MALAKAR'S POV

Ravion caught up to us before we reached the gates, guards trailing him, his mouth already halfway open to say something he clearly hadn't finished thinking through. "You're not taking her out of the territory tonight."

"I am." I didn't slow down. "Unless you're planning to stop me."

He didn't have an answer for that. His guards didn't move either, which told me everything I needed to know about how far he was willing to take this.

"Father won't like it."

"Your father doesn't get a vote in who I claim, same as I didn't get one in whatever that was back there." I glanced past him toward the crowd still watching from the arch. "She's not yours. She's not yours tonight, not tomorrow. So we're done here."

He stepped back. That was the last of it — there was no further protest, just his voice trailing something bitter behind us that I didn't bother turning around for.

Her sister caught up next, her steps quick and purposeful through the thinning crowd, and I gave them the distance to talk while pretending I couldn't hear every word of it.

"You didn't have to just stand there," Axira whispered.

"There wasn't anything to say that would've fixed it," her sister answered, her voice low, urgent. "Listen. This isn't the ending it looks like. Trust me."

Axira didn't answer that. When she turned back to me, her eyes were red-rimmed and empty, and she didn't look back again as we passed through the gates.

We walked in silence for a while after that. Vargulf Valley was half a day's ride from Emberclaw and I hadn't brought a carriage, hadn't planned on company at all when I left home this morning, so it was just the two of us on foot toward where I'd left my horse, the noise of the ceremony fading behind us until all that was left was the wind and her breathing which was too fast, like she was still bracing for something.

And it was irritating. 

"You can stop that," I said eventually.

She startled like I'd shouted. "Stop what?"

"Whatever you're doing to your hands." I nodded at them without looking directly at her. She'd been wringing the fabric of her sleeve for the last ten minutes, like it was the only thing keeping her upright. "You're going to tear the seam."

She stopped immediately, flushing, and shoved her hands behind her back like a child caught misbehaving.

"I'm not going to hurt you," I said, because it seemed like the thing that needed saying, given the way she was holding herself — her shoulders in, chin down, every line of her body angled slightly away from me like she was minimizing the target.

"I know."

"You don't sound like you know." I turned to her slightly. 

She didn't answer that. I let the silence simmer for a minute, unbothered by it because I honestly preferred when no one was talking, and eventually she was the one who broke it.

"Are you going to ask my name formally?"

"I already know your name. Axira Serath. I did refer to you by your name tonight when I claimed you." I glanced at her. "Do you know mine?"

"Everyone knows your name."

There was something careful in how she said it. Like she was picking her words not to offend me. I wasn't stupid. I knew the tales around me. Never bothered to correct it too. 

"Say it, then."

She hesitated. "Malakar Drenthe."

"And what does everyone know about Malakar Drenthe?"

She went quiet again, longer this time, and I watched her decide whether honesty was safe here or not.

"That you're dangerous," she said finally, quiet. "That your own wolf isn't — that something's wrong with you. That people who cross you don't stay around long enough to talk about it."

"All true, more or less." I kept walking. "Anything else?"

"That I shouldn't be alone with you."

That sentence landed different than the rest — she was scared. Her voice shook as though she remembered that she was walking to her supposed death. 

I stopped walking. She stopped a beat later, a full step of distance between us that she didn't seem inclined to close.

"You're afraid of me."

"Wouldn't you be?"

Fair point so I didn't answer it.

"I'm not going to hurt you," I said again, slower this time, my voice gruff around the edges but a tinge of honesty bled through my words. 

I expected it to land somewhere soft. But it didn't get the chance to.

Because the second our eyes met properly — actually met this evening, not the sideways glances she'd been giving me since the courtyard — something in my chest did something I hadn't expected. 

There was a sharp pull. Like someone had planted a hook somewhere in my chest and yanked hard enough for my expression to falter slightly. 

She felt it too. I knew, because her whole body went rigid, and the color drained out of her face so fast I thought for a second she might actually faint.

"What," she breathed, stumbling half a step back, hand flying to her own chest like she could physically push whatever that was back out. "What was that?"

I didn't have an answer. I'd felt exactly one thing like that before in my life, decades ago, and it hadn't happened with a girl who wasn't my mate, standing in the dark an hour after being rejected by someone else entirely.

"Nothing," I said, because that answer was easier than the alternative, and because I needed time to think before I said something I couldn't take back. "Keep walking."

She didn't move.

"That wasn't nothing." Her voice had gone thin, frightened in a new way now, a way that had nothing to do with my reputation and everything to do with whatever had just happened between us. "I felt that. You felt that too, I saw your face—"

"I said keep walking, Axira." I gritted. 

She flinched at her own name in my mouth, and after a long moment, she walked.

