13. Chapter 13
The cabin felt wrong. Too isolated. Too much like running even while staying still.
Nadia stood in the doorway at dawn, her few possessions already packed. She’d made the decision sometime after midnight, lying awake with the bond humming beneath her skin and Rhys’s scent still clinging to her clothes.
The walk to the main compound took twenty minutes. Long enough for her wolf to settle into certainty. Short enough that she couldn’t talk herself out of it.
Maren met her at the lodge entrance, as if she’d been waiting.
“I need a room.” Her voice came out steadier than she expected. “Closer to the compound. Not isolated.”
Maren’s expression softened. She didn’t ask questions. Didn’t demand explanations. Just nodded and gestured for Nadia to follow.
The room was on the second floor of the main lodge, small but warm. A window overlooked the training yard. The door had a lock that worked from the inside only, a detail Nadia noticed immediately.
“We keep these rooms for wolves who need proximity without intrusion.” Maren set fresh linens on the bed. “You’re not the first survivor to stay here. Won’t be the last.”
“Breakfast is at seven. Training at nine. Drop by if it suits.” Maren paused at the door, then let it close behind her.
Nadia unpacked slowly, arranging her few belongings in the small space. It felt strange to claim territory that wasn’t temporary. To put clothes in drawers rather than keeping them in a bag by the door.
The common room buzzed with morning energy when Nadia descended at seven. Wolves gathered in loose clusters, eating and talking and moving with the easy confidence of pack members who felt safe in their own territory.
Conversation didn’t stop when she entered. A few wolves nodded acknowledgment, but no one stared. No one demanded she explain her presence or submit to inspection.
Sage waved from a corner table. Nadia’s wolf pushed her forward before fear could freeze her in place.
“You moved.” Sage pushed a plate of food across the table. “Good. That cabin was too far out.”
Nadia sat carefully, her back to the wall. “Better here. I think.”
“I know the feeling.” Sage’s expression was understanding. “Took me three months to move into the main compound. I came in expecting to leave. Kept thinking if I stayed close to the edge, I could finish what I had come for and walk back out.”
“Did it?” Nadia picked at the eggs. “Fall apart?”
“Not yet.” Sage’s smile was wry. “Turns out some packs actually let the truth stand even when it costs them.”
Rhys entered through the far door, his limp pronounced in the morning frost. His gaze found Nadia immediately. Something flared between them.
He didn’t approach. Just held her eyes a beat longer than felt safe, something warm and possessive flickering across his features before he controlled it. Then he moved to the food line.
“He’s been like that since you arrived,” Sage murmured. “He waits.”
“I kissed him.” The admission slipped out before Nadia could stop it. “Last night. I initiated it.”
Sage’s eyebrows rose. “And?”
“And it was—” Nadia’s words wouldn’t come. “Real. Terrifying. I don’t know how to do this. How to want something without being afraid it’ll destroy me.”
“You do it badly at first.” Sage’s tone was matter-of-fact. “You panic and second-guess and convince yourself it’s all a trap. Then gradually, you start believing that maybe it’s not.”
She stood, collecting her empty plate. “Training starts in an hour if you want to join. Fair warning, I don’t go easy on beginners.”
Nadia watched her leave, then turned her attention back to her food. Across the room, Rhys leaned over a marked-up sketch with Declan and two other warriors, low voices and hard-set mouths. His scarred face stayed serious. Whatever they were sorting, it was theirs.
But every few minutes, his gaze drifted to her. Checking. Making sure she was still there.
Warmth moved between them, and something in Nadia loosened.
The training yard was packed with wolves when Nadia arrived at nine. Warriors ran drills in organized chaos, their movements precise despite the apparent disorder.
Sage stood near the weapons rack, arms crossed. She nodded when Nadia approached.
“Ever trained to fight?” Her tone was neutral.
“No.” Nadia’s fingers curled into her palms. “I was taught to submit. To make myself small and unthreatening. Fighting back just made it worse.”
“Fighting back without training makes it worse.” Sage selected two practice knives from the rack. “Fighting back with skill changes the equation.”
She handed one knife to Nadia, keeping the other. “First lesson, omegas aren’t weak. Thornwood and packs like it just need you to believe you are. It makes you easier to control.”
Nadia turned the practice knife in her hand. The weight felt foreign. “Every pack I’ve known treated omegas like property. Fragile things to be protected or possessed.”
“Because they’re afraid of what happens when we stop playing fragile.” Sage moved into a fighting stance. “I have watched omegas with abilities most packs don’t talk about. Emotional influence. Pack bond manipulation. The capacity to calm or incite depending on need.”
