Claimed In The Dark

CHAPTER FOUR: WHAT SHE HAD TO KNOW

I sat on the edge of the green couch with my knees pulled up to my chest, and Julian sat across from me on the low table, close enough that our knees almost touched, close enough that I could feel that same pull under my ribs humming quietly, patiently, like it had all the time in the world to wait me out.

"Challenge rites," he said, "are old pack law. Older than my grandfather, older than his grandfather. When an alpha claims a mate, the pack accepts her as protected, untouchable, off limits to every wolf in every territory. But until that claim happens, formally, in front of witnesses, a mate is considered unclaimed. And unclaimed means..." He stopped, jaw working, like the words tasted bad going out.

"Means what, Julian."

"Means any wolf strong enough to challenge me for territory can also challenge you. It's barbaric. It's outdated. It's also still law, and Denna knows it, and she's going to make sure every pack within three hundred miles knows it too, because the longer you stay unclaimed, the weaker I look, and the weaker I look, the more of a target this whole territory becomes."

My stomach turned over slowly and cold. "So people are going to come here. To fight you. Over me."

"Not just fight," Marcus said quietly from the doorway where he'd been standing this whole time, arms crossed, listening. "Some of them won't bother going through Julian at all. They'll just try to take you. It's faster. Messier, but faster."

"That's not going to happen," Julian said, and the growl was back under his voice, low and rough.

"I didn't ask for any of this," I said, and my voice cracked more than I wanted it to. "Yesterday my biggest problem was a design critique. I don't know pack law. I don't know what a claim even involves. I don't know anything, and everyone keeps talking like I'm supposed to already understand the rules of a world I found out was real four hours ago."

Julian's face changed, softened, and he reached out, slow enough that I could have pulled away, and closed his hand gently over mine where it sat white-knuckled on my knee. The second his skin touched mine, the pull flared warm and steady, and some of the panic in my chest actually loosened, just slightly, just enough to breathe.

"I know," he said. "And I'm sorry. None of this is fair to put on you in one day. But I need you to hear one more thing, and I need you to actually hear it, not just survive it." He waited until I looked at him. "The bond that happened between us in that quad. It's rare. Rarer than Denna made it sound. Most wolves go their whole lives without ever feeling it, not once. I've led this pack for four years and never felt so much as a flicker of it, not with anyone. And then you. A human. Not pack. Not even aware wolves existed until an hour ago." His thumb moved, slow, absent, over my knuckles. "My uncle'd been asking around quietly since you passed out. There's an old story in this pack, about human bloodlines that carry something in them, something from a long way back, that makes the bond hit different. Stronger. Faster. I don't know yet if that's what this is. But I don't think it's a coincidence that it happened at all, and neither does he."

I looked at Marcus, who nodded once, slowly, his face carefully unreadable in the way I was starting to realize was his default setting.

"What does that mean for me," I said.

"I don't know yet," Julian said. "But it means Denna asking what you are instead of who you are wasn't just her being cruel. She might actually know something we don't."

Something cold moved through me that had nothing to do with fear of Denna at all. It was the specific, quiet horror of realizing the ground under your whole life might not be as solid as you thought it was yesterday.

"There's something else," Marcus said, and something in his tone made Julian's head turn sharp toward him. "Denna didn't figure out where you took the girl on her own, Julian. Nobody outside this house knew you brought her here."

The room was very still.

"What are you saying," Julian said, low.

"I'm saying someone told her," Marcus said. "And there's only a small handful of people who knew where you were going the second you left that quad."

Julian's eyes came back to mine, and for just a second, underneath all that careful control, I saw something that looked almost like fear, the kind of fear that has nothing to do with a woman in a black coat standing on a porch and everything to do with not knowing anymore who around him could be trusted.

"Get me that list," he said quietly, not looking away from me. "Tonight."

Outside, the pines had gone fully dark, the last grey light gone from the sky, and somewhere out past the treeline, faint but unmistakable, a long, low howl rose up into the night, answered a second later by another, closer, and then a third closer still, three separate voices calling to each other in the dark, and Julian's hand tightened around mine hard enough that I gasped.

"They already know you're here," he said, standing fast, pulling.

Long me up with him. "Stay behind me. Now."