MARKED BY THE ENEMY

Chapter 5 — A Debt With No Name

KADE

I left Nova sitting on the edge of that bed with more questions than I'd answered, and every one of them followed me down the hallway like a weight I couldn't set down.

I'd told her about the bond. Not everything — not the parts I don't fully understand yet — but enough. Enough that she'd gone pale and quiet in a way that scared me more than her anger had. Anger, I could work with. Silence meant she was somewhere inside her own head. I couldn't follow her in.

I needed air. I needed five minutes where I wasn't the person responsible for the worst night of someone's life.

I didn't get it.

Marcus was waiting for me at the end of the hall, arms crossed, leaning against the wall like he'd been standing there for a while — which, knowing him, he probably had.

"So it's true," he said. No greeting. Marcus rarely bothered with those unless he wanted something from you. "You turned into a human. Without council approval. During a sanctioned raid that already went sideways enough to warrant an inquiry on its own."

"The raid went sideways because the intel was wrong." I kept walking, and he fell into step beside me, unhurried, infuriatingly calm. "There were no hostiles in that town, Marcus. There was a girl asleep in her own bed."

"And now there's a girl bonded to an Alpha who broke pack law to save her." He said it lightly, like he was remarking on the weather, but I'd known Marcus long enough to hear the edge underneath. "The council isn't going to care about your reasoning, Kade. They're going to care about precedent. About what it means when an Alpha decides the rules bend for him whenever it's convenient."

"It wasn't convenient." I stopped walking, rounding on him. "She was dying. I made a choice in half a second that I've now got to live with for the rest of my life, and so does she, and I don't need a lecture on precedent from someone whose only concern right now is optics."

Something flickered behind Marcus's eyes — there and gone so fast I almost missed it. If I hadn't known him for eight years, hadn't fought with him, hadn't trusted him with things, I wouldn't have told anyone else in this pack, I might not have caught it at all.

"I'm not lecturing you," he said, his voice smoothing back into something reasonable. "I'm trying to help you survive the inquiry that's coming. Because it is coming, Kade. You know that."

He wasn't wrong. That was the maddening part of arguing with Marcus — he was almost never technically wrong. He just had a talent for being right in ways that always somehow served him.

"What do you suggest," I said, tired, more tired than I wanted to admit to anyone.

"Let me handle her."

I went still.

"What does that mean?"

Marcus's expression didn't change, easy and unbothered, like the request was nothing at all. "The girl. Nova. Let me take responsibility for her orientation into the pack — settling her in, managing the council's concerns, keeping her contained until the inquiry's resolved. It keeps you at arm's length from the situation. Gives you deniability if this goes badly. And frankly, you've got enough on your plate rebuilding trust with the council after last night without babysitting a newly turned human on top of it."

It should have sounded reasonable. On paper, it was reasonable — practical, even generous, Marcus doing what a good Beta does, absorbing pressure off his Alpha.

Every instinct in my body said no.

I couldn't explain it, not in words that would make sense out loud. Something about the bond, still raw and new, recoiled at the idea of anyone else being the one Nova had to depend on right now. Something older than reason, something that felt less like jealousy and more like a warning I didn't have proof for yet.

"No," I said.

Marcus's eyebrows rose, just slightly. "No?"

"She's my responsibility. I turned her. I'll handle the fallout — all of it, the council, the inquiry, her transition into the pack. Not you."

"Kade." He said my name carefully, the way you'd talk someone down from a ledge. "You understand how this looks. The Alpha personally overseeing the human he illegally turned, with a mate-bond nobody sanctioned, right when the council's already circling for a reason to question your judgment? You're handing them exactly the narrative they want."

"Then I'll manage the narrative." My voice came out harder than I meant it to. "But she's not a problem for you to handle, Marcus. She's a person. And she's mine to protect."

Something passed behind his eyes again — quicker this time, controlled almost instantly, but I caught the edge of it, and for the first time in eight years of trusting this man with my back, a thread of unease wound tight in my chest that had nothing to do with the council, or the raid, or the bond currently rewriting my entire life.

"Of course," Marcus said smoothly, straightening off the wall, already turning to leave like the conversation had never held any tension at all. "Whatever you think is best."

He walked away before I could read anything further in his face.

I stood there a long moment, replaying his words, replaying that flicker in his eyes I couldn't quite name, and something cold settled low in my stomach — a feeling I recognized from years of leading wolves into situations I couldn't always predict.

The feeling of being lied to by someone I trusted completely.

I turned to head back toward Nova's room, already reaching for my phone to pull the raid briefing one more time, to check — really check — where that false intel had actually come from.

That's when I heard it. A voice, low, coming from the small side office Marcus kept near the west wing, the door not quite shut all the way.

Marcus's voice. On the phone. Speaking to someone in a tone I'd never once heard him use with anyone in this pack.

"She's awake," he said. "It's done. Now we just need to see how long Kade can keep her from finding out the truth."

I stopped breathing.