No One Could Tame the Feral Alpha… Until Her.

Chapter 1.

The first time I saw Alpha Dreand, he was on his knees. I thought someone had poisoned him. That was how impossible it looked. The entire courtyard had gone silent around us. Even the wind seemed to stop between the banners above the stone walls. Men who had laughed a second ago were staring with their mouths half-open. Women who had been carrying baskets toward the kitchens had frozen in place. Somewhere to my left, a spear slipped from a guard's hand and clattered against the ground. No one moved to pick it up because Alpha Dreand, the feral alpha, the mad wolf king from the north, the one mothers used as a threat to quiet their children, was on one knee in front of me like I had put him there. I hadn't. That was the terrifying part.

I was just standing there in a plain cream dress with my sleeves rolled to my elbows and blood on my fingers from where one of the kennel wolves had bitten me not 10 minutes earlier. My hair had half fallen out of its braid from work. My breath was still uneven. I had no crown, no title, no pack name worth speaking out loud. And yet the most feared alpha in the territory was looking up at me with burning gold eyes and a snarl caught halfway between violence and pain.

"Don't touch him," someone shouted. It might have been Fen, my close friend. It might have been one of the guards. I don't know. Because Dreand made a sound low in his throat, a warning, a plea. I couldn't tell which. And every instinct in my body narrowed toward him. He looked like he wanted to rip out every throat in the courtyard except mine. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my teeth.

"What is wrong with him?" I whispered. No one answered me. Paloma, the healer's assistant, stood a few feet away, clutching a satchel of herbs so tightly I thought the seams would split. Her face had gone pale. Gandel, captain of the inner guard, had one hand on the hilt of his sword and the other stretched in front of the younger guards as if to keep them from doing something stupid. Which told me two things at once. First, they were afraid. Second, they thought whatever was happening had something to do with me.

I should explain something. I was not supposed to matter in Black Creed. I was the girl people forgot while looking directly at me. The quiet one from the servant houses, the one who worked in the lower kitchens, helped in the infirmary when Paloma needed extra hands, and knew how to keep her eyes down when the high wolves passed. I had lived in Black Creed for 6 years without becoming anyone's favorite subject. That was deliberate. Before Black Creed, there had been another pack, another name, another life I did not say aloud anymore. Silvergate Pack. Even thinking it felt like pressing on a bruise. My father had been beta there. Not alpha, but close enough to power to die when power changed hands. When the old alpha was overthrown and the new one decided loyalty needed to be bled out of the pack, my family became an example before I was old enough to understand what examples cost. My mother got me out. For three nights she ran with me through sleet and mud and pine-dark forest, my hand in hers, never once slowing enough to cry where I could see it. On the fourth morning, she left me at the road to Black Creed with a woman she trusted and kissed my forehead like it was a promise. I never saw her again, so no, I was not supposed to matter. Girls like me survived by becoming useful and forgettable. Girls like me did not catch the eye of kings. They did not stand in courtyards with blood on their hands while an alpha from legend bowed to them like they had a right to command him.

And yet, Paloma said, her voice thin, "Step back." Dreand's gaze snapped to her so fast that half the courtyard flinched. Not because he moved, because we all felt what he could become if he did. No, I said before I could think better of it. Every head turned toward me. It was a stupid answer, a dangerous answer, the kind that gets servants punished and ordinary girls noticed in ways they do not survive. But the second Paloma told me to move, something in Dreand's expression changed. Not calmer, exactly. Worse. More frantic, like he thought I was about to disappear and he would tear the stones apart trying to stop it.

I swallowed. His chest was bare beneath a dark fur mantle, every breath shuddering through muscles slick with sweat. Up close, he looked less like a man and more like something half-forced into one shape against its will. His black hair hung damp around his face. A scar cut through one eyebrow. Gold light flickered under his skin at the throat like fire trapped beneath ice. He was beautiful. I hated myself a little for noticing that while everyone thought he might slaughter us.

"Annaniel," Gandal barked, harsher than Paloma had. "Away from him now." Dreand growled. It wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. Three of the younger guards stepped backward so quickly they nearly tripped over each other. My pulse kicked harder. I should have listened. I should have gone very still and let people with weapons and titles handle the problem. Instead, I did the thing I had already begun to suspect would ruin my life. I stepped closer.

The courtyard erupted. Someone cursed. Someone else shouted my name again. I heard Fen say, "Moon, save her," under his breath from somewhere near the kennel gate. Dreand did not lunge. He did not snap. He just looked at me with those savage, burning eyes. Every line of him strung tight enough to break. I should have been scared. I was scared. But beneath the fear, there was something stranger, something deep and disorienting. It felt almost like recognition, as if some part of me had been walking toward this moment for years without telling the rest of me. My hand rose before I had decided to lift it.

"Annaniel," Paloma snapped, but I was already there. My fingers touched Dreand's jaw. Heat shot through me so suddenly my knees nearly buckled. Not ordinary heat, not skin against skin. This felt like a live wire drawn through my bones. His eyes flared brighter. A rough sound tore out of him. Not pain, exactly. Not relief, exactly, but close enough to both that it made my throat tighten. Then he went still. Completely, impossibly still. The entire courtyard stared. Dreand leaned into my hand. It was such a small movement and somehow more shocking than anything else that had happened. This was a man they said had broken a rival alpha's spine in the middle of negotiations. A man whose own wolves watched him with the caution people usually reserved for wildfire and cliffsides. A man who had arrived in Black Creed two days earlier with 12 warriors, a treaty in one hand and blood on the other, and he was leaning into my touch like it was the first mercy he had ever known.

"What?" Fen said faintly. "In the hells." I looked down at Dreand, and for one suspended moment, the courtyard vanished. There was only his face in my hand and the impossible sense that I knew him where I had never met him. Something inside my chest pulled hard enough to ache. His lips parted. "Mine," he said hoarsely.

The world came crashing back in. The guards tensed. Paloma went white. Gandel actually drew his sword this time. I yanked my hand away like I'd been burned. Absolutely not. A few people stared at me as if I'd lost my mind. Maybe I had. Dreand's head lifted sharply, his eyes tracking me with a focus that made me want to run and stand still at the same time. He rose in one smooth, frightening motion. Every guard in the courtyard lifted a weapon. Dreand ignored them all. He was enormous standing, bigger than anyone had a right to be. He looked down at me with something wild still clawing behind his expression, but controlled now, dragged brutally into line. When he spoke again, his voice was deeper, steadier. "You touched me."

I folded my shaking hands into fists so no one would see them tremble. "You were acting rabid." A disbelieving sound moved through the courtyard. His mouth twitched. Not a smile. Not quite, but enough to change his face in a way that was almost worse than the feral look had been. "I was not rabid." "You were on the ground growling at everyone." "I was fighting the bond."

"What?" My stomach dropped. No. Number. Across from us, Gandel's expression had become the particular kind of grim usually reserved for funerals and border attacks. "Alpha Dreand," he said carefully. "Perhaps this discussion should happen in private." "There is no discussion," Dreand said without looking away from me. "She is my mate."

