Chapter 16

FREYA

The healer came by early afternoon, a quiet older woman named Marta who unwrapped the bandages on my feet with careful, practiced hands and didn’t ask a single question about how they’d gotten that way. Not where I’d come from, not why an Ashford was lying in an unfamiliar bed on Hamilton land, not anything at all beyond the occasional murmured instruction to hold still or point my toes. I found I was grateful for it in a way that surprised me. I’d had enough questions the night before to last a lifetime.

She left me with fresh dressings, a pair of soft shoes two sizes too big, and instructions to stay off my feet for another full day. I ignored all three within the hour, because staying in that room any longer felt like it might swallow me whole. The walls had started to feel close around midday, the quiet turning from restful into something more like waiting, and I couldn’t sit inside it and do nothing but replay the sound of my father’s hand connecting with my face over and over until I found some new angle of pain in it.

I told myself I was just going to look at the hallway. Then the hallway became the staircase, and the staircase became the ground floor, and before I fully understood what I was doing I was standing in the entrance of a house I had no right to be exploring, in territory that belonged to a family my own had warned me about since before I could walk properly on two feet.

Hamilton land looked nothing like I’d imagined it. I’d grown up picturing something colder, harder, some physical reflection of the reputation my father had spent years building around this name at every dinner table and pack meeting I could remember. Instead the halls were warm wood and worn stone, the kind of house that had clearly been lived in hard by generations of people who didn’t have much patience for delicate furniture. There were claw marks scored into one of the door frames near the kitchen, old enough that they’d been sanded smooth at the edges rather than repaired, like nobody here saw much reason to hide what they were or apologize for it.

I made it as far as a wide courtyard, sunlight cutting long shapes across old flagstone, before I understood I wasn’t alone anymore.

Pack members had started to notice me. A few at first, drifting past on their way somewhere else and slowing when they caught sight of me standing in the archway, then more, doorways emptying out until I could feel a small crowd gathering at the edges of my vision without ever quite looking directly at any of them. I felt the weight of it settle over my shoulders almost immediately, familiar in the worst way, an echo of the hall the night before except smaller, closer, no father’s ceremony to distract from the fact that every set of eyes on me belonged to someone I had no claim on at all, no history with, nothing to offer in my own defense beyond the borrowed sweater on my back.

Some of the stares held open dislike, sharp and unmistakable, the kind that didn’t bother pretending to be anything else. A few held  softer gazes, although painfully closer to pity, and I wasn’t sure which one I hated more. Pity meant they’d already decided what I was, a broken thing washed up on their border, something to be managed rather than a person who might still have opinions about her own life, her own choices, her own next move.

I kept walking anyway, because stopping felt like giving them exactly the reaction they were waiting for, and I had spent enough of the last twenty-four hours being watched for a reaction that I refused to hand over another one for free.

“Careful,” a voice said from somewhere to my left, low and mocking, pitched just loud enough to carry across the stone. “Wouldn’t want to trip. I hear Ashfords don’t handle falling very well these days.”

A ripple of laughter moved through a small cluster of warriors gathered near the courtyard wall, and I felt my face go hot despite myself, despite every effort to keep it still. I didn’t stop walking. I didn’t turn to see who’d said it. I’d learned enough the night before about what happened when I gave a room permission to watch me react, and I wasn’t going to make that mistake twice in two days.

It didn’t matter. A moment later someone’s shoulder caught mine hard enough to spin me half a step sideways, deliberate and precise in a way that no accidental collision ever managed to be, the kind of contact that wanted you to know exactly how little it cared about your balance.

I caught myself against the courtyard wall and turned to find a woman standing there, tall and sharp-featured, warrior’s build under a plain training jacket, looking at me like I had tracked mud across her floor. She hadn’t apologized. Her expression made it clear she wasn’t going to.

“Watch where you’re standing,” she said. “This isn’t Ashford territory. You don’t get to just wander wherever you like here.”

“I wasn’t wandering into anyone,” I said, keeping my voice even. “You walked into me.”

Her mouth curled at that, an unpleasant grin settling into the shape of it, satisfied almost, like I’d given her exactly the opening she’d been hoping for. “Careful with the attitude. You’re not exactly in a position to be picking fights, are you? Last I heard you got tossed out of your own home in front of half the region.”

Word had clearly made the rounds through this pack the same way it had made the rounds through everywhere else. I should have expected that, given how fast news traveled between territories even when nobody wanted it to. I hadn’t fully braced for what it would feel like to have it thrown back at me by a stranger who had no stake in any of it, just the easy cruelty of someone who’d found a target that couldn’t fight back without making everything worse.

“I don’t want trouble,” I said, which was true, and which came out sounding weaker than I wanted it to.

“Good,” she said. “Because you’re not worth the effort of it.” Her eyes swept over me, slow and deliberately insulting, taking in the borrowed shoes, the too-large sweater someone had left folded outside my door that morning, the state of my hair which I hadn’t had the chance to do anything with since the night before. “Alpha Kendrick’s gone soft, letting Damien drag home whatever he finds bleeding on the border. First it was strays, now apparently it’s Lucian Aurelius’s discarded toy.”

The words landed harder than the shoulder had. A few of the warriors behind her laughed again, quieter this time, less sure of themselves, like even they understood that one had gone further than the shove, further than anything that could still pass as simple pack territorialism.

I felt heat crawl up my neck, humiliation and fury tangled together so tightly I couldn’t tell which one was driving the shake starting in my hands. I thought of the hall the night before, of standing in the center of it and refusing to give my father the tears he’d wanted, and I tried to find that same steadiness now, tried to plant my feet the way I had when I’d looked Lilith in the eye and told the truth in front of nine packs without my voice once breaking.

It didn’t come as easily here. There, I’d had something to stand on, a truth I’d spent eight days preparing to say, evidence folded neatly in a clutch, a whole room I’d rehearsed for in my head a hundred times over. Here I had nothing but a borrowed sweater and a reputation that had traveled faster than I had, arriving on this territory hours before I did and settling into every mind here long before anyone had bothered to meet me.

“That’s not what I am,” I said, and hated how small it sounded even as it left my mouth.

“No?” The woman tilted her head, unimpressed, like she’d expected exactly that answer and found it exactly as unconvincing as she’d hoped. “Could’ve fooled me. Lucian throws you out after he cheats on you with your sister, and somehow you’re the one everyone’s whispering about.” She stepped closer, close enough that I had to fight the urge to step back and lose whatever ground I still had left to stand on. “Must be nice, getting carried across a border by an Alpha’s son the second things go wrong. Some girls have all the luck.”

Someone behind her laughed outright at that, and the sound of it seemed to hang in the courtyard, ugly and loud, drawing more eyes from further off, more people pausing mid-step to watch whatever this was becoming.

I opened my mouth to say something, anything, some version of the composure I’d managed to hold onto through an entire hall of hostile Alphas the night before. Nothing came. My throat had gone tight and my eyes were stinging in a way I refused to let turn into actual tears, not here, not in front of strangers who’d already decided exactly what kind of girl I was before I’d said a single word in my own defense, before I’d had the chance to be anything other than the story that had arrived ahead of me.

The woman smiled. 

“Go on back inside,” she said. “Before someone decides you’re not worth the Alpha’s goodwill after all.“​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​