Chapter 7
Valen
The treeline is one step away. It always is.
Open ground, then forest, then gone. I’ve used that step more times than I can count. Nobody’s ever stopped me from taking it, nobody’s going to stop me now but I don’t take it.
Behind me the yard is cool where the sun hasn’t reached it yet, and colder still in every wolf watching me from the porch, water trough, cabin steps.
The same eyes tracked me all last night, after Dane’s ruling, after the pack scattered back to its business with nothing settled underneath it.
They gave me a cabin at the edge of the compound, past the last row, close enough to the trees that I could’ve been back in them in ten steps if I’d wanted to be.
I didn’t take that exit either. Yesterday I was a stranger they hadn’t decided about.
Then a woman went down in the dirt six feet from where I was standing.
Not knowing me was tolerable. Being blamed for hurting someone isn’t.
Packed dirt under my boots. Smoke starting up from the lodge chimney.
Somewhere behind me a horse blows out through its nose, unbothered, the only creature in this yard that hasn’t picked a side.
Three wolves cross the yard toward me. Mateo leads.
Young, fast on his feet, moving quicker than the two behind him.
He stops closer to me than he needs to and holds it there.
Wyatt’s a step behind him, older, wide through the shoulders, the sort who doesn’t waste a word when a look will do the job instead.
A third wolf hangs back near the porch rail, watching, not committing either way.
“You should go.” Mateo says it like he’s rehearsed it in a mirror. “While it’s still your idea and not somebody else’s.”
“Kari’s hurt.” Wyatt’s voice doesn’t move, doesn’t rise, doesn’t do anything but land where he puts it. “That’s on you as far as we’re concerned. Doesn’t matter what Dane ruled.”
I could give them exactly what they’ve come for.
I could agree, turn, walk into the trees, never come back, and let every wolf in this yard spend the rest of their lives being right about me.
It would take nothing from me I haven’t already lost a dozen times over in a dozen other packs.
Leaving is the only skill that’s never failed me.
“I watched her go down from six feet away.” My voice comes out low, controlled. “I didn’t touch her.”
“Convenient.” Mateo again, sharper.
“No.” I hold his eyes. “True. Those aren’t always the same thing. This time they are.”
“You expect us to just take your word for that?” Wyatt this time, squaring up as he says it.
“I don’t expect anything from either of you. I’m telling you what happened. What you do with it is yours to decide.”
Neither of them has an answer ready. It doesn’t warm the yard any, in fact the watch gets colder, more wolves finding reasons to drift close enough to see what happens next.
Mateo rocks up onto the balls of his feet, ready to close the distance if I so much as move wrong.
Somewhere behind him, a woman I don’t know murmurs something to the wolf beside her, neither of them looks away from me while she says it.
Rafe stands at the edge of all of it, arms crossed, everything he’s feeling locked down where I don’t need to read it to understand. His mate is hurt. He doesn’t have to say a word for me to know exactly where I stand with him. He says one thing anyway, low. “Watch yourself.”
The vowels stretch on the last word, the same cadence I grew up hearing, from a stretch of the North Range I left before Rafe was born.
Nothing more passes between us. He doesn’t move on me, doesn’t have to.
A man like that can end a threat with nothing but how he stands still. He knows it as well as I do.
Dane crosses the yard, Nova half a step behind him, and every wolf still watching me turns toward the two of them instead.
“He stays.” Dane says to the yard, not just to me. “Watched. On my terms. First wrong step and he’s gone.” He looks at me directly, waits until I look back at him. “You understand what I’m saying.”
“I do.”
“Then use it well.” Nova’s voice carries without needing to rise, the kind of calm that holds a room together on its own. “Nobody touches him unless I say otherwise. That includes you two.”
Mateo doesn’t argue it out loud. Wyatt looks at me a moment longer, holding something back for later. Then the two of them peel off toward the others. The third wolf by the porch rail never moves the whole time, giving nothing away about which side he’s on.
Every pattern I’ve ever learned says the same thing every time.
