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“I spent my whole life being the Alpha’s sister. That was the entirety of what I was to this pack. The label came first, and everyone I met decided what it meant before I opened my mouth. Some people decided it meant I was soft. Protected. Others decided it meant I was useful. A connection to power.” She turned her mug in her hands, slow circles. “When Marcus took me, the first thing I thought was that they’d taken Kahn’s sister. Not Olivia. Kahn’s sister. Because that’s who I’d let them reduce me to.”
“What changed?”
“I stopped waiting for permission to be more than that.” Olivia met her gaze. “Viktor didn’t fix it. Caitlynn didn’t fix it. I fixed it. I walked into a briefing room without being invited, sat down, opened my mouth, and refused to leave. And the thing that made it possible wasn’t courage; it was being tired. I was so exhausted from holding myself at arm’s length from my own life that the only option left was to step into it.”
Sloane stared at her. Her eyes burned. She blinked hard, twice, and looked away.
“I don’t know how to let him see me.” The admission came from somewhere below her ribs, a place she didn’t visit. “Not the parts that are useful. Not the fighter, not the strategist. He sees those already. But the rest of it, the parts that flinch, the parts that freeze when someone stands too close in the dark.” She swallowed. “I keep thinking if he sees that, he’ll know I’m not worth the trouble.”
“He watched you fight alongside him two days ago. He’s lived with you for weeks. He made you terrible coffee this morning and left without waking you. He already sees more than you think.”
“That’s what terrifies me.”
“I know.” Olivia reached across the table. Her fingers settled on Sloane’s wrist, brief, warm, deliberate. The same gesture Caitlynn had given Sloane in the corridor after the ceremony, and the echo of it cracked against a wall Sloane had been maintaining for twenty years. “Being seen by someone who stays is a different thing entirely. It takes practice. You don’t have to be good at it yet.”
Olivia lifted her hand. Pulled the folder back toward her. Opened it, picked up her spoon, and went back to her porridge as though the last ten minutes had been as ordinary as weather.
Sloane sat with her hands in her lap, her palms tingling where Olivia’s fingers had touched her wrist. The dining hall was almost empty now. Plates cleared, tables wiped, the kitchen staff moving behind the counter with the efficiency of people who did this every day and would do it again tomorrow.
She stood. Picked up her plate. Carried it to the rack.
“Olivia.”
The other woman looked up from her folder.
“Thank you.” The word felt strange in her mouth, unpractised, like a key she’d found in a drawer and wasn’t sure which lock it fit.
Olivia nodded. The nod carried no ceremony. No weight. Just acknowledgment, plain, clean, the kind of thing a person gave when they understood that gratitude could cost as much as the confession that earned it.
Sloane left the dining hall. The corridor was bright with morning sun, dust motes turning slowly in the shafts of light through the high windows. The bond hummed. Chris was closer now, moving back toward the compound, his presence a warm pulse at the edge of her awareness.
She could feel him getting closer. She could feel the steady draw of him, patient, unhurried, asking nothing.
She didn’t turn toward her room.
She walked to the east entrance, pushed the door open, and sat on the steps in the morning light to wait for him.
Chapter 27 - Chris
Gideon brought the folder to the briefing room at noon. He didn’t knock. He walked in, set the folder on the table in front of Kahn, and sat down without waiting for permission.
Chris was already in his chair. Viktor stood at the map table. Caitlynn sat near the communications desk with a mug of tea she hadn’t touched. Sloane occupied the seat she’d earned three briefings ago, her hands folded on the wood, her posture straight.
The bond carried her to him in a low, constant signal. She’d been calm all morning. Steady. He’d felt it shift after her conversation with Olivia, a loosening he couldn’t name but could track, as though a knot somewhere in her chest had slipped half a turn.
Gideon opened the folder. Inside were pages covered in his own handwriting, dense, angular script that filled the margins of what looked like old patrol records.
“I’ve been pulling files since last week,” he said. “Banishment records. Cross-referencing the names from Viktor’s sighting reports with pack records going back thirty years.”
Kahn leaned forward. “What did you find?”
“The three scouts we identified at the ridge aren’t Garrett’s wolves. They don’t belong to anyone. They were exiled from the Iron Creek Pack nine years ago.” Gideon turned a page, pressed it flat. “The two we caught at the eastern approach last month came from the Ashfall Pack. Banished twelve years ago for insubordination. Before that, I tracked a name through the supply intercepts, a man called Harlan Briggs. He was removed from the Cedar Lake Pack for attacking a ranking female.”
Viktor’s pen had stopped moving.
“Three packs,” Gideon said. “Three separate banishments, different years, different offenses. Every one of them ended up with Garrett.”
The briefing room was quiet. Chris watched Sloane’s hands on the table. Her fingers hadn’t moved. She was listening the way she always listened in these rooms, her body still, her focus total.