She demonstrated a defensive position, her movements fluid. “Your designation isn’t weakness. It’s power they’ve convinced you not to use.” Sage dropped the stance. “Thornwood trains omegas to flinch when an alpha raises his voice. Conditioning, not biology.”
Nadia’s fingers closed hard around the practice knife. The truth landed somewhere old, somewhere long denied permission to surface.
Sage held the line. “An alpha command can’t override a sworn-free wolf who’s chosen against it. The conditioning can crack open if you’re hurt or drugged or alone. Your body remembers obeying before your mind catches up. The way out is practice. Refusing until the reflex breaks.”
Nadia’s wolf stirred, something fierce and long-buried rising to the surface. “Show me.”
They trained for two hours. Sage pushed hard but never beyond what Nadia could handle, teaching defensive positions and knife work and how to use her smaller size as advantage rather than liability.
Nadia’s muscles burned. Sweat soaked through her shirt. But she felt something other than fear.
She felt dangerous.
Rhys appeared at the yard’s edge halfway through, his expression locked down. But Nadia caught the flash of pride in his eyes when she successfully disarmed Sage on the third attempt.
Warm approval moved through her, and Nadia’s wolf preened.
“Enough for today.” Sage sheathed her practice knife. “You’ll be sore tomorrow. We’ll work through it.”
Nadia nodded, too breathless to speak. Her arms burned from exertion, fingers cramping.
Rhys closed the distance with care, watching her face for any sign to stop. “You’re a fast learner.”
This close, his scent cut through the training yard smells of sweat and dirt and frost-thinned air.
Pine and leather and something underneath that made her pulse kick sideways.
Her body was still running hot from the drills, nerve endings lit up and hypersensitive, and his proximity turned all of that adrenaline into something else entirely.
She made herself breathe past the burn. “I’m motivated.” She wiped sweat from her face with a hand that wasn’t quite steady. “Tired of running. Tired of being afraid.”
“Fear isn’t weakness.” His gaze was level. “It’s kept you alive this long.”
“Maybe.” Her eyes held his. “But I don’t want to just survive anymore. I want something worth keeping.”
Something hot and certain cracked open between them. Rhys’s expression shifted, raw need breaking through his control before he reined it back.
“Walk with me?” The question came out uneven.
Nadia nodded.
They walked the compound’s perimeter in comfortable silence. Rhys kept his pace slow, compensating for his leg without drawing attention to it.
His arm shot out, blocking her path.
“Stay back.”
Ten yards ahead, carved into the bark of a boundary pine, was a fresh mark.
Three claw slashes angled downward. Thornwood’s sigil. The cuts were clean. Deliberate. Recent.
Rhys crouched, fingers brushing the disturbed earth at the base of the tree. Not deep. Just far enough to leave a message.
“That they can.” His attention swept the tree line, calculating angles, distance, wind.
Rhys angled in front of her without thinking. Instinct. Shielding.
Nadia caught his arm before he could step fully between her and the trees.
“Don’t.” His gaze snapped to hers. “If they’re watching,” she continued, her blood roaring, “let them see me.” The words shook, but she didn’t.
“I just chose to stay.” Her fingers dug into her own arms, but she didn’t step back. “Don’t make that choice smaller because they’re watching.”
“The cabin felt wrong. Like I was still running even while staying still.” Nadia made herself stop counting exits along the tree line. She let the silence sit between them for one beat, then another. “If I’m choosing this, choosing you, I need to actually be here.”
Rhys stopped walking. His scarred hand flexed at his side. “Choosing the pack isn’t the same as choosing me. Blackridge will protect you either way.”
“I know.” Nadia turned to face him. “That’s why I’m choosing you. Because you keep giving me the option not to.”
His breath caught. The mate-recognition flared so hard between them that Nadia felt it in her bones. “I don’t know how to do this.” Her voice cracked.
“Then we learn together.” Rhys held her gaze, steady. “I’ve never loved someone without feeling like I’m failing them.”
Nadia reached for his hand, the first time she’d initiated touch since their kiss. His skin was warm, his fingers scarred from old battles. “You’re not broken. You’re surviving.”
“I’m in the main lodge. Second floor.” Nadia’s pulse quickened. “Close enough?” “Close enough.” His tone was thick with emotion.
That night, Nadia lay in her new room and listened to the compound settle into sleep. Wolves moved through the halls below. Someone laughed in a distant room. The building creaked and breathed with life.
She lay with one hand on her chest, feeling it hold warm and steady. Rhys was two floors down. Close enough.
Thornwood’s ultimatum sat on the table downstairs like a stone someone had laid in the middle of the lodge. She counted the seams of the ceiling boards above her until the count steadied her breath. She was done running.