The word cracked through the courtyard like thunder. Then I laughed. It burst out of me too fast and too sharp because if I didn't laugh, I might scream. "Your mate?" I repeated. "You do not even know me." His gaze held mine with unnerving certainty. "Annaniel." I froze. I had not told him my name. No one had. The courtyard had gone so silent I could hear the banner ropes straining overhead. He saw the moment I realized it, and some unreadable emotion flashed across his face. Something like victory, something like grief.

"How do you know my name?" I asked. He did not answer at once. And that was when I understood this was worse than attraction, worse than a mistaken bond, worse than the kind of trouble that could be solved by hiding better or speaking less. Because Alpha Dreand looked at me like he had been looking for me for a long time.

"Take her inside," Gandel ordered suddenly. "No," Dreand said. Two guards moved anyway, uncertain but trying to obey their own captain. Dreand turned his head. That was all. He did not bare his teeth. He did not raise his voice. Yet both men stopped where they stood as if they had slammed into a wall. "Annaniel goes nowhere," he said. "Unless I walk with her."

I found my voice. "I am not going anywhere with you." His eyes came back to mine. "You will." The certainty in it set my teeth on edge. "You are very used to being obeyed." "I am very used to being right." The certainty in his tone made my pulse jump. Fen, who had been silent until then, stepped out from near the kennel gate with his hands raised in what might generously be called peacekeeping. After escaping Silvergate, I had met Fen. He had grown up with me in Black Creed. He knew enough of my history in this pack to understand when I looked cornered and enough of his own limitations not to pretend he could fight an alpha king alone.

"Maybe," he said carefully, "everyone could stop deciding what Aniel will do and let Anel say what Anel wants." Bless him. I latched onto the lifeline immediately. "Thank you." Dreand looked at Fen. Fen paled but held his ground. Then, to my shock, Dreand inclined his head once. "Say it then."

A hundred eyes turned toward me. I took a breath and tried to gather the wreckage of my thoughts into something that resembled sense. "I want," I said slowly, "to know why the most feared alpha in the north just dropped to one knee in front of me, called me his mate, somehow knew my name, and is now acting like he has any claim over what I do." Dreand's expression did not change. "That," I added, "and I want everyone else to stop staring at me like I caused this." No one looked away. Paloma recovered first. "Inside," she said briskly, latching on to order because the alternative was panic. "Now, before the whole keep hears." "The whole keep has already heard," Fen muttered.

"He was probably right." Within minutes, I was being escorted across the courtyard and into the keep's west wing with an armed guard detail I had never requested. Paloma flanking one side of me and Dreand himself looming at the other. Gandel walked ahead with the rigid posture of a man composing 10 different emergency plans at once. I could feel servants peeking from doorways as we passed. Wonderful. By sunset, every gossip corner in Black Creed would have a version of the story. By tomorrow morning, I would either be cursed, blessed, envied, or pied. Likely all four.

We were taken to one of the old council rooms, small enough to keep control, private enough to keep this from becoming a public spectacle before anyone knew what it meant. Gandel shut the door himself and dismissed the guards to the hall. Then he turned to face us. The room held only five people. Me, Dreand, Gandel, Paloma, and Fen. Because apparently no one had managed to stop him from following. For a moment, nobody spoke. Then I folded my arms and looked directly at the man who had just detonated my life. "Start talking."

Dreand's gaze moved over my face with unbearable focus. "Your name is Annaniel Veyron." Every muscle in my body locked. No one in Black Creed knew that surname. No one. Paloma frowned. Fen went still. Gandel's eyes sharpened. And Alpha Dreand, mate or not, feral or not, beautiful or not, had just proved he was far more dangerous than I had imagined.

"My name," I said carefully, "is Danielle Lochbane, not Veyron." Dreand did not look convinced. Worse, he looked patient, as if he knew I would stop lying when I got tired. Gandel's gaze moved between us. "That name means something." "No," I said at once. "Yes," Dreand said over me. I turned on him. "You don't get to answer for me." "Then stop making me do it." The nerve of him. And I took a step toward him before I could think better of it. "You walk into my home, throw my life into chaos, and now you think you can decide when I speak." His expression remained infuriatingly calm. "If I thought that, you would already be sitting down." Fen made a strangled noise that might have been a laugh and choked it off when I glared at him. Paloma pinched the bridge of her nose. "Moon, save us from mated pairs." "We are not a mated pair," I snapped. Dreand's eyes flicked to me. "Not yet."

My face went hot with rage so immediate it almost covered the other thing. Fear. Because he knew. He knew my name, which meant he knew something about where I came from, which meant whatever fragile safety I had built in Black Creed had just begun to crack. Gandel, to his credit, noticed the important part before the emotional one. "How do you know that surname?" Dreand looked at him without any urgency. "Because I have been looking for her."

I wanted very badly to throw something at his head. "Why?" Paloma asked. Dreand's jaw flexed once. "Because 6 years ago, the Veyron line was supposed to have been wiped out." The room tilted. Fen swore softly. Gandel's expression changed in a way that made my skin prickle. Not surprise, exactly, but recognition. He knew the name. Of course he did. Everyone old enough to remember the pack wars knew Silvergate. They knew the bloodshed that followed when the Veyron loyalists were slaughtered and the new alpha took control. They just did not know I was one of the pieces left over.

"Annaniel," Fen said carefully, like he was approaching a wounded animal. "Is that true?" I looked at him. Then at Paloma, then at Gandel. Three faces I had known for years, all suddenly watching me from a distance. A bitter laugh rose in my throat, and I swallowed it back. This was exactly why I had hidden. This was exactly why I had become quiet, useful, forgettable. People were comfortable with a servant girl. They were not comfortable with bloodlines, not with the ghosts attached to them.

"It doesn't matter," I said. "It matters," Dreand said. "Stop talking like you know what matters to me." His gaze sharpened. "I know what hunts you." Something inside me recoiled. "You know nothing." For the first time since the courtyard, his control slipped a little. Not in violence, in frustration. "I know your mother died because of you." "She died getting you out." The words hit like a blade sliding between ribs. The room vanished around the edges. I don't remember deciding to move. I only know that one second I was standing by the council table, and the next I had crossed the room and slapped him hard enough that Fen sucked in a breath. The crack echoed off the stone. Dreand did not flinch. Not because he didn't feel it, because he let me do it. My palms stung.

"How dare you?" I whispered. No one moved. Paloma looked startled, but not disapproving. Fen seemed torn between alarm and the belief that Dreand had deserved worse. Gandel remained still as carved wood, though his hand had drifted subtly closer to the knife at his belt. Dreand slowly turned his face back toward me. A red mark bloomed across his cheekbone. "She did die getting you out," he said quietly. "I'm sorry that's true." I wanted to hit him again. I wanted to break something. Instead, I stepped back because if I stayed that close to him, I might do either.

"How?" I said, and my voice shook no matter how I tried to steady it. "Would you know anything about my mother?" The room waited. Dreand took a breath like a man stepping onto dangerous ground. "Because my father was supposed to bring her brother's warriors to Silvergate that night." I stared at him. "What?" He continued before I could interrupt. "Your mother sent word for help when she realized the coup had already begun. My father answered. He was late." My heartbeat was so loud I could barely hear him. "No," I said. "It's true." "No." Louder this time. "No, because if that were true, I would know your pack name." "You would know my father's," he said. "Not mine. He went under another title in the south." Gandel's head lifted sharply. "Torin." Dreand glanced at him once. "Yes." Something old and ugly flashed across Gandel's face. "Torin of Ashver." Paloma looked between them. "You know him?" "I knew of him," Gandel said. "He rode with border packs and sold his wolves where he pleased. Sometimes as mercenaries, sometimes as oathbound allies, depending on which story he wanted told." "That sounds encouraging," Fen muttered. "My father was many things," Dreand said. "But he did answer your mother's call."

