Chapter 7 Harkan #2
"No." My jaw tightened. "This isn't just a message anymore. He's escalating."
"Why? What changed?"
Her, the wolf answered, though only I could hear. She changed everything.
I met her gaze. "He knows about you now. About what you are to me."
Around us, the pack was dispersing, carrying Declan to the healer's quarters, tending to Yara, murmuring in frightened clusters about what had attacked the border patrol. Cara appeared at my elbow, her face grim.
"We need to talk," she said quietly. "In private."
I nodded, but I didn't release Sable's arm. Couldn't make myself let go.
"Both of you," Cara added, her gaze flicking between us. "She needs to hear this, too."
"Give us a moment," I said. "We'll be there shortly."
Cara's eyebrow rose, but she didn't argue. She and Thea slipped away, their footsteps fading down the corridor.
Sable was still swaying slightly, her face too pale, blood drying beneath her nose. I guided her to a bench against the wall, and for once, she didn't fight me.
"Sit," I said. "Before you fall down."
"I'm fine."
"You're bleeding from your face, and you can barely stand. That's not fine."
She sat. Progress.
I found a cloth and a pitcher of water from a nearby table, brought them back, and crouched in front of her. She watched me warily as I wet the cloth and raised it toward her face.
"I can do it myself," she said.
"I know." I didn't move. "Let me, anyway?"
Something flared in her expression—surprise, maybe, or confusion. But after a moment, she gave a tiny nod.
I cleaned the blood from her face with careful strokes, gentle as I could manage with hands that wanted to shake. The wolf prowled inside me, desperate to touch her, to hold her, to make sure she was real and whole and here.
Gentle, I reminded him. Gentle, or we'll scare her away.
When I finished, her eyes were closed. For a moment, she looked almost peaceful.
Then she opened them, and the walls were back in place.
"The meeting," she said. "We shouldn't keep them waiting."
I wanted to argue. Wanted to make her rest, make her eat, make her understand that she didn't have to keep pushing herself to the breaking point.
But I knew her well enough by now to know that wouldn't work.
"Can you walk?"
"Yes."
I offered her my hand. She took it, and I pulled her to her feet.
We walked to my quarters together, her pace slowed by her exhaustion. I didn't let go until we reached the door.
Cara and Thea were already waiting inside. Trouble had followed at their heels, silent as a shadow, and leapt into Sable's lap the moment she settled into a chair. His foxfire was dim but steady, and she stroked his fur with fingers that had finally stopped trembling.
"It's a message," Cara said without preamble. "The attack. The Devourer. Your father wants you to know he's watching."
"I figured that out myself, thanks."
She ignored my tone. "It's not just watching. He's testing your defenses. Probing for weaknesses." Her gray eyes met mine, winter-cold and steady. "And he found one."
"The eastern border," Thea supplied. "Declan's patrol was covering the stretch near the old mill. It's the weakest point in our perimeter—too much open ground, not enough cover."
"He knows our territory," I said grimly. "He knows it because he used to own it."
Father. The wolf's growl was a rumble of hatred so deep it shook my bones. He wants to take back what's ours. What we fought for. What we bled for.
"There's more." Cara's expression shifted into something I couldn't quite read. "One of the scouts found this near the attack site."
She held out her hand. In her palm lay a small metal disc, etched with symbols that made my eyes water to look at.
The same symbols as the token Trouble had stolen from Sable's shop. The same calling card my father's emissaries carried.
"He wanted us to find it," Sable said quietly. "He wanted you to know exactly who was responsible."
"Yes." I stared at the disc, at the writhing lines that seemed to move in the torchlight. "He's not just testing our defenses. He's making a statement. Reminding me that his reach extends anywhere he wants it to."
"What does he want?" Thea asked.
Me, the wolf answered, though only I could hear him. He wants us broken. Kneeling. He wants to prove we're still his.
"Submission," I said aloud. "He wants me to acknowledge his authority. To bring the pack back under his control." My jaw tightened. "And now that he knows about Sable, he wants her, too."
Sable's hand stilled on Trouble's fur. "Because of my gift."
"Because you're a threat. A truth-taster can see through every lie he's built his power on. And because—" I stopped, the words catching in my throat.
Say it. Tell her. She's ours and he knows it.
"Because she's yours," Cara finished quietly. "Taking her would be the ultimate humiliation."
Silence fell over the room like a shroud.