Take the reprieve, keep my head down, be gone the second it turns bad again - because it always turns bad again.
I’ve earned a place in a room before, more than once, in more packs than I can count on both hands.
I’ve lost every one of them anyway to a fear nobody ever says out loud to my face.
When a body doesn’t age as it should eventually somebody notices.
The room that took years to earn closes overnight.
I’m on the road again before the season turns, telling myself it’s easier this way, that I never wanted to stay anyway.
This one isn’t mine yet either - half this yard would still rather I weren’t standing in it.
But I’m still not walking into the trees.
The reason for that is across the yard, talking with Lyanna.
She’s the only reason I’m standing anywhere near a place that doesn’t want me.
Yesterday her arm was against mine the whole time she stood between me and a yard ready to come apart.
I can still find the exact spot, the warmth of it hasn’t left my skin, not through the night, or the walk out here this morning.
Her scent hung in the air around me for an hour after she’d stepped back and hasn’t fully let go since, something warm underneath it I can’t put a name to.
I’ve caught myself twice this morning turning toward it before I know I’m doing it.
Nobody has ever put themselves out there for me.
Not in all the years I’ve been alive. She did it in front of everyone, with nothing in it for her that I’ve been able to find.
I’ve turned that fact over more times than I can count since it happened.
She crosses the yard now, unhurried. My hand goes still at my side.
Everything in me turns and tracks her the whole way.
It happens every time she’s close enough to notice.
It stops the second she isn’t. The hunger comes up fast, faster than I like, my jeans go tight with it before she’s finished crossing the yard.
Same as it did yesterday when her arm first touched mine.
I hold it down, don’t move toward her. Every year I’ve spent refusing to want anything is the only discipline I have left.
I spend every bit of it standing still while she closes the last of the distance between us.
“You’re still here.” It’s not a question.
“Dane’s terms.” I keep my voice quiet. “Watched. Useful or gone.”
“That’s not why you’re still here.”
Her eyes stay on mine, for a second - I swear she can see straight through to whatever’s underneath. If she finds anything, and whatever it is, she doesn’t say.
“Why did you vouch for me?” I ask her the question I’ve been holding since yesterday. “You told Dane I didn’t touch her like it was fact, not opinion. A person doesn’t get that certain by guessing.”
“I watched the whole thing happen. That’s certain enough.”
“Is it?”
“You want a different answer than the one I gave you.”
“I want the true one.”
“I gave you the true one.”
She doesn’t answer the actual question. We both know it.
She looks at me a beat longer than the question needs.
Whatever moves behind her eyes is gone before I can hold onto it.
Everyone else in this yard I can take apart in a glance.
It’s not a gift, it’s a habit, years of watching people closely enough to survive it.
Her I can’t. It has never stopped me from trying anyway.
“You should eat something,” she says instead.
She leaves it there and walks toward the lodge without telling me why she did it. I let her go without pushing further. I still want her, still don’t have an answer for why she stood between me and the rest of this yard. Neither one goes away.
A wolf near the porch mutters something to the one beside him, low, meant to carry.
I catch enough of it to know what it’s about.
Her, standing that close to me. The watch on me tightens another notch.
I let it. I turn from the treeline. It’s one step behind me now instead of one step ahead.
For the first time in longer than I can remember I’m not going to use it.
I walk toward the horse pasture, toward the work Dane’s given me, in front of every wolf still watching to see whether I’ll break. I don’t break.
Every rule I’ve ever lived by says this is exactly backward.
Wanting nothing is how a man survives somewhere he isn’t wanted.
Wanting her, to be trusted, to be the one who stays instead of the one who’s asked to leave.
It should be sending me straight into those trees right now.
It’s doing the opposite. I don’t have an explanation ready for that, not one that holds up against everything I’ve learned to expect by now.
I’m on Dane’s terms now, suspected, watched, carrying two things I can’t set down.
I can’t read her, and standing closer hasn’t changed it.
The fact of her, six feet away yesterday and closer than that today, still somewhere in my body like she never actually left.
The exit is right there behind me. It’s always right there. I don’t take it.