.”

Ivara flashed me a grin. “We save the cheerful for dessert. Sit, luna-not-luna.”

“Don’t call me that,” I said automatically.

Aren took the seat at the head of the table. The subtle shift in the room’s posture was immediate: shoulders straightened, voices dropped, attention tipped his way.

He surveyed the spread—maps, plates, mugs, my reluctantly occupied seat—and then looked straight at me.

“We need rules,” he said.

I popped a piece of bread in my mouth, chewed. “We’re wolves, Aren. We already have rules. Don’t eat pack. Don’t betray pack. Don’t let idiots in charge sell your children.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. I felt a flicker of satisfaction. Good. Let him flinch.

“I meant,” he said evenly, “rules for this house. For us. So we don’t make an already tense situation worse.”

“Domestic regulations,” I said. “How romantic.”

Gravik cleared his throat. “He’s not wrong,” he said. “We’re used to his rhythms. You’re not. We’d prefer to avoid, say, walking in on you tearing each other’s throats out in the hallway in front of the trainees.”

“That happened once,” Ivara muttered.

“And the pup still has nightmares,” Gravik shot back.

I set my mug down. “Fine. Rules. Hit me.”

Aren laced his fingers together on the table.

“One,” he said. “Separate rooms stay separate. You can come and go as you please, but no surprises. You knock. I knock. We don’t use the bond to drag the other out of bed in the middle of the night unless someone is dying.”

I swallowed around an unexpected tightness in my chest. “So you admit there’s still enough bond to tug.”

“I admit there’s still enough of something to be dangerous,” he said. “Two. Publicly, we present a united front. No undermining each other in front of the packs. If you disagree with a decision, you bring it to me in private.”

“And if I think your decision will get someone killed?” I asked.

“Then,” he said calmly, “you shout at me in my office instead of in the council hall.”

Too reasonable. Infuriatingly reasonable.

“Three,” he went on. “You don’t go on patrol alone until we’ve adjusted routes and the enemy has had time to realize you’re not a soft target. At least one guard with you outside the core territory. Preferably me.”

“Preferably—” I laughed, short and sharp. “Oh, that’s adorable.”

His gaze cooled. “You are a healer and my political ally. You’re also the former mate whose head we deliberately tangled with old magic. That makes you a prime target. Security is not up for debate.”

“So I’m a fragile, breakable symbol now?” I said. “Good to know.”

“A valuable one,” Gravik said, blunt. “If it makes you feel better.”

“It doesn’t,” I said.

Aren held my gaze. “You can argue with my methods,” he said quietly. “You can hate my choices. But you do not get to make yourself bait without telling me.”

The table went very still.

My wolf bristled at the command in his tone. Another, smaller part of me—the part that remembered cold stone and the taste of blood—shivered for a different reason.

“You’re very sure I’m going to run around dangling myself in front of monsters,” I said lightly.

“You always have,” he said.

I looked away first.

“What about my rules?” I asked. “Or is this a one-sided arrangement?”

His mouth twitched, almost a smile. “By all means, healer. State your terms.”

“Fine.” I counted on my fingers. “One: no decisions about my magic without me in the room. No more councils deciding what my mind can or cannot bear. Two: if you feel my pain through… whatever this is—” I gestured between us “—you don’t get to barge into my room unless I ask, or I’m actually dying.”

He inclined his head. “Agreed.”

“Three,” I said. “If I find out you’re hiding anything about the children, the kidnappings, or what really happened the night you broke us—trial union or not—I walk. And I don’t come back.”

The temperature around the table seemed to drop. Gravik looked away. Ivara went very still.

Aren held my eyes. In them, for the first time, I saw naked fear.

“Then,” he said, voice very soft, “I suppose I’d better make sure you don’t find me lying.”

For a heartbeat, I almost believed him.

And then, from outside, a howl split the morning—high, ragged, full of panic.

Every wolf in the room tensed.

Gravik was already on his feet. “Border call,” he snapped. “That’s Orlen’s pattern.”

My coffee turned to ash on my tongue.

Aren stood, chair scraping back. “Report,” he barked toward the open doorway.

A young patrol wolf skidded in, chest heaving. “Attack near the southern huts,” he gasped. “They took a child—tried to. Mother’s still alive. We need a healer.”

My body moved before my mind caught up, muscles already coiled to run.

“Rules later,” I said, shoving away from the table. “Right now, we do the only thing we’re actually good at.”

Aren’s hand brushed my arm—light, a question, not a command. “Together,” he said.

My wolf bared her teeth.

“Fine,” I said. “Try to keep up.”