Chapter 5

Fabrice reaches the clearing on his own two feet, refusing the arm one of his warriors offers him, blood still running down his ribs from the gash the iron furred rogue left behind. I watch him take in the scene the way you watch a man read his own eulogy. Bodies of dead rogues scattered across the grass. His entire pack on their knees. And none of them looking at him.

Something moves across his face too fast for me to name it before he buries it. Not gratitude. Not relief that his mate just saved his life and half his warriors along with it.

Shame.

"Get up," he says to the kneeling wolves, and his voice comes out rougher than he means it to. "All of you. Get up."

No one moves right away. A few warriors glance toward me first, as if checking whether it is permitted, and that single glance is worse for him than if they had ignored the order outright. I watch him understand it in real time, watch the exact moment he realizes that for the first time in his life as alpha, his voice is not the only one that matters in this clearing.

Slowly, warriors rise. Not all at once, not eagerly, more like men waking from something they are not sure they are allowed to remember. A few keep their eyes down as they stand. A few do not stop looking at me at all.

I feel the shift ripple through me, whatever ancient thing carried my body through the fight finally settling, and the transformation begins to reverse itself. Bone by bone, my body folds back into the shape I have worn my whole life, until I am standing there in torn, blood soaked clothes, human again, breathing hard, arms wrapped around myself against a cold I did not feel a moment ago.

Fabrice crosses the clearing toward me. Every step he takes, I watch him rebuild the mask I know so well, pain and fear tucked away somewhere behind his eyes, replaced by something colder.

"You disobeyed a direct order tonight," he says, quiet enough that only the warriors nearest us can hear. "You left your post."

I stare at him. My hands are still shaking, streaked with blood that is not mine, and this is what he leads with.

"I saved your life," I say.

"You made a spectacle of yourself in front of the entire pack." His jaw tightens. "Do you understand what they are saying right now? What they will be saying by morning?"

"I understand that if I had stayed at my post, you would be dead."

Something flashes behind his eyes, fast and dangerous, and I realize he is not actually angry about the danger at all. He is angry about the kneeling. About forty warriors choosing, even for a single confused moment, to look at me the way they have never once looked at him.

He turns from me and raises his voice for the whole clearing to hear, warriors, healers, pups, everyone still gathered among the dead.

"The pack owes its survival tonight to quick thinking and the will of its alpha," he says, and I watch him rewrite the last twenty minutes in real time, folding my body's transformation into a story where he is still the one holding the pen. "We will speak of what happened here later, in private, as is proper."

A few warriors exchange glances. No one argues with him. No one ever does, not out loud.

"For now," Fabrice continues, and his eyes find mine again, sharper this time, "there is still the matter of respect owed before this Hunt began." He lets the words sit a moment, long enough for the warriors closest to us to understand exactly what he means. "You will kneel to Sana, as promised, so this pack remembers where its order still lives."

The clearing goes very still.

I look at him, really look, past the mask, past ten years of practiced obedience, and for the first time I do not feel shame rising to meet his demand. I feel something else entirely, something that has been building since the moment my spine first tore open in that other clearing, low and steady and finally, finally louder than my fear of him.

"No," I say.

The word lands harder than I expect it to, even in my own ears. A few warriors actually flinch.

Fabrice's expression does not change right away. He simply waits, the way he has always waited when he expects the world to correct itself back into the shape he prefers.

"I will not ask twice," he says.

"You will not ask a third time either," I answer, and I feel the ground shift under both of us, some old order of things quietly ending in a burned clearing that still smells of rogue blood. "Not to me."

His hand moves before I fully register it, not toward me, but toward the front of his own chest, some old habit of pride catching itself mid gesture. His face has gone the color of ash.

"You would defy me. Here. In front of everyone."

"I already did," I say. "Hours ago. You just weren't paying attention."

He steps closer, close enough that I can see the blood still drying along his jaw, close enough that his voice drops to something meant only for me, though every warrior in that clearing can still hear every word.

"Kneel," he says again, low and final, "or I will make you regret tonight for the rest of your life."

My open hand catches Fabrice across the jaw before either of us can stop it.