The Beta's Fire

Chapter 1

The first time I ever beat Rhys Draven in a fair fight, his father laughed so hard he had to sit down in the dirt. That was nine years ago. Rhys never let me win again after that, and neither did his brothers, but this morning I still had him on his back with my forearm across his throat, and it still felt like the best part of my day.

"Yield," I said.

"Never," Rhys said, which is what he always said, right before he used his hips to throw me sideways into the grass.

I rolled with it, came up on my feet, and found Tobin already circling behind me, grinning like this was the funniest thing he'd seen all week.

"You're outnumbered, Calder," Tobin said. "Three against one isn't really a fight anymore, it's a math problem."

"Funny, I don't remember agreeing to three against one."

"You never agree to anything. You just show up and start winning."

That got a laugh out of me, which was a mistake, because Cassian used the half second my guard dropped to close the distance and sweep my legs out from under me. I hit the ground hard enough to knock the air out of my chest, and before I could recover, all three of them were standing over me in a loose triangle, breathing hard, sweat-soaked, grinning like they'd planned it.

They hadn't. Nobody plans anything with Cassian. He just moves like the ground tells him where to be.

"That's cheating," I said, still flat on my back.

"That's called a real fight," Cassian said. His voice was quiet, the way it always was, like he was saving his volume for something that mattered. He held a hand down to me. I took it, and he pulled me up in one smooth motion, close enough that I caught the smell of pine and clean sweat on him, close enough that my traitor heart did the stupid stumbling thing it always did around him.

Around all three of them, if I was being honest with myself, which I tried very hard not to be.

I stepped back and put distance between us before my body could give anything away. Three months from now the pack council would evaluate me for the Beta position my father had held for twenty years. I did not need to walk into that evaluation smelling like I wanted my future Alphas the way I actually wanted them.

"We done?" I asked, brushing dirt off my leggings.

"You're bleeding," Rhys said. Not a question. He crossed the training ring in three strides and tilted my chin up with two fingers, studying the split in my eyebrow where Tobin's elbow had caught me during the scramble. His storm-gray eyes went dark and careful, the way they always did when he thought I was hurt worse than I was. "Hold still."

"It's a scratch."

"It's bleeding into your eye."

"I've had worse."

"That's not the argument you think it is," Tobin said, coming up on my other side. He wiped his thumb along my cheekbone, gentle, wiping away a smear of blood I hadn't even felt. His grin had softened into something quieter. "You don't have to prove you can take a hit every single morning, Wren."

"Yes I do," I said. "That's literally the job I'm trying to get."

"The job," Cassian said from behind me, "is to lead. Not to bleed."

"In this pack, sometimes it's both."

Nobody argued with that, because it was true, and because all three of them knew exactly why I trained the way I did. My father had built his whole reputation on being the wolf who never asked anyone to bleed for him without bleeding first himself. I intended to be exactly that kind of Beta, if the council let me, if my body and my discipline were enough to make three centuries of male Betas look at a woman and see the same thing.

Rhys was still holding my chin. He hadn't let go, and the training ring had gone very quiet around us, the kind of quiet that happens right before somebody says something they can't take back.

"Wren," he started.

Whatever he was going to say died in his throat when the gate at the far end of the field slammed open and Lyra came sprinting across the grass so fast her healer's bag bounced against her hip like it might fly off.

"Wren," she shouted, "it's your dad. Something's wrong with your dad."

I didn't remember crossing the field. One second I was standing in the circle of the three of them, and the next I was running, my heart slamming against my ribs so hard it hurt worse than the cut over my eye. Rhys, Tobin, and Cassian were right behind me, matching my pace without a word, because that was who they were, the three of them showing up before I even had to ask.

We found him collapsed at the edge of the northern border, one hand still pressed against the old gray warning stone that had stood there since before I was born. His skin had gone the color of ash. A thin black line, like a burn that had never fully healed, ran up his forearm from where his palm touched the stone.

"Dad." I dropped to my knees beside him. His eyes fluttered open, unfocused, searching for my face.

"Wren," he rasped. "The stone. It's screaming again."

"What stone? Dad, what are you talking about, there's nothing here, it's just rock—"

"Not to you," he said, and his hand closed around my wrist with a strength that didn't match how pale he looked. "Not yet."

Behind me, I heard Cassian go very still, the way he did right before he sensed something none of the rest of us could.

"Wren," he said, low and urgent. "Look at your father's arm. Look at the mark. I have seen that exact shape before, on a stone at the edge of my birth pack's territory, three days before it burned to the ground with every single wolf inside it."