I folded my arms tighter around myself because suddenly I felt cold and failed. A pause. Yes, he said. There it was. That was the shape of it. Not rescue, not some noble old promise. Guilt. He had found me because his bloodline had failed mine. That should have made me feel safer, simpler, easier to understand than fate or bonds. Instead, it filled me with a bitter exhaustion that settled all the way into my bones.

"So, this is what?" I asked. "A family debt?" Dreand was silent for too long. My stomach sank. "It started that way," he said. Paloma let out an under-her-breath curse. I laughed once, humorless and sharp. Of course it did. Fen shifted uncomfortably. Gandel's mouth hardened as if Dreand had confirmed the exact answer he liked least.

"You hunted me down," I said. "Because your father failed to save my family, and now you've decided I'm a debt to pay." His eyes darkened. "No," he said. "That is exactly what you just said." "I said, 'That's how it started.' Then explain the rest." He held my gaze. "I couldn't explain the rest until today." The bond. He meant the bond. I could hear it sitting beneath every word, whether he spoke it aloud or not. Mate, mine. The same impossible claim from the courtyard now threaded through this room like a trip wire no one could stop brushing against. I hated that word. Most of all, I hated what it meant. Head. Gandel exhaled through his nose. "Enough circling. Say what you mean." "Alpha." Dreand's expression turned to stone. "6 years ago, my father came too late to Silvergate. He found the bodies, found the blood, found your uncle dying near the gatehouse." His eyes stayed on mine. "Your uncle told him your mother got you out and headed south." I had not heard anyone speak of my uncle in years. I had almost forgotten the timbre of his voice. He had carried me on his shoulders during summer hunts. He had laughed too loudly, fought too easily. I had heard that he died somewhere near a gatehouse I had never let myself picture. The room blurred for a moment. "My father searched for you," Dreand said. "Not out of kindness, but out of duty and guilt. He never found you. Then he died last winter." Paloma went still. Fen frowned. Gandel crossed his arms tighter. "And you took up the search?" Gandel said. "Yes. Why now?" Dreand's gaze stayed on me. "Because I inherited his records and because the moment I saw her, I knew." I felt something ugly and hot crawl up my throat. "There it is again. You knew?" I spread my hands. "What does that even mean? That the moon whispered it in your ear? That some magic hand reached down and labeled me yours?" His jaw set. "Yes." The room went silent again. Fen blinked. "That was direct." Dreand ignored him. "You touched me and the bond locked." "I touched your face because you were losing your mind in the middle of the courtyard." "And I went to my knee because my wolf recognized you." The words slid under my skin. Paloma finally stepped in, voice brisk because she was smarter than the rest of us put together. "Does she feel it?" Every eye turned to me. I opened my mouth and found nothing simple enough to say because the truthful answer was humiliating. No, I did not feel some great singing, inevitable mating bond. I did not feel certainty. I did not feel surrender. But I had felt something in the courtyard. Something violent and intimate and utterly unwelcome. Something that had made my chest ache when he looked at me. Something that had not gone away. "No," I lied. Dreand's eyes narrowed very slightly. I wanted to bite him. Paloma noticed the look. "That means yes. It means mind your own business." "It became my business when a feral alpha nearly tore apart our courtyard over you." I opened my mouth to argue. A sharp knock sounded at the door. All five of us froze. Gandel moved first, crossing to it with one hand on his knife. "Who?" came the answer from outside. "And unless you've all died in there, I'd like to know why half the keep is saying our guest king found his mate among the servant staff." I closed my eyes. Wonderful. Odyssey was Gandel's younger sister, my closest friend, and Black Creed's worst-kept secret where information was concerned. She ran the stores, the ledgers, and most of the servant schedules, which meant she knew everything before she was supposed to. If she was here, then the story had already spread beyond saving. Gandel opened the door a crack, then wider when he saw she was alone. Odyssey swept in, wearing a dark riding skirt and an expression sharpened by interest. She took one look at the room, at Dreand's cheek still marked red from my hand, at my face, at Paloma and Fen standing like witnesses to a disaster, and sighed. "So it's true?" "No," I said. "Yes," Dreand said. Odyssey's eyes lit with interest. "I like him already." "I don't." "That may be the first bad lie you've told." I glared at her. She ignored me and turned to Gandel. "The outer kitchens are placing bets." "On what?" "Whether she stabs him before dusk or kisses him first." Fen choked. Paloma looked offended on my behalf for half a second before apparently deciding the odds were fair. I wanted the floor to open. "This is not funny," I said. Odyssey's expression sobered a fraction. She looked at me more closely then, taking in what sat beneath my anger. "No," she said quietly. "It isn't." That more than her teasing nearly undid me, because Odyssey had always been sharp enough to see what other people missed, and apparently she had now seen enough to know this was about more than a bond. She folded her arms. "Tell me what I need to know." "No," I said again automatically. Gandel looked at me. "And yell." There was no pressure in it, no force, just a kind of grim invitation to stop standing alone if I didn't have to. It was tempting. Slowly, like I was peeling skin from old scars, I told them the part I had never spoken aloud in Black Creed. Not everything, not every detail, not the road or the cold or the way my mother had looked when she left me, but enough. Silvergate. The coup, my father's death, my mother's escape, the false name, the years hiding. No one interrupted. When I finished, the room felt different, smaller, quieter. Fen looked sick. Paloma looked furious. Gandel looked like a man revising 10 years of assumptions in real time. Odyssey crossed the room without warning and pulled me into a brief, fierce hug. I stiffened on instinct and then, traitorous thing that I was, almost leaned into it. "You should have told me," she muttered. "I know." "No, I mean I would have helped you bury bodies." Not because I'm offended. Despite everything, a laugh escaped me. Short and cracked, but real. When she pulled back, Dreand was watching us with something unreadable in his expression. Not jealousy, exactly. Hunger for closeness, maybe. The sight of it unsettled me more than I wanted to admit. Gandel looked at Dreand. "If what you're saying is true, why reveal her now? Why not speak to me first? Or Paloma? Why announce a mating claim in front of half the keep?" A muscle ticked in Dreand's jaw. "I did not intend to." I folded my arms. "You certainly committed to it." His gaze flicked toward me. "My wolf dropped me to my knee. That was not strategy." "Fen muttered. "That is not helping him look less dramatic." "It's helping me look less insane," Dreand said. "That remains to be seen," I shot back. Odyssey tilted her head. "So, what happens now?" That question settled over the room like dust after a collapse. What happened now? Black Creed was a small enough pack that nothing stayed private for long. By tonight, everyone would know the northern alpha had claimed the servant girl. By tomorrow, the smarter ones would notice how much trouble that could bring. Because Dreand did not just carry a reputation. He carried enemies, border tension, pack politics, old blood debts, and if anyone from Silvergate ever came this far south and heard the right whisper in the wrong order. I went cold. Dreand noticed immediately. Of course he did. "Who?" he asked. I looked at him sharply. "What?" "Who are you afraid heard?" "No use pretending now. The alpha who took Silvergate has two sons, Lear and Bastion. If either of them learns I'm alive." "They won't touch you," Dreand said. I almost laughed. "You don't know them." "No," he said. "But I know me." The room went quiet because there was no arrogance in the way he said it, only certainty. Cold, brutal, absolute certainty. Paloma broke the silence first. "Then she needs protection." "I don't need-" "Yes, you do," four people said at once. I glared at all of them in turn. Odyssey lifted a brow. "Would you like us to say it individually so it feels less rude?" "No," good, because I would not have stopped. Gandel rubbed a hand over his mouth. "For now, Annaniel does not return to the servant wing." I stiffened. "Excuse me." "It's too exposed." "This is my home." "This is no longer just about your home." Dreand's voice cut in, low and dangerous. "She stays where I can reach her." I turned on him immediately. "I am not being moved into your rooms like some prize." His gaze held mine. "Then choose another room, but not one I cannot get to." The sheer audacity of the man. And yet, under the anger, under the humiliation and fear and exhaustion, something in me responded to that tone with a dangerous flicker of heat. Safety, perhaps. Possession, certainly. Odyssey, damn her, noticed that too. "Oh, this will be dreadful," she said with relish. "You're already half in love and you don't even like him." "I am not in love with anyone." Dreand's mouth twitched. I almost elbowed his beautiful face. Gandel made the decision before I could continue arguing. "Annaniel takes the old east tower room. Odyssey will move her things. Fen sleeps outside her door tonight. Paloma, I want Tonic sent up in case the bond does something strange. Dreand." He paused. "You do not go into her room uninvited." Dreand looked mildly insulted. "I know how doors work." Fen snorted. I pointed at Dreand. "That one?" That one was almost funny. His eyes came back to mine. And for the first time since the courtyard, the full weight of his attention softened into something else, something lower, warmer, more dangerous because it was almost gentle. "I could be funny for you," he said. The room, for reasons I deeply resented, became very interested in my reaction. I stared at him. Then I turned to Gandel. "I would like to go to my new, heavily guarded prison tower now." Odyssey patted my shoulder. "That sounded very dramatic. He's rubbing off on you already." I walked toward the door before anyone could see how badly my hands were shaking. Behind me, I heard Dreand move, too. Of course, he did. And somehow, without my consent, that terrifying, impossible bond between us tightened just enough for me to feel it. Not love, not trust, but the unmistakable knowledge that this was only the beginning.