Sable's expression had gone carefully blank, but I could feel the turmoil beneath it—the fear, the anger, the desperate need to run warring with something else. Something that felt almost like resolve.
"So, what do we do?" she asked finally.
I looked at her—really looked at her. Blood still stained her hands. Exhaustion shadowed her eyes. But beneath all of that, beneath the fear and the wariness and the walls she'd built around herself, there was steel.
She wasn't asking if we could win. She was asking how.
Mate, the wolf rumbled, and the word was a vow.
"We prepare," I said. "We strengthen our defenses, gather our allies, and make it clear that anyone who comes for what's mine will pay in blood."
"The Mating Moon," Cara added. "It's five days away. Every Alpha in the region will be there, including your father. If we're going to make a stand—"
"Then that's where we do it." I held Sable's gaze, willing her to understand. "Together."
Something flickered in her eyes—not trust, not yet, but something adjacent to it. The beginning of belief, maybe. Or just the stubborn refusal to go down without a fight.
"I told you I wasn't doing this to make friends," she said quietly.
My jaw tightened, and I prayed to every god and goddess that she wasn’t setting up to bolt again. "I remember."
"I'm still not." She lifted her chin, a challenge and a confession all at once. "But I'm also not running. Not anymore."
The wolf howled in triumph, and I let myself smile. "Good."
Cara and Thea exchanged glances but said nothing. After a moment, they slipped out, leaving me alone with Sable and the fragile thread of understanding that stretched between us.
She looked down at Trouble, still stroking his fur, avoiding my eyes. "A Devourer." She said the word like she was testing its weight. "Your father likes to keep monsters on a leash."
Wasn’t that the fucking truth. "He keeps many things on leashes."
Her eyes met mine, understanding sparking there before she spoke. "Including you. The century in chains. It was him, wasn't it?"
The question hit like a blow to the chest.
Tell her. She shared her truth. Give her ours.
"Yes," I said, the word dragged out of me like a confession. "He's the one."
She nodded slowly, as if she'd already known. "Then we have something in common."
"What's that?"
Finally, Sable looked up. Her hazel eyes were fierce and tired and impossibly beautiful, and I wanted nothing more than to close the distance between us and never let her go.
"We both have monsters we need to slay," she said. "Might as well do it together."
The bond hummed between us, warm and steady.
She was close—or rather, I was, drifting toward her during this tableau as if drawn by a magnet. Close enough that I could see the flecks of gold in her hazel eyes, the faint shadows beneath them, the way her pulse fluttered at the base of her throat. Close enough to touch, if I just—
Not yet, I told the wolf, though it cost me. She's not ready. We're not ready.
But gods, I wanted to be.
"You should sleep," I said instead, my voice rougher than I intended. "You pushed too hard tonight. Your body needs to recover."
She huffed out a bitter laugh. "So should you."
"I will. After I check the perimeter and double the patrols and—"
"Harkan." She said my name like it meant something, and the wolf went absolutely still. "You can't protect everyone if you collapse from exhaustion. Even Alphas need rest."
She was worried. About me. The realization hit somewhere deep in my chest and lodged there, warm and aching.
"A few hours," I conceded. "After I make sure the borders are secure."
She studied me for a long moment, like she was trying to decide whether I was lying. Whatever she saw must have satisfied her, because she nodded.
"A few hours," she repeated. "And then we figure out how to kill your father's monster."
Not your monster. Your father's monster. The distinction wasn't lost on me.
I moved toward the door. At the threshold, I paused. Looked back.
She was watching me, Trouble curled in her lap, exhaustion written in every line of her body. But her eyes were steady. Present.
"Rest," I said. "I'll be back before dawn."
"Be careful."
Two words. Simple. But no one had said them to me in a very long time. Not since…
"Thank you," I said quietly. "For earlier. For Declan. You didn't have to do that."
"Yes," she said. "I did."
Something passed between us—not a smile, not yet, but the shadow of one. The promise of one, maybe, if I was patient enough to wait for it.
I slipped out and closed the door behind me, standing in the corridor with the taste of her name on my tongue and the ache of wanting in my chest.
Mate, the wolf whispered.
Not yet, I told him again. But soon.
I turned toward the stairs, toward the borders that needed checking and the patrols that needed doubling. But the bond hummed between us, solid and sure, and for the first time since I'd marked her, it didn't feel like a chain.
It felt like a promise.