Chapter 2
1044 Words
(Rhett, POV)
I signed the last report on my desk without reading a single word of it.
That wasn't like me. I read everything: every border log, every supply request, every complaint some warrior filed against another over something petty enough that five years ago I would have laughed it off before it ever reached my desk. I didn't laugh at much anymore. I just read, and signed, and moved to the next thing, because moving to the next thing was easier than sitting still with my own head.
My father used to say a good Alpha carries his pack's weight so nobody else has to feel it. He never mentioned what a person was supposed to do with the weight after they'd carried it long enough to forget what it felt like to stand up straight. I'd been Alpha for five years. I couldn't remember the last morning I'd woken up without already being tired.
Five years is a long time to run a pack on nothing but discipline.
I stood at the window of my study looking out over Ashwood territory, my territory, the strongest pack in three counties, built stone by stone since I took the title at twenty-one with blood still on my hands and a hole in my chest where a mate bond used to be. We had good land. Good warriors. Good harvests two years running. Everyone told me I'd built something to be proud of.
I didn't feel proud. I felt like a man standing guard over a house he doesn't live in anymore.
A knock came at the door, short and hard. Finn didn't wait for an answer before he opened it. He never did, not since we were pups together, and I'd stopped correcting him for it years ago.
"You need to see this," he said, already crossing the room with a folded paper in his hand.
"If it's another supply dispute, I don't care who gets the west field."
"It's not a supply dispute." Finn set the paper on my desk and didn't step back. That was how I knew it mattered. Finn never crowded me unless something was wrong. "Border gate flagged a car an hour ago. Three passengers requesting formal asylum. Family unit. They gave a name at the gate."
"And?"
"Calder. Garrick Calder." Finn watched my face carefully when he said it, like he expected it to mean something to me. It didn't, not yet. "Former Beta of Blackthorn Pack."
That got my attention.
Blackthorn wasn't a name that crossed our border often, and when it did, it usually meant trouble wearing a nicer coat than it deserved. Draven Vale ran that territory like a kingdom instead of a pack, and everyone in three counties knew it, even if nobody said it to his face.
"Beta doesn't run from his own pack for nothing," I said.
"No, he doesn't." Finn's jaw tightened. "Word from the gate is he's got two kids with him. A son. And a daughter, just turned eighteen, or about to."
"You said that like it matters."
"Might. Might not." Finn shrugged, but he was watching me too closely for it to be a real shrug. We'd grown up in the same den, trained under the same warriors, and he knew exactly which of my expressions meant something and which ones I put on for show. "I'm just telling you what the gate guard told me. Figured you'd want the whole picture before you decide anything."
"I haven't decided anything yet."
"You will. You always do, fast, once you've got enough in front of you." He tapped the folded paper on my desk. "This is enough."
Something in my chest moved. I didn't have a name for it yet. I told myself it was nothing, the kind of unease any Alpha would feel hearing that a man like Vale might have chased a family halfway across the region.
"Vale's not going to let his own Beta and family just disappear," I said. "If they're asking for asylum, there's a reason bigger than 'we didn't like the weather.'"
"Elders are already saying we shouldn't get involved," Finn said. "Vale's pack outnumbers ours two to one. Taking in his Beta's family is one thing. Refusing to hand them back if he comes asking is a different fight."
I picked the paper up off the desk, scanning the gate report properly this time. Requesting asylum under Ashwood's founding law. Family fled overnight. No injuries reported. Awaiting Alpha's authorization for provisional entry.
Every instinct I'd built over five years of careful, controlled leadership told me to send someone else to handle it. A Gamma. A senior warrior. Anyone whose judgment wasn't going to get tangled up in whatever this feeling in my chest was.
"I'll go myself," I said.
Finn raised an eyebrow. "You never go to the gate yourself. Not for asylum cases."
"I do today."
I didn't have a good answer for why. I told myself it was because a former Beta and his family deserved to be met by the Alpha himself, not passed off to a junior officer like a shipping crate. I told myself it was because Vale was dangerous enough that I needed to assess the risk with my own eyes.
I didn't let myself finish the other thought, the one sitting quiet and heavy underneath all the reasonable ones, the one that had nothing to do with strategy at all.
"Rhett." Finn's voice stopped me at the door. He only used my given name when he meant something by it. "Whatever's going on with you today, it's fine. Go. I'll have the council brief ready when you're back."
"Nothing's going on with me."
"Sure." He didn't believe me. I could see it in the way his eyes tracked me all the way to the door. He'd known me too long to be fooled by a flat denial, but he let it go anyway, because that was Finn. He pushed until he decided pushing wouldn't help, and then he stopped.
I grabbed my coat off the chair and walked out before he could ask me anything else, because I wasn't sure I had an honest answer, and I wasn't ready to find out what it was.
- Writer