Chapter 2.

No one spoke for three full heartbeats after Dreand said my old name. It should not have mattered the way it did. A surname was just a sound, a dead thing, a scrap from a life I had spent six years cutting away piece by piece. But when it came out of his mouth, Veyron, low and certain, like it belonged to me, whether I wanted it or not, I felt 12 years old again, standing in the dark while my mother hissed at me not to make a sound.

"My name," I said, forcing each word flat, "is Danielle Lochbane, not Veyron." Dreand did not look convinced. Worse, he looked patient, as if he knew I would stop lying when I got tired. Gandel's gaze moved between us. "That name means something." "No," I said at once. "Yes," Dreand said over me. I turned on him. "You don't get to answer for me." "Then stop making me do it." The nerve of him. And I took a step toward him before I could think better of it. "You walk into my home, throw my life into chaos, and now you think you can decide when I speak." His expression remained infuriatingly calm. "If I thought that, you would already be sitting down." Fen made a strangled noise that might have been a laugh and choked it off when I glared at him. Paloma pinched the bridge of her nose. "Moon, save us from mated pairs." "We are not a mated pair," I snapped. Dreand's eyes flicked to me. "Not yet."

My face went hot with rage so immediate it almost covered the other thing. Fear. Because he knew. He knew my name, which meant he knew something about where I came from, which meant whatever fragile safety I had built in Black Creed had just begun to crack. Gandel, to his credit, noticed the important part before the emotional one. "How do you know that surname?" Dreand looked at him without any urgency. "Because I have been looking for her."

I wanted very badly to throw something at his head. "Why?" Paloma asked. Dreand's jaw flexed once. "Because 6 years ago, the Veyron line was supposed to have been wiped out." The room tilted. Fen swore softly. Gandel's expression changed in a way that made my skin prickle. Not surprise, exactly, but recognition. He knew the name. Of course he did. Everyone old enough to remember the pack wars knew Silvergate. They knew the bloodshed that followed when the Veyron loyalists were slaughtered and the new alpha took control. They just did not know I was one of the pieces left over.

"Annaniel," Fen said carefully, like he was approaching a wounded animal. "Is that true?" I looked at him. Then at Paloma, then at Gandel. Three faces I had known for years, all suddenly watching me from a distance. A bitter laugh rose in my throat, and I swallowed it back. This was exactly why I had hidden. This was exactly why I had become quiet, useful, forgettable. People were comfortable with a servant girl. They were not comfortable with bloodlines, not with the ghosts attached to them.

"It doesn't matter," I said. "It matters," Dreand said. "Stop talking like you know what matters to me." His gaze sharpened. "I know what hunts you." Something inside me recoiled. "You know nothing." For the first time since the courtyard, his control slipped a little. Not in violence, in frustration. "I know your mother died because of you." "She died getting you out." The words hit like a blade sliding between ribs. The room vanished around the edges. I don't remember deciding to move. I only know that one second I was standing by the council table, and the next I had crossed the room and slapped him hard enough that Fen sucked in a breath. The crack echoed off the stone. Dreand did not flinch. Not because he didn't feel it, because he let me do it. My palms stung.

"How dare you?" I whispered. No one moved. Paloma looked startled, but not disapproving. Fen seemed torn between alarm and the belief that Dreand had deserved worse. Gandel remained still as carved wood, though his hand had drifted subtly closer to the knife at his belt. Dreand slowly turned his face back toward me. A red mark bloomed across his cheekbone. "She did die getting you out," he said quietly. "I'm sorry that's true." I wanted to hit him again. I wanted to break something. Instead, I stepped back because if I stayed that close to him, I might do either.

"How?" I said, and my voice shook no matter how I tried to steady it. "Would you know anything about my mother?" The room waited. Dreand took a breath like a man stepping onto dangerous ground. "Because my father was supposed to bring her brother's warriors to Silvergate that night." I stared at him. "What?" He continued before I could interrupt. "Your mother sent word for help when she realized the coup had already begun. My father answered. He was late." My heartbeat was so loud I could barely hear him. "No," I said. "It's true." "No." Louder this time. "No, because if that were true, I would know your pack name." "You would know my father's," he said. "Not mine. He went under another title in the south." Gandel's head lifted sharply. "Torin." Dreand glanced at him once. "Yes." Something old and ugly flashed across Gandel's face. "Torin of Ashver." Paloma looked between them. "You know him?" "I knew of him," Gandel said. "He rode with border packs and sold his wolves where he pleased. Sometimes as mercenaries, sometimes as oathbound allies, depending on which story he wanted told." "That sounds encouraging," Fen muttered. "My father was many things," Dreand said. "But he did answer your mother's call."

