Chapter 2 No Answer
Nora POV
The truck started on the second try. The engine turned over unevenly, coughed once, then caught and held. I sat in my dark green dress with my hands gripping the steering wheel and my forehead pressed against the cold vinyl.
I didn’t drive to the highway. I drove to the garage.
The Iron River repair shop sat behind the pack house, a squat cinder-block building with two service bays, a parts closet that smelled like motor oil and rust, and fluorescent lights that buzzed when you flipped them on.
I’d spent more of my life inside those walls than anywhere else.
My first word might have been mama, but the first thing I ever loved was the sound of a ratchet clicking.
I killed the engine and went inside through the side door, the one with the sticky latch I’d been meaning to fix for three years.
The fluorescents sputtered to life. My workbench stood exactly as I’d left it that afternoon, covered in parts from a water pump rebuild I hadn’t finished.
A half-drunk mug of coffee sat on the corner, cold and forgotten.
The dress came off first. I stripped it over my head and threw it on the floor next to the drain pan.
It landed in a puddle of something dark and I didn’t care.
I pulled on the jeans and flannel shirt I kept hanging behind the door for early mornings, shoved my feet back into my boots, and tied my hair up in its usual knot.
The pins Delia had used earlier scattered across the concrete floor like tiny silver accusations.
Delia had helped me with my hair.
She’d stood behind me in the bathroom two hours ago, her fingers gentle and quick, twisting sections into something pretty while I fidgeted and complained. She’d told me I looked beautiful. She’d smiled at me in the mirror, and I’d believed that smile was real.
My hands found work before my brain could spiral further.
I grabbed my rolling toolbox and started pulling what I needed.
I laid my socket set and torque wrench on the bench, then added the good ratchets instead of the cheap ones I used for quick jobs, along with my multimeter, timing light, and compression tester. I sorted my equipment from the pack’s.
The bond pulsed. A distant, sour sensation that wasn’t mine wormed through my chest. Rafe’s anger and confusion bled through the thread connecting us. Good. Let him choke on it.
I yanked open the bottom drawer of my toolbox and pulled out the socket extensions. My fingers were already picking up grease from the handles, black crescents forming under my nails, and the familiar grime felt more honest than anything that had happened in the last hour.
The side door opened.
“Nora.”
Delia’s voice came out small and careful, the way you’d talk to a dog you weren’t sure would bite. She stood in the doorway in her pale blue ceremony dress, her cheeks still wet, her mascara ruined.
I didn’t stop sorting tools. “Go back to your mate, Delia.”
“He’s not my mate. Not yet. That’s what I came to—”
“He chose you.” I shoved a breaker bar into the toolbox hard enough to rattle everything inside. “You stood up there with him. You held his hand. What exactly are you here to explain?”
She stepped inside and let the door swing shut behind her. Her heels clicked on the concrete, a ridiculous sound in a garage. “It happened during the treaty visits. I didn’t plan it, Nora. Neither of us did.”
“Don’t hide behind that.” I looked at her. “You went on trips to meet my promised mate, the man I was forbidden from seeing, and you just happened to fall for him? Over how many visits? How many years?”
Delia’s chin trembled. “Almost two years.”
Almost two years of phone calls and visits and whatever else they’d shared while I stayed home under pack trucks, trusting the custom, trusting the treaty, trusting my own sister.
“And at what point,” I said, “did it occur to you to tell me?”
“I wanted to. I tried, so many times. But Dad said it would be handled at the ceremony, that Conrad and Rafe had agreed—”
“Dad said.” I slammed the toolbox lid closed. “Dad knew. You knew. Rafe knew. Conrad knew. Everyone making decisions in that clearing tonight had more information about my future than I did. And none of you thought I deserved a warning?”
Delia flinched. “The Goddess can’t override what already exists, Nora. What Rafe and I have is real. I thought you would accept. I thought once the rejection was done, you’d understand that—”
“That what? That the bond doesn’t matter? That twenty-four years of waiting and duty and putting my life on hold don’t count for shit because you batted your eyelashes at the right guy?”
