Hunters.

SLOANE

I watch the pack from my window before the sun’s fully up, the way I do most mornings now. Training yard filling in slow rows. Smoke curling up from the kitchens. A pack that didn’t exist two years ago, built out of nothing but spite and grief and a stubborn refusal to stay broken.

It still doesn’t feel like it belongs to me some mornings. Other mornings it’s the only thing that does.

Kieran knocks once, out of habit more than necessity, and lets himself in before I answer.

“You’re up early.”

“I’m always up early.”

“You’re up earlier than early.” He crosses to stand beside me at the window, close but not too close, the way he’s always careful to be. “Corvin wants to know if we’re increasing the eastern patrol before the meeting or after.”

“Before. I don’t want anyone stretched thin the day we’re supposed to be showing strength.”

“That’s what I told him. He wanted to hear it from you anyway.” Kieran almost smiles. “He doesn’t trust anything I say unless you say it first.”

“Corvin doesn’t trust anything, period. It’s practically his job description.”

That gets a real laugh out of him, low and easy, and for a second the morning feels almost normal, almost like two people who grew up in the same pack talking about nothing important.

Then his face shifts, just slightly, into the look he gets before he’s about to ask something he’s already decided he shouldn’t.

“Can I ask you something?”

“You’re going to whether I say yes or not.”

“Fair.” He turns to lean against the window frame, watching me instead of the yard now. “Is it true? The Alpha we’re meeting. That he’s the one who rejected you.”

I don’t move. I’ve had two years of practice not moving when something lands wrong, and it serves me well now, because whatever shows on my face isn’t anything I choose to let him see.

“How do you know that.”

“The pack growls, Sloane.” He says it simply, like it should be obvious. “You think two hundred wolves keep a secret that size to themselves forever? Someone always knows someone who was in that hall. It’s been quiet the last two years because nobody wanted to be the one to bring it up to your face. Doesn’t mean it stopped being true.”

“And you decided today was the day to bring it up to my face.”

“I decided today was the day you needed someone to actually say it out loud instead of letting you walk into that meeting pretending it’s just business.” His voice softens, just slightly. “You don’t have to go, you know. There are other ways to handle the alliance.”

“I know I don’t have to go.”

“But you’re going anyway.”

“I’m going anyway.”

He watches me for a moment longer, and I can see him deciding whether to push further, and deciding against it, which is one of the things I’ve always appreciated about him even when it frustrates me.

“For what it’s worth,” he says, “whatever he did to you, I’ve never once seen you flinch from anything since. Not once. He doesn’t get to know that. But I figured someone should say it.”

Something in my heart skips, small and unexpected, and I don’t have a ready answer for it.

“Thank you,” I say, which isn’t enough, but it is all I have.

Del appears in the doorway before either of us has to figure out what comes next.

“They’re ready for us at the mill,” she says, glancing between the two of us with the particular sharpness she saves for moments she isn’t going to comment on out loud. “Car’s waiting.”

“I’m coming.” I pull my eyes away from the window, from the pack still moving through its ordinary morning without any idea what’s about to walk into it. “Kieran, tell Corvin the patrol change stands.”

“Already planned on it.”

Del falls into step beside me down the hall, close enough to speak low.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You have your fine voice on. The one that means you’re not.”

“I’m handling it, Del.”

She doesn’t push, and we reach the car in a silence that isn’t uncomfortable so much as loaded.

A scout comes running across the yard before either of us gets the door open, breathing hard, boots skidding on the gravel.

“Alpha.” He barely gets the word out before he’s bent over, hands on his knees. “The mill road. There’s fresh blood at the old crossing, and tracks leading off it that aren’t ours and aren’t Duskmoor’s either.”

Del’s hand goes still on the car door.

“How fresh,” I ask.

“Hours, maybe less.”

Kieran is already moving toward the armory before I’ve finished deciding whether to be afraid.

“We’re still going,” I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel. “Just not unarmed, and not blind.”

Del meets my eyes over the roof of the car, and neither of us says the word we’re both thinking.

Hunters.