I folded my arms tighter around myself because suddenly I felt cold and failed. A pause. Yes, he said. There it was. That was the shape of it. Not rescue, not some noble old promise. Guilt. He had found me because his bloodline had failed mine. That should have made me feel safer, simpler, easier to understand than fate or bonds. Instead, it filled me with a bitter exhaustion that settled all the way into my bones.

"So, this is what?" I asked. "A family debt?" Dreand was silent for too long. My stomach sank. "It started that way," he said. Paloma let out an under-her-breath curse. I laughed once, humorless and sharp. Of course it did. Fen shifted uncomfortably. Gandel's mouth hardened as if Dreand had confirmed the exact answer he liked least.

"You hunted me down," I said. "Because your father failed to save my family, and now you've decided I'm a debt to pay." His eyes darkened. "No," he said. "That is exactly what you just said." "I said, 'That's how it started.' Then explain the rest." He held my gaze. "I couldn't explain the rest until today." The bond. He meant the bond. I could hear it sitting beneath every word, whether he spoke it aloud or not. Mate, mine. The same impossible claim from the courtyard now threaded through this room like a trip wire no one could stop brushing against. I hated that word. Most of all, I hated what it meant. Head. Gandel exhaled through his nose. "Enough circling. Say what you mean." "Alpha." Dreand's expression turned to stone. "6 years ago, my father came too late to Silvergate. He found the bodies, found the blood, found your uncle dying near the gatehouse." His eyes stayed on mine. "Your uncle told him your mother got you out and headed south." I had not heard anyone speak of my uncle in years. I had almost forgotten the timbre of his voice. He had carried me on his shoulders during summer hunts. He had laughed too loudly, fought too easily. I had heard that he died somewhere near a gatehouse I had never let myself picture. The room blurred for a moment. "My father searched for you," Dreand said. "Not out of kindness, but out of duty and guilt. He never found you. Then he died last winter." Paloma went still. Fen frowned. Gandel crossed his arms tighter. "And you took up the search?" Gandel said. "Yes. Why now?" Dreand's gaze stayed on me. "Because I inherited his records and because the moment I saw her, I knew." I felt something ugly and hot crawl up my throat. "There it is again. You knew?" I spread my hands. "What does that even mean? That the moon whispered it in your ear? That some magic hand reached down and labeled me yours?" His jaw set. "Yes." The room went silent again. Fen blinked. "That was direct." Dreand ignored him. "You touched me and the bond locked." "I touched your face because you were losing your mind in the middle of the courtyard." "And I went to my knee because my wolf recognized you." The words slid under my skin. Paloma finally stepped in, voice brisk because she was smarter than the rest of us put together. "Does she feel it?" Every eye turned to me. I opened my mouth and found nothing simple enough to say because the truthful answer was humiliating. No, I did not feel some great singing, inevitable mating bond. I did not feel certainty. I did not feel surrender. But I had felt something in the courtyard. Something violent and intimate and utterly unwelcome. Something that had made my chest ache when he looked at me. Something that had not gone away. "No," I lied. Dreand's eyes narrowed very slightly. I wanted to bite him. Paloma noticed the look. "That means yes. It means mind your own business." "It became my business when a feral alpha nearly tore apart our courtyard over you." I opened my mouth to argue. A sharp knock sounded at the door. All five of us froze. Gandel moved first, crossing to it with one hand on his knife. "Who?" came the answer from outside. "And unless you've all died in there, I'd like to know why half the keep is saying our guest king found his mate among the servant staff." I closed my eyes. Wonderful. Odyssey was Gandel's younger sister, my closest friend, and Black Creed's worst-kept secret where information was concerned. She ran the stores, the ledgers, and most of the servant schedules, which meant she knew everything before she was supposed to. If she was here, then the story had already spread beyond saving. Gandel opened the door a crack, then wider when he saw she was alone. Odyssey swept in, wearing a dark riding skirt and an expression sharpened by interest. She took one look at the room, at Dreand's cheek still marked red from my hand, at my face, at Paloma and Fen standing like witnesses to a disaster, and sighed. "So it's true?" "No," I said. "Yes," Dreand said. Odyssey's eyes lit with interest. "I like him already." "I don't." "That may be the first bad lie you've told." I glared at her. She ignored me and turned to Gandel. "The outer kitchens are placing bets." "On what?" "Whether she stabs him before dusk or kisses him first." Fen choked. Paloma looked offended on my behalf for half a second before apparently deciding the odds were fair. I wanted the floor to open. "This is not funny," I said. Odyssey's expression sobered a fraction. She looked at me more closely then, taking in what sat beneath my anger. "No," she said quietly. "It isn't." That more than her teasing nearly undid me, because Odyssey had always been sharp enough to see what other people missed, and apparently she had now seen enough to know this was about more than a bond. She folded her arms. "Tell me what I need to know." "No," I said again automatically. Gandel looked at me. "And yell." There was no pressure in it, no force, just a kind of grim invitation to stop standing alone if I didn't have to. It was tempting. Slowly, like I was peeling skin from old scars, I told them the part I had never spoken aloud in Black Creed. Not everything, not every detail, not the road or the cold or the way my mother had looked when she left me, but enough. Silvergate. The coup, my father's death, my mother's escape, the false name, the years hiding. No one interrupted. When I finished, the room felt different, smaller, quieter. Fen looked sick. Paloma looked furious. Gandel looked like a man revising 10 years of assumptions in real time. Odyssey crossed the room without warning and pulled me into a brief, fierce hug. I stiffened on instinct and then, traitorous thing that I was, almost leaned into it. "You should have told me," she muttered. "I know." "No, I mean I would have helped you bury bodies." Not because I'm offended. Despite everything, a laugh escaped me. Short and cracked, but real. When she pulled back, Dreand was watching us with something unreadable in his expression. Not jealousy, exactly. Hunger for closeness, maybe. The sight of it unsettled me more than I wanted to admit. Gandel looked at Dreand. "If what you're saying is true, why reveal her now? Why not speak to me first? Or Paloma? Why announce a mating claim in front of half the keep?" A muscle ticked in Dreand's jaw. "I did not intend to." I folded my arms. "You certainly committed to it." His gaze flicked toward me. "My wolf dropped me to my knee. That was not strategy." "Fen muttered. "That is not helping him look less dramatic." "It's helping me look less insane," Dreand said. "That remains to be seen," I shot back. Odyssey tilted her head. "So, what happens now?" That question settled over the room like dust after a collapse. What happened now? Black Creed was a small enough pack that nothing stayed private for long. By tonight, everyone would know the northern alpha had claimed the servant girl. By tomorrow, the smarter ones would notice how much trouble that could bring. Because Dreand did not just carry a reputation. He carried enemies, border tension, pack politics, old blood debts, and if anyone from Silvergate ever came this far south and heard the right whisper in the wrong order. I went cold. Dreand noticed immediately. Of course he did. "Who?" he asked. I looked at him sharply. "What?" "Who are you afraid heard?" "No use pretending now. The alpha who took Silvergate has two sons, Lear and Bastion. If either of them learns I'm alive." "They won't touch you," Dreand said. I almost laughed. "You don't know them." "No," he said. "But I know me." The room went quiet because there was no arrogance in the way he said it, only certainty. Cold, brutal, absolute certainty. Paloma broke the silence first. "Then she needs protection." "I don't need-" "Yes, you do," four people said at once. I glared at all of them in turn. Odyssey lifted a brow. "Would you like us to say it individually so it feels less rude?" "No," good, because I would not have stopped. Gandel rubbed a hand over his mouth. "For now, Annaniel does not return to the servant wing." I stiffened. "Excuse me." "It's too exposed." "This is my home." "This is no longer just about your home." Dreand's voice cut in, low and dangerous. "She stays where I can reach her." I turned on him immediately. "I am not being moved into your rooms like some prize." His gaze held mine. "Then choose another room, but not one I cannot get to." The sheer audacity of the man. And yet, under the anger, under the humiliation and fear and exhaustion, something in me responded to that tone with a dangerous flicker of heat. Safety, perhaps. Possession, certainly. Odyssey, damn her, noticed that too. "Oh, this will be dreadful," she said with relish. "You're already half in love and you don't even like him." "I am not in love with anyone." Dreand's mouth twitched. I almost elbowed his beautiful face. Gandel made the decision before I could continue arguing. "Annaniel takes the old east tower room. Odyssey will move her things. Fen sleeps outside her door tonight. Paloma, I want Tonic sent up in case the bond does something strange. Dreand." He paused. "You do not go into her room uninvited." Dreand looked mildly insulted. "I know how doors work." Fen snorted. I pointed at Dreand. "That one?" That one was almost funny. His eyes came back to mine. And for the first time since the courtyard, the full weight of his attention softened into something else, something lower, warmer, more dangerous because it was almost gentle. "I could be funny for you," he said. The room, for reasons I deeply resented, became very interested in my reaction. I stared at him. Then I turned to Gandel. "I would like to go to my new, heavily guarded prison tower now." Odyssey patted my shoulder. "That sounded very dramatic. He's rubbing off on you already." I walked toward the door before anyone could see how badly my hands were shaking. Behind me, I heard Dreand move, too. Of course, he did. And somehow, without my consent, that terrifying, impossible bond between us tightened just enough for me to feel it. Not love, not trust, but the unmistakable knowledge that this was only the beginning.

