His Forbidden Human

Chapter 10: What Rennick Already Knows

The meeting started with tea.

Maya hadn't expected that. She'd been bracing for something tense and immediate — declarations, demands, the kind of confrontation that the last week had been building toward. Instead, a woman she hadn't noticed before moved quietly through the room with a tray, and suddenly everyone had a mug, and Rennick was settled into a chair across from them like this was a perfectly ordinary evening gathering.

She looked at Ethan. He gave the smallest nod.

She took the tea.

It was good. She hated that it was good.

"Three years," Rennick said, to Ethan. Conversational. Like they were picking up something interrupted. "You've been in my territory for three years and this is the first time you've sat in this room."

"I wasn't in your territory," Ethan said. "I was in the territory."

"Which I run."

"Which you claimed."

A small silence. Not hostile — something more like two people acknowledging a line they'd both been aware of for a long time.

"Fair," Rennick said, simply. He looked at Maya. "How are you finding Ethan's hospitality?"

She kept her voice even. "It's fine."

"Fine." He seemed to find this genuinely amusing. "He fed you?"

"Yes."

"Made coffee?"

"Every morning."

Rennick looked at Ethan with an expression Maya couldn't fully decode — something between surprised and knowing. Ethan's face gave nothing back.

"The Hollow Pack," Ethan said. Redirecting. His voice had a particular flatness that meant he was done with the preamble.

"Yes." Rennick set down his mug. The easy manner didn't disappear exactly, but something sharpened underneath it. "They've been in my territory for three weeks. I've been — patient. Observing."

"Why patient?" Marcus asked from across the room. It was the first thing he'd said since they arrived.

"Because I wanted to understand what they were looking for before I moved against them." Rennick's gaze moved briefly to Maya and back to Ethan. "Now I think I understand."

"Tell me what you think you understand," Ethan said.

Rennick looked at him for a moment. Then he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, in a posture that somehow managed to be both casual and completely deliberate.

"The Hollow Pack isn't random," he said. "You know that already, or you wouldn't be here. They've been moving through territories for eight months, taking specific humans. Young. Unconnected." He paused. "But that's not the only pattern."

"What's the other pattern?" Maya asked.

Everyone looked at her. She hadn't planned to speak. The question had come out before she could decide on it, which was becoming a habit she wasn't sure she loved about herself.

Rennick looked at her with that same expression from before — the one that was trying to determine her value. Up close it was less comfortable than it had been from across the room.

"The other pattern," he said, addressing her directly and without condescension, which she hadn't expected, "is bloodline. Each human they've taken has had something in their family history. Something dormant. Mostly forgotten." He held her gaze. "Something old."

The fire crackled.

Maya felt Ethan go still beside her. Not his usual controlled stillness. Something more absolute.

"What kind of something," she said.

"That depends on the family." Rennick reached to the side table beside his chair and picked up something she hadn't noticed — a folder, plain and unremarkable. He held it out toward her. "I had someone look into your history. After the first night, when I knew you were here."

She didn't reach for it immediately. "You investigated me."

"I investigate everything in my territory." No apology in it, just fact. "It's how I keep people safe."

She glanced at Ethan. His jaw was tight. He hadn't known about the folder.

She took it.

Inside were printed pages — records, mostly. Old ones. Scanned documents she couldn't immediately place, names and dates going back further than she'd expected. She turned through them slowly, aware of the room watching her, trying to find something she recognized.

She found it on the fourth page.

Her grandmother's name. Her mother's maiden name above it. And above that, a name she didn't recognize, attached to a record that was older than anything that should have been easily findable.

"I don't understand what I'm looking at," she said.

"Your great-great-grandmother," Rennick said quietly, "made an agreement. A long time ago. With a pack that no longer exists." He paused. "The agreement was supposed to die with the pack. But agreements in our world are — persistent. They don't disappear just because one of the parties does."

Maya stared at the page.

"What kind of agreement?"

"Protection, originally. She was in danger. The pack offered safety in exchange for—" He chose his next word carefully. "Access. To her bloodline. To whatever she carried."

"What did she carry?"

"We're not entirely sure. Something rare. Something the Hollow Pack seems to think is valuable enough to travel eight months and through six territories to find." He looked at her steadily. "You carry it too. It's why they tracked you specifically. It's why they'll keep tracking you."

The room was very quiet.

Maya closed the folder. She set it on her knee. She looked at the fire because it was easier than looking at anyone's face right now.

"So I was never just in the wrong place," she said.

"No," Rennick said.

"They were always going to find me eventually."

"Probably. The forest just moved the timeline."

She absorbed this. Filed it. The filing was getting harder — there was only so much room in the place she was putting all the things she didn't know how to feel yet.

"Can it be undone?" she asked. "The agreement. Whatever my ancestor made."

"Possibly." He glanced at Ethan. "It would require finding the original terms. Understanding what was exchanged." He paused. "And it would require someone with enough standing in our world to formally dissolve it."

She understood the pause.

"Someone like a pack alpha," she said.

"Someone like a pack alpha," he confirmed.

She finally looked at Ethan.

His expression was controlled. Completely, carefully controlled. But she knew him well enough now to see past it — to the thing underneath that was working very hard to stay contained.

He knew. He had known, or suspected, and hadn't told her yet because he was waiting to confirm it.

She looked back at Rennick.

"What do you want?" she asked. Directly. The way he seemed to prefer.

Something in his expression shifted — a genuine appreciation, she thought, quick and unguarded.

"I want the Hollow Pack out of my territory," he said. "They're a problem regardless of you. But you—" He tilted his head. "You're a complication that becomes simpler if it's handled correctly."

"Handled how?"

"That," he said, "is what I'd like to discuss with Ethan."

He looked at Ethan. Ethan looked back.

Maya set the folder on the table between them.

"Discuss it in front of me," she said.

Rennick looked at her again. The appreciation was back, less guarded this time.

"All right," he said.

He picked up his tea. Settled back.

And outside, beyond the warm light of the lodge, the forest was dark and patient and full of things that had been looking for her long before she ever walked into it.

She kept her hands still.

She listened.

She had a feeling the next part was going to change everything.