Chapter 17

FREYA

I didn’t move fast enough.

I was still trying to find some version of a response, something that wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of watching me fold, when she stepped in again, closer this time, close enough that I could smell the sharp bite of whatever oil she used on her training leathers.

“Not that I blame him for picking you up,” she said, tilting her head like she was studying a piece of furniture she was deciding whether to keep. “You clean up well enough, I suppose, if you like the sad look. Though I heard you cried through most of your own engagement dinner before you even got banished. Must be exhausting, being that fragile all the time.”

A few more laughs from behind her, though thinner now, some of the warriors clearly less comfortable with where this had gone than they’d been a minute ago. I kept my chin up and said nothing, because I’d learned the hard way in the last day that giving people a reaction only fed whatever they were hungry for, and I didn’t have anything left to spare feeding it.

“That’s enough.”

The voice cut across the courtyard from somewhere behind me, low and hard in a way I hadn’t heard it before, nothing like the easy, teasing tone Damien had used carrying me across the border the night before. The warrior in front of me straightened immediately, some old instinct pulling her spine up straight before she’d even fully turned to see who’d spoken.

Damien crossed the courtyard at a pace that wasn’t quite a run but wasn’t far from it either, and the small crowd that had gathered to watch me get taken apart parted for him without anyone needing to say a word. Whatever authority came with being the Alpha’s son, it was clearly not something anyone here felt like testing.

“Rowan,” he said, and I understood the woman’s name for the first time, said with none of the warmth he’d used on me the night before. “You want to explain what you’re doing?”

“Just talking,” Rowan said, though some of her earlier confidence had already started to slip. “She wandered into the courtyard, I told her to watch where she was going. That’s all this is.”

“That’s not what I saw,” Damien said. “I saw you corner someone half your size who’s had exactly one night to process getting thrown out of her own home, and you decided that it made her an easy target.” His voice hadn’t risen, hadn’t turned to shouting the way I might have expected from someone defending anyone in front of an audience, and somehow that made it worse for Rowan, the flat certainty of it, like he wasn’t even bothering to get angry because the outcome of this conversation was already decided. “Apologize.”

Rowan’s jaw tightened. Her eyes flicked toward me, then back to Damien, some calculation happening behind them that I couldn’t quite follow. “She’s an Ashford,” she said, like that explained everything, like the name alone should have been argument enough.

“She’s a guest in my father’s house,” Damien said. “Which means, as far as you’re concerned, she’s under the same protection any of us would extend to a guest. I don’t care whose daughter she used to be. Apologize, or take it up with my father directly, because I’m not interested in having this conversation with you twice.”

The courtyard had gone almost as silent as the hall had the night before, everyone watching now with an intensity that made my skin crawl. It was a different kind of attention, the kind that came from watching something they clearly hadn’t expected to see. 

I felt heat crawl back into my face, but it was different this time, a tangled mess of gratitude and humiliation. I hadn’t asked to be defended. Part of me hated that I needed it at all, hated standing there while someone else fought a battle I should have been able to fight myself.

Rowan’s eyes found mine again, and whatever apology came out of her mouth a moment later was clipped and grudging, barely more than the shape of the word. “Apologies,” she said, not looking at me while she said it.

“Better,” Damien said, though his tone made it clear he didn’t think it was much better at all. “Now get back to training. All of you.”

The crowd dispersed slowly, in twos and threes, murmuring low enough that I couldn’t catch most of it, though I caught enough to know I was still very much the subject of it. Rowan held my gaze for one more second before she turned, something unreadable in her expression, not quite chastened, more like she was mocking me. 

Then it was just Damien and me, standing in the sudden quiet of an empty courtyard.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I said, once I trusted my voice to come out steady.

“I know.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, some of the hard edge from a moment ago already softening back into the easier version of him I’d woken up to that morning. “Didn’t stop me from wanting to.”

“Your pack’s going to talk about this.”

“My pack talks about everything,” he said. “It’s practically a hobby around here. Give it a week, they’ll have moved on to something else.” He studied me for a second, something more careful in his expression now, like he was checking for damage he hadn’t been there to prevent. “You alright?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re a terrible liar, you know that?”

I almost laughed, surprising myself with how close it came to actually happening, some small, unfamiliar bubble of it rising up through everything else I was feeling. “I’ve had a long two days.”

“Fair.” He tilted his head toward the house. “Come on. I’ll walk you back before someone else decides to test whether the Alpha’s goodwill has limits.”

We started back across the courtyard together, and for the first time since I’d woken up in that strange room with unfamiliar wooden beams overhead, I let myself feel something close to steady, walking beside someone who’d stepped in without being asked, without needing anything from me in return, and who hadn’t once looked at me the way the rest of the hall had the night before.

I didn’t notice until we’d almost reached the door that we weren’t alone.

Dante stood at the edge of the training yard, a short distance off, still as stone, watching the two of us cross the courtyard with an expression I couldn’t begin to read. He hadn’t moved to help. He hadn’t said a word through any of it, not the shove, not Rowan’s cruelty, not his own brother stepping in to do what he hadn’t.

He’d simply watched, the entire time, and something about the stillness of him, about how long he must have been standing there before I ever noticed, settled cold and uneasy somewhere in my chest.

I thought of the marker stones the night before, of waking with my cheek pressed against a scent I’d mistaken for his, of how certain I’d been for one disoriented moment that he was the one who’d carried me here. It hadn’t been him. It had never been him, not since the night we’d met, not once in all the weeks since when I’d let myself hope some part of that bond might still mean something even after he’d made it clear he wanted no part of it.

Watching him now, arms crossed, unreadable, I understood something had shifted since that hall two nights ago, though I couldn’t yet say what, or why it mattered as much as it did that he’d chosen to stand at the edge of a courtyard and watch instead of walking away entirely.

Damien followed my gaze and huffed out something that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Ignore him,” he said, low enough that only I could hear it. “He does that. Shows up, says nothing, disappears again before anyone can ask him why he bothered showing up in the first place.”

“Does he do it a lot?”

“More than he’d ever admit to.” Damien nudged the door open ahead of us, holding it for me in a way that felt almost absentminded, like courtesy was simply a reflex he didn’t think twice about. “Come on. Let’s get you inside before Rowan decides she needs a second round of humiliation to feel better about the first one.”

I glanced back once before the door closed behind us. Dante hadn’t moved. He was still watching, and for one strange second across the length of that courtyard, it felt like he was the only person in this entire territory who’d looked at me and seen something other than a weakling whose family discarded when they were no longer worth the stress.