Chapter 3.

By the time Odyssey finished relocating my things to the East Tower, the entire keep knew three facts. One, Alpha Dreand had found his mate in Black Creed. Two, his mate was me. Three, I did not look remotely pleased about it. The third fact, unfortunately, seemed to be people's favorite. I heard the whispers all the way up the tower stairs. "She slapped him." "No, she cursed him." "I heard he knelt." "He did kneel." "Well, then she's either blessed or doomed." I was leaning toward doomed.

The East Tower room was bigger than anything I had slept in since childhood. That alone made me uncomfortable. It had a narrow bed with carved posts, a stone hearth, a wash stand, and two windows that looked out over the training yard and the forest beyond the keep walls. It smelled like old cedar and disuse. Someone, Odyssey, probably, had already sent up fresh blankets and a tray with bread, cheese, and tea. I stared at it all from the doorway like it belonged to someone else.

"It's not so bad," Fen said from behind me. I stepped inside and set my folded dress bundle on the bed. "It is if it means the rest of the keep thinks I've been claimed by a man I met this morning while he was half out of his mind." Fen shut the door softly behind him. "To be fair, that is exactly what happened." I turned and glared at him. He lifted both hands. "I'm on your side." "You're enjoying this." "A little," he admitted. "Only because I've never seen anyone look so offended to be desired." I sank onto the edge of the bed with a long, exhausted exhale. "Fen." "All right. I'm sorry." He crossed the room and leaned against the wall by the window, his expression sobering. "For what it's worth, I know this isn't funny to you. Not really." I looked down at my hands. They were still not steady. Every time I stopped moving for too long, my mind went back to the council room. To Dreand saying my mother's death out loud, to everyone else learning what I had spent six years hiding. To the fact that no matter how hard I tried, part of me had gone warm and electric when Dreand got close. Like some piece of me was waking up against my will. It infuriated me.

Fen watched me for a moment. "Do you want me to stay in here a while?" "No." "Do you want me outside the door?" "No." He raised a brow. "Do you want anything?" I thought about it. "A new life." "That one's out of stock." I gave him a look. He smiled faintly, then pushed off the wall. "Odyssey sent Laya to bring up hot water. She should be here soon. If you throw anything heavy at the alpha, try not to miss. I'd rather not listen to him pace all night." I blinked. "He's outside." Fen's mouth twitched. "Not yet, but I'd put money on it." The idea sent a hot rush of irritation through me and something else. I waited until Fen left, then crossed to the window and looked down at the training yard. Wolves moved below in scattered groups, some sparring, some carrying supplies, some very obviously pretending not to glance toward the tower. The late afternoon sun was low and coppery across the stone. And there he was. Dreand stood in the center of the yard talking to Gandel, his shoulders squared, dark hair loose around his face, that black fur mantle hanging from one broad shoulder, like something torn off a beast rather than stitched by human hands. Even from here, he was impossible not to notice. As if feeling my gaze, he looked up straight at my window. My breath caught. The distance between us should have made it impossible for me to read his expression, but I did anyway. He wasn't smiling, wasn't moving, just looking up at me with a kind of relentless attention that felt more intimate than if he'd climbed into the room uninvited. I jerked back from the window so fast I nearly tripped over the rug. Ridiculous. This was ridiculous.

A knock sounded at the door before I could decide whether I was angry, embarrassed, or both. "Come in," I called. Laya was one of the servants I was constantly paired with for duties. She slipped inside, balancing a bucket of steaming water and a smaller basin. She was younger than me by 2 years and had the kind of face people always assumed meant softness until they heard her opinion on anything. She set the water down with careful efficiency and looked around the room. "Well," she said, "this is better than the servant quarters." I stared at her. "That's your first response." She shrugged. "My second was going to be that you look like you've been struck by lightning, but I thought I'd start kind of-" A breath that might have been a laugh. Laya straightened and dusted off her hands. "Odyssey says to tell you supper will be sent up. Paloma says to tell you not to drink anything anyone gives you unless it came through her. And Gandel says if you try to escape the tower, Fen has permission to tackle you." I was not planning to escape. She tipped her head. "Good. I'd hate to see Fen prove how serious he is about that." I sat down again on the bed. "Does everyone know?" Laya considered. "Everyone worth counting. The stable boys, the cooks, the lower guards, the seamstresses, the women in the laundry, and probably the blacksmith's wife, even though she hasn't been inside the keep in three days." Wonderful. She came closer then, her expression softening just slightly. "Are you all right?" No one had asked me that directly all day. The answer nearly got stuck in my throat. "No," I said honestly. Laya nodded like I'd given a sensible answer. "Do you want comfort or strategy?" I blinked. "What?" "Comfort or strategy?" she repeated. "Paloma gives comfort badly. Odyssey gives strategy even when no one asked. I can attempt either depending on your need." I stared at her for half a second, then laughed despite myself. "Strategy." "Good. That one I'm better at." She folded her arms. "If Alpha Dreand is telling the truth, then this changes your position whether you accept the bond or not. People will treat you differently. Some because they fear him. Some because they think they can get close to him through you. Some because they're already imagining the children." I choked. "Laya." "I said strategy, not kindness." I pressed a hand to my forehead. "Please stop talking." She continued as if I hadn't spoken. "If he's dangerous, use that. If he's devoted, use that, too. Just don't assume either makes him harmless." My head lifted. "You think he might be?" She gave me a long look. "I think any man who can level a courtyard with one look and still go to his knees for one woman is either the best kind of danger or the worst, usually both." That lodged somewhere deep and uncomfortable inside me. A second knock came before I could answer. Laya rolled her eyes. "That'll be him." "It had better not be." She crossed to the door and pulled it open before I could stop her. It was him. Of course it was. Dreand filled the doorway like the stone had been built as an afterthought around his body. Fen stood a few steps behind him in the hall with his arms folded and an expression of resigned interest, clearly enjoying the fact that he wasn't technically preventing this. Laya looked up at Dreand, unimpressed. "If you make her cry, I'll ruin your shirts with lamp oil." Dreand inclined his head as if that were a perfectly reasonable threat. "Understood." Then she slipped past him into the hall and shut the door behind her, leaving me alone with the worst thing that had happened to my pulse in years.