“That’s not fair.”
“Fair?” My laugh came out harsh. “You want to talk to me about fair? You got to go on the visits I was banned from. You got to know him. You got to charm him with that pretty face and that pretty dress while I sat here covered in engine grease doing the job nobody thanked me for. And now you’re standing in my garage telling me it wasn’t fair that I’m angry? ”
Delia’s tears came harder. She pressed her hands together in front of her chest like she was praying. “I love him, Nora. I know that’s the worst thing I could say to you right now, but it’s true. I didn’t steal him. He chose.”
She meant it. That was almost worse. She had believed the words would settle everything and leave Rafe free to belong to her.
“And you both made sure I paid for his choice.”
The words hung between us. Delia stared at me, and for a moment the guilt in her face hardened into the beginning of resentment.
The side door opened again.
Gordon Keane filled the frame, his formal jacket unbuttoned, his graying auburn hair mussed from the walk. He looked at me, then at Delia, then at the pile of tools on my bench, and his jaw set in the stern expression he used whenever I disappointed him.
“Nora,” he said. “You need to come back.”
“No.”
“This isn’t a request. The packs are waiting. Conrad is waiting. You will return to the ceremony ground and accept Rafe’s rejection so we can—”
“So you can celebrate?” I pulled open the parts closet and grabbed my bag of spare fuses and electrical tape. “Break out the champagne for the happy couple? Light some sparklers?”
“So we can preserve the peace.” His voice dropped into his Alpha register, the one that made lesser wolves tuck their tails and bare their throats.
It had worked on me once. When I was twelve.
“The treaty requires a mating between our families and Copper Point. Conrad has agreed that Delia satisfies the terms. All you have to do is speak four words and walk away clean.”
“Walk away clean.” I turned to face him fully. “How long did you know?”
“Long enough to make arrangements. Conrad and I agreed that a match with either of my daughters would renew the peace.”
“So you let me put on a dress and stand in front of both packs without telling me what was coming. You watched me touch my fated mate and feel the bond confirm, knowing your other daughter was going to replace me. And now you want me to make it easy for you.”
Gordon’s expression didn’t change. It never changed. My whole life, I’d watched him save his real emotions for Delia and give me the stone face of a man fulfilling an obligation. “I did what was best for the pack.”
“Keeping Delia happy mattered more than protecting me.” I shoved the fuses into my toolbox.
“She’s always been your favorite. If Rafe wanted her, you weren’t going to fight it.
You just needed someone to walk out there first and take the hit so the Goddess could confirm the bond before Rafe broke it.
I was the sacrifice, and you didn’t even have the decency to warn me. ”
His eyes narrowed in calculation. He was trying to figure out how to make me obey.
“Nora, the bond staying open hurts both of you. It will hurt Rafe. You’re being selfish.”
“I learned from the best.”
Boots on gravel outside. The door swung open a third time, and Rafe Sutherland ducked under the frame, too tall for the low doorway, his dark hair catching the fluorescent light. His ice-blue eyes swept the garage.
He looked at the tools on my bench. He looked at the dress on the floor. He looked at me in my jeans and work shirt with grease already staining my fingers, and I watched him try to reconcile the woman he’d rejected with the one who wasn’t cooperating with the aftermath.
“Nora.” His voice carried the same measured calm he’d used at the ceremony. “I know this is difficult. But you’re making it worse for everyone, including yourself.”
“Get out of my garage.”
“The bond is going to eat at both of us the longer you hold it open. I can already feel—” He stopped.
His hand went to his chest, pressing flat, and I felt a flare of discomfort through the thread between us.
He was feeling me. My fury, my grief, my stubbornness.
And it was sharper for him than anything I picked up from his end.
“Good,” I said.
“You can’t punish me forever.”
“Watch me.”
“Nora.” Delia, still crying, stepped between us. “Please. If you won’t do it for them, do it for me. Let us have a real start. Don’t you want me to be happy?”
I looked at my sister. My younger sister, who’d grown up prettier and softer and more loved. Who’d spent her whole life hearing yes while I heard duty. Who stood in my garage asking me to hand over the last thing I had.
