Chapter 3

Kane's study, it turned out, doubled as something closer to a classroom over the following week, evenings spent with maps of the territory spread across his desk, explanations of pack law delivered with the same patient thoroughness he apparently brought to everything, and Wren absorbing all of it with the specific hunger of someone who'd spent three years feeling powerless and had just been handed, unexpectedly, the beginning of actual competence.

"Tell me about your sister," Kane said, on the fifth evening, setting aside the territorial map they'd been reviewing. "You've told me what she needs. You haven't told me who she is."

Wren hesitated, old habits of careful compartmentalization warring with the strange, growing trust this week had built between them. "Her name's Ivy. She's twenty-four. Four years younger than me." She traced the edge of the desk, not quite meeting his eyes. "She was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune condition three years ago — the kind that doesn't respond well to standard treatment, the kind that requires the sort of specialized care that costs more than either of us could ever hope to earn in a lifetime of ordinary jobs."

"And the pack's medical resources—"

"Cover treatments no human insurance would touch. Specialists who understand conditions that overlap with shifter medicine in ways human doctors don't fully grasp yet." Wren finally looked up, something raw in her expression that she rarely allowed herself to show. "I spent three years watching my sister get sicker while I fought a system designed to exhaust people like us into giving up. When your pack's lawyer approached me about this arrangement, I didn't hesitate, Kane. Not because I didn't understand the risk. Because I'd already spent three years living with a different kind of risk, and at least this one came with a chance of actually saving her."

Kane was quiet for a long moment, something working behind his careful control. "Our parents died when I was young," he said finally, offering the confidence with obvious effort, an even trade for the vulnerability Wren had just shown him. "My mother, specifically — an illness the pack's healers couldn't treat in time, mostly because I was too young then to have any authority to demand better resources be found. I've spent every year since making sure this pack never lacks for medical capability again, no matter the cost. It's part of why your sister's care was never actually a difficult concession for me to make."

"You never told me that."

"You never asked." A ghost of something almost like a smile crossed his face. "I'm not accustomed to being asked genuine questions, Wren. Most people who want something from me already know better than to pretend interest in anything beyond the transaction."

"I'm not most people," Wren said, echoing her words from their wedding day, though this time the statement carried considerably more warmth than the flat pragmatism she'd offered then.

"No," Kane agreed, studying her with an expression she was beginning to recognize as something other than careful assessment. "I'm starting to understand that."