I stood. He entered slowly, as if approaching something he did not want to frighten. That should have annoyed me more than it did. Instead, it made the room feel smaller, warmer, too aware of itself. "What do you want?" I asked. His gaze moved over me once, not lingering rudely, but not pretending indifference either. "To see you." The honesty of it landed harder than charm would have. "Well, you've succeeded." He did not smile. "You are upset." I folded my arms, a gifted observation. "You should be." That surprised me enough that I let silence fall. He took another step into the room, leaving the door open behind him. Perhaps because Gandel had warned him. Perhaps because he understood closed doors might make me feel trapped. "I changed everything today." "Yes," I would change the way it happened if I could. I looked at him sharply, but not the fact that it happened. "No." His voice deepened. "Not that." Heat ran through me before I could stop it. Annoying, humiliating heat. I turned away and crossed to the wash stand so he would not see it on my face. "You know," I said lightly. "There was a very brief moment in the courtyard where I thought perhaps you weren't insufferable." And now," "now I think perhaps the bond damaged my judgment." Behind me, I heard the faintest breath of amusement. "It didn't," he said. I braced both hands on the edge of the wash stand, then "tell me exactly what it did." For a moment, he didn't answer. When he did, his voice had lost some of its iron. "It tied my wolf to yours." A pause. "It means distance will feel wrong. It means if you are hurt, I'll know. It means if you are frightened enough, I may feel it before you speak. It means I will want to protect you even when you hate me for it." I swallowed. "And me?" I asked quietly. His answer came with unbearable certainty. "You will feel me, too." And just as quickly, my traitorous body proved him right. Because the second he said it, I realized that pressure under my ribs, that restless awareness that had followed me up the tower and through every breath since the courtyard, it wasn't only mine. Some piece of him sat in the back of my senses like a storm waiting on the horizon. I turned to face him again. "Can it be broken?" His expression changed, harder, guarded. "Yes," he said after a long moment. "But not without cost." "That should have reassured me. It didn't. Then maybe that's what I want." The words left my mouth before I had weighed them. He went very still. The room changed with him. No violence, no raised voice, just a sudden frightening stillness that made every hair on my body lift. "Do not say things you don't mean to wound me," he said. My breath caught. "There was nothing cold in the words. That was what made them dangerous. They were not a threat. They were truth. And some part of me, traitorous, weak, waking, felt the hit of that truth, too. I looked away first. "Why did you really come to Black Creed?" I asked. "Not 6 years ago now." He watched me for another long beat. Then he answered, "Because someone has been asking after the surviving Veyron girl." My head snapped back toward him. Every thought in my skull went white. "Who?" "I don't know yet." Ice spread through my veins. Dreand's gaze sharpened. "One of my informants heard the rumor in a border market. A girl hidden under another name. A beta line thought dead. Enough detail to alarm me. Not enough to identify who was looking." "When?" "Two weeks ago." Two weeks. Someone had been looking for me two weeks ago while I had been hauling buckets and binding herbs and pretending my life was small enough to be safe. I sat down hard on the edge of the bed because my knees had stopped feeling reliable. "Annaniel," for the first time, Dreand sounded unsure. He took one step toward me and stopped. "Look at me." "I did." "You are not alone in this anymore," he said. I should have hated the comfort in that. Instead, my chest tightened with a dangerous, aching relief. "I have been alone in it for 6 years," I whispered. His face changed again. Not softened. Something deeper, more raw. "I know." "No," I thought. "You don't." But maybe he knew enough. A sharp knock came from the hall before anything else could happen. Fen's voice followed. "Gandel says, 'Supper's here, and if the alpha is still in the room when I count to 10, I'm allowed to become disrespectful.'" To my complete horror, Dreand's mouth curved, a real smile this time. Small, but devastating. I stared at him. He looked younger when he did that, less like a warlord, more like a man. It made him more dangerous, not less. He glanced toward the door, then back at me. "I'll go." "Please do." But he did not move immediately. Instead, he looked at me with that same impossible attention from the courtyard and said very quietly, "Sleep if you can. I'll be near." Something in me thrilled at the words before I could beat it back. That made me furious. "Good night, Alpha." His eyes flashed at the title. He liked it. Of course, he liked it. "Good night, Annaniel." Then he was gone, and I was left staring at the open doorway, my pulse wild in the sudden quiet. Outside, I could hear Fen muttering something that sounded suspiciously like, "I hate that he's pretty," which frankly was the first thing anyone had said all day that felt entirely fair.

Chapter 4.

I dreamed of wolves and fire. Not the old fire, not Silvergate, though part of me thought it was at first. This dream opened in a forest I did not know. Silver-blue under moonlight. The trees enormous and black against a sky too bright with stars. I was running barefoot through wet grass with no memory of how I got there. My lungs did not burn. My body did not tire. I moved as if the night belonged to me. Something ran beside me. I could not see it clearly. At first, I only felt it. The shape of another presence close enough to touch. Huge and wild and perfectly matched to my pace. Every time I looked, moonlight broke against dark fur and gold eyes before the image blurred again. My wolf, not mine. Both. The feeling was impossible, and yet I knew it in the dream without question. We were hunting something together, or maybe hunting our way back to each other. The forest smelled of rain.

and pine and blood not yet spilled. My heart was pounding, but not from fear, from anticipation.

Then the trees opened into a clearing. A man stood in the center of it with his back to me, dark hair moving in the wind, shoulders broad enough to block the moon. He turned before I called his name. Dreand only not exactly. His face was the same and not the same. Younger maybe, unscarred. There was no fur over his shoulders and no iron in his posture. He looked at me with an expression so nakedly relieved it made something inside my chest ache.

"You're late," he said.

I stopped. The dream shifted. His throat opened under a blade I never saw coming. Blood sprayed black in the moonlight. I tried to scream, but sound would not leave me. The clearing split apart beneath my feet. Wolves howled from every direction at once. Dreand dropped to his knees with his hand clamped over his throat, looking at me as if I had done it.

I woke choking on my own breath. Dawn hadn't fully broken. The room was gray with first light. The hearth burned down to embers, and my night dress clung damp to my skin. For one blind second, I did not know where I was. Then the east tower came back to me in a rush. The room, the bond, gray sand, the impossible new shape of my life. I pressed a hand hard against my chest. Too fast. My heart was beating too fast.