“You know what the worst part is?” My voice came out quiet.
“I would have been happy for you. If you’d told me.
If anyone had told me before tonight. If you’d come to me six months ago and said, Nora, I fell in love with Rafe during the treaty visits, and I’m sorry, and I don’t know what to do, I would have been wrecked, but I would have helped you figure it out.
Because that’s what I do. I fix things.”
Delia’s face crumpled.
“But you didn’t tell me. None of you did. You let me walk out there and get gutted in front of everyone I’ve ever known.” I picked up my toolbox by the handle. “So no. You don’t get my help tonight.”
Rafe stepped forward. “This is ridiculous. You’re acting like a child.”
I slammed the toolbox down on the bench.
“You rejected your fated mate at a public ceremony for her sister, and I’m the one acting like a child?
Your wolf is screaming at you right now, Rafe.
I can feel it. He knows what you did. He knows you’re wrong.
And every single day that bond stays open, he’s going to remind you. ”
Rafe’s jaw tightened. He’d expected me to accept his rejection and couldn’t understand why I refused. “You’re only hurting yourself.”
“Maybe. But I get to decide how much that matters.”
I carried the toolbox past him, shouldering through the door into the cold September night. The moon had moved west. Both packs were still waiting at the clearing, but there would be nothing to celebrate tonight.
My truck sat where I’d left it. I loaded the toolbox into the bed, then went back for my clothes from the locker in the break room, the cash I kept in the false bottom of the parts closet, my jacket, a spare pair of steel-toed boots, and my phone charger.
Delia followed me out. “Where are you going?”
I didn’t answer.
“Nora, it’s the middle of the night. You can’t just—”
“I can do whatever I want, Delia. Nobody’s arranged my future anymore.”
Gordon appeared in the doorway, his bulk blocking the light from inside. “If you leave tonight, you leave without the pack’s protection. I can’t extend Iron River’s territory to wherever you decide to run.”
“I’m not running.” I secured the toolbox with a bungee cord. “I’m leaving. There’s a difference.”
“There isn’t.” His voice was flat. “Come inside. Sleep on it. We’ll talk in the morning when everyone’s calm.”
“Nobody cared about calm when you put me in front of both packs.”
I climbed into the cab. The engine turned over on the first try this time, the old Ford rattling to life with a familiar diesel grumble that meant more to me than any vow spoken at a fire ring. I put my hands on the wheel. The ache in my chest held steady.
Rafe stood ten feet away, his fists clenched, his face tight.
Through the bond, I felt his frustration spike and knew he blamed me.
He was already building a story in which my refusal to cooperate kept everyone stuck while his rejection, his choice, and the bond he’d thrown away had nothing to do with it.
He would carry that story for as long as he needed it, but the open bond would keep forcing him to feel what his choices had done to me.
I put the truck in reverse. Delia pressed her hand against the passenger window, her fingers splayed, her mouth forming words I couldn’t hear over the engine.
I backed out, shifted into drive, and pulled onto the dirt road leading away from the pack house. My headlights lit the pines. The gravel popped under my tires.
The bond pulled with a constant, grinding ache in my chest. My wolf shoved against me from inside, frantic as the distance widened.
I kept driving.
The dirt road met the county highway, and I turned east without thinking about why. I only knew I needed to get away from Iron River, Copper Point, and the three people who’d watched me break and asked me to give them more.
The dashboard clock said it was past three in the morning. The highway stretched empty and dark ahead of me, lined with black pines. My headlights caught a deer’s eyes at the shoulder, twin green sparks that vanished as the animal bolted.
I drove. The bond thinned as the miles piled up, but it held. I left it that way.
Rafe, Delia, Gordon, and the treaty would get no answer from me, and neither would the Goddess, who’d confirmed a bond she knew would be thrown away.
The tears came somewhere past the county line, beyond the edge of Iron River territory. I let them fall without wiping them. My hands stayed on the wheel, steady, grease-stained, competent. The hands of a woman who knew how to take things apart and put them back together.
The road kept going.