A knock sounded almost immediately. I froze. Then Dan's voice came through the door, low and controlled and already tense.

"Annaniel."

My blood ran cold. He felt it. The dream. the fear. He felt it. I should not have been surprised after what he'd said. And yet, the reality of it made my stomach drop. This wasn't some vague poetic connection. This was immediate, physical, close.

I swung my legs off the bed and crossed the room, yanking the robe from the chair on my way. "What?"

The door opened before I reached it. I stared. Dreand stood there fully dressed except for his weapons which were absent, probably because Gandelle had made rules while I slept. His face was hard with alarm, gold eyes bright in the dim light. Fen hovered just behind him, looking half awake and entirely annoyed.

"She's alive," Fen said dryly. "I told you she was likely just having a nightmare."

Dand ignored him and looked only at me. "You were afraid." There was no accusation in it, just raw certainty. I wanted to deny it on principle. Instead, I said, "Congratulations on your supernatural observational powers."

His expression did not shift. "What happened?"

Behind him, Fen rolled his eyes. "It's dawn. Can the terrifying mating conversation wait until after tea?"

"No," Drean said.

"Yes," I said at the same time. He looked at me like I was saying something irrational, which to be fair, I was doing mostly to oppose him.

"It was a dream," I said. "That's all."

His jaw tightened. "You woke like someone was killing you."

That shut me up because that was exactly what it had felt like. Fen glanced between us and sighed. "Right. I'm going downstairs before the tower becomes unbearable. If anyone asks, I was never here for the moody part of this conversation." Then he walked off without waiting for a reply.

I stared after him. "He is a terrible guard."

"He trusts me not to hurt you."

I looked back at Dreand. "Should he?" Something flickered in his face. Not a fence. Something almost like weariness.

"No," he said quietly. "Not yet."

That answer did something dangerous to me, something soft and startled. Most men with his power would have bristled, would have demanded trust, as if rank entitled them to it. Dreand just stood there, too large for the narrow tower doorway, and admitted I had reason to doubt him.

I stepped back from the door. "Come in, then."

His gaze sharpened. "You're inviting me."

"I resisted the urge to throw something. Do not make this strange."

"It is already strange." He entered anyway. Morning light climbed slowly over the stone floor as he shut the door behind him. He stayed close to it as if deliberately giving me space and waited while I crossed to the wash stand to pour water into the basin. My hands were steadier than they'd been last night, barely.

"It was a dream," I said finally, keeping my back to him. "You were in it. Silence, then alive." I closed my eyes. At first, when I turned, his face had gone still in a way that made him look dangerous again, but not with anger. More like the kind of focus a hunter wears before stepping into a trap.

"Tell me."

I did not want to. Not because the dream embarrassed me, though it did. Not because it made the bond feel more real, though it certainly had. I did not want to because speaking it aloud would make it too intimate too quickly and Dreand was already inside too many of my defenses. But some stubborn part of me also wanted to know if it meant anything. If Bond dreams existed, if he had them too. If this was another way the moon or fate or whatever cruel force had decided to ruin my peace.

So I told him, "The forest, the run beside him, the clearing, the blade."

When I finished, the room had gone so quiet I could hear the wind against the tower stones. Drean's face had not changed much, but his eyes had darker now, more distant.

"What?" I asked.

He took a slow breath. "When a mating bond forms before the pair truly knows each other, the dreams can come first."

I stared at him. "That sounds made up."

"It isn't."

"And how would you know?"

"Because I dreamed you before I found you."

The air in the room shifted. I hated the way my pulse reacted to that. "What kind of dreams?"

His gaze held mine. "Enough to know your face. Not enough to know your name."

My throat tightened. That was impossible, too. Yet part of me believed him instantly. Maybe because the bond already felt impossible enough that nothing else had room to shock me properly. I looked away first. "You said someone was searching for me."

"Yes."

"Do you think the dream means they're close?"

"No." He spoke immediately, certain. "I think it means the bond is settling."

That should have made me feel better. Instead, it made the room feel very small. I moved to the window to breathe. Below, the keep was waking. Servants crossed the yard with baskets. Guards changed posts. Somewhere in the lower court, someone was arguing loudly over barrels, normal morning sounds, black creed sounds. They grounded me more than the room did.

"I can't do this," I said quietly.

Behind me, Dreand did not move. "Do what?"

I let out a breath. "Become someone else overnight. Become your mate. Become a woman everyone suddenly watches. I have spent years making myself smaller so I could stay alive. And now," I gestured vaguely at the window, the keep, the whole impossible mess. "Now I feel like I've been dragged into a story I never agreed to."

When he answered, his voice was lower than before. "You don't have to become anyone overnight."

I turned. He was still by the door, but some of the hard edge had gone out of him. He looked less like an alpha making a claim and more like a man trying not to push too hard on a bruise.

"The bond happened," he said. "That part is real, but I am not asking you to love me by noon."

I blinked. It was such a plain thing to say, so unexpectedly gentle that it made me suspicious. He watched the suspicion happen across my face and to my complete shock, a faint smile touched his mouth.

"There it is," he murmured. "What?"

"The moment you think kindness is a trick."

Heat flashed through me. "It usually is."

"Not from me." I wanted to dismiss that immediately. Instead, I asked why. His expression went serious again.

"Because my wolf would sooner bite off my own hand than use tenderness to manipulate you."

The image was so absurdly vivid that a startled laugh escaped me before I could stop it. He looked at me with something close to triumph. I narrowed my eyes. "Do not look pleased with yourself."

"You laughed."

"That was not for you. It was in front of me. I'm counting it."

I should have told him to leave. Instead, I found myself studying him in the growing morning light, the hard line of his mouth, the scar through one brow, the dark hair loose over his shoulders, the sheer impossible physical fact of him. There was power in the room with him that had nothing to do with muscle and everything to do with certainty. Yet right now it was leashed, restrained, almost careful, almost. I hated how much that mattered.

A knock came at the door before either of us could say anything else. Paloma pushed inside with a tray before permission could be offered, took one look at the room, and stopped.

"Am I interrupting anything reckless?"

"Yes," I said.

"No," Drean said.

She sighed. "Excellent. That means probably." She carried the tray to the table and set down tea, bread, and a steaming bowl that smelled medicinal. Then she fixed me with the stern expression she usually reserved for boys who reopened stitches through stupidity.

"Drink that."

"What is it?"

"A tonic."

"Will it help?"

"Not with your personality."

Draand made a sound suspiciously close to a laugh. I looked between them in betrayal. "You're both unbearable."

Paloma ignored me and turned to Dreand. "Gandal wants you in the war room."

His expression shifted immediately. "Why, scouts?" The word sharpened everything. I felt it in the bond before I understood why. Drean's alertness, cold and instant, like steel sliding free of its sheath.

"From where?" he asked.

Paloma looked at me then and whatever was in her face made my stomach drop. "Silvergate," she said.

The room went silent. For one endless second, nobody moved. Then Drean turned to me and I felt the full force of his attention lock on like a vow.

"Stay here," he said.

I stared at him. Then I straightened slowly and set the untouched tonic aside. "No," I said. "I'm coming with you."

Part two of this story will be available tomorrow, Saturday, March 28th, at 8:00 p.m. Pacific time.