But she kept glancing at me sideways the rest of the way to the horse. I kept not looking back at her, because I didn't have the first idea what to say about a pull that shouldn't exist, between a rejected girl and a man everyone had the sense to fear.

There was no way. 

No way that this wide eyed girl from Serath was my mate. 

Impossible.

AXIRA 

I'd heard stories about Vargulf Valley my whole life. Everyone had. The kind of place parents mentioned to quiet unruly children, the kind of name that made older wolves lower their voices at gatherings like saying it too loud might summon something.

I never once imagined I'd actually see it. Certainly not like this — arriving in the dark on the back of the Alpha's horse, hours after being rejected in front of everyone I'd ever known, with a stranger's arm the only thing keeping me from sliding off during the last hour of riding.

The valley opened up ahead of us as we crossed the final ridge, and whatever I'd expected — something bleak, something dead, something that matched the horror stories — wasn't what I found. 

Torches lined a long stone path leading up to a fortress carved into the mountainside itself, dark and gloomy, but not lifeless.

It was beautiful in a way I hadn't braced myself for, and that unsettled me more than ugliness would have.

The horse slowed to a stop in a wide courtyard, and before I could figure out how to dismount without embarrassing myself further, a young woman hurried out from a side door, already reaching up to help me down.

"Not yet." Malakar's voice ordered, and the maid stopped mid-step, dropping into a small bow and retreating without a word.

He dismounted first, then reached up for me, and I hesitated only a second before letting him help me down — his hands steady at my waist, gone the instant my feet touched stone.

"Listen to me," he said, low enough that it wouldn't carry. "Before anyone else gets to you."

I nodded, throat too tight to answer properly.

"You don't apologize for existing here. Not to my elders, not to my pack, not to anyone. You didn't ask for what happened  tonight and you don't owe anyone an explanation for it." His eyes held mine steadily, none of the strange charge from the road in them now, just something flat and serious. "If someone speaks to you like you're beneath them, you don't shrink. You understand? I will not accept that."

"I don't know how to do anything else," I admitted, and hated how small it sounded even as it left my mouth.

"You'll learn."

Before I could ask what that meant, footsteps echoed across the courtyard — several sets, moving fast, and I turned to find a cluster of older wolves approaching, robed, unmistakably elders by the power and authority they carried in how they walked.

"Alpha." The one in front didn't bother with pleasantries. His eyes swept over me once, assessing, and whatever conclusion he reached showed plainly on his face. "A word."

"Say it here," Malakar waved a dismissive hand. "She's staying."

"Then she should hear it." The elder didn't hesitate. "This is Vargulf Valley. We are not some minor pack you can populate with whoever the rest of the territories discard. Do you understand what it means, bringing a rejected Omega into this pack? A girl no one else wanted?"

The words hit somewhere low in my stomach, familiar in a way that made my whole body go cold. Not this again. Not here too.

"She wasn't discarded," Malakar said. "She was mine to claim, and I claimed her."

"Claimed out of pity," another elder said, his voice sharper and filled with urgency, like he wanted to throw me out that moment, "which is worse. You've made us a laughingstock the moment word travels — the most feared pack in the territories, and its Alpha collects Emberclaw's leftovers."

I flinched at that word again. Leftovers. I was starting to understand it would follow me no matter where I went.

"She carries no strength worth mentioning," the first elder continued, and now he was looking directly at me, like I was a problem to be solved rather than a person standing three feet away who could hear every word. "No pack loyalty tested. No proven bloodline. What exactly does she bring to Vargulf, besides scandal?"

"That's enough." Malakar's voice didn't rise, but something underneath it did, and the elder actually took a half-step back.

"With respect, Alpha, someone has to say it. This pack has survived because we do not act on impulse. We do not gather strays out of some misplaced—"

"I said that's enough."

The silence that followed was absolute. I stood in the middle of it, face burning, eyes stinging in a way I refused to let turn into actual tears, not again, not twice in one night.

The elders didn't look convinced. They looked furious, restrained only by rank, and I understood with sudden clarity that whatever Malakar had just done by bringing me here, he hadn't just complicated his own reputation.

He'd made an enemy of his own council, on my behalf, before I'd even said a single word to any of them.

"Take her inside," Malakar said finally, to no one in particular, and it took me a second to realize he meant me. "She's had a long night."

I didn't move right away. I looked at the elders, still watching me like I was something that had crawled in uninvited, and then at Malakar, who wasn't looking at me at all anymore, already turning to face his council head-on, bracing for whatever came next.

I walked inside before I had to hear any more of it.

AXIRA

The room they gave me was bigger than my entire wing back home.

I stood just inside the door for a long moment after the maid left me there, not quite able to make myself walk further in, like the space itself might reject me the way everyone else had tonight.

It had stone walls, a fireplace already lit, a bed piled with more blankets than I'd ever owned at once. Everything smelled faintly of pine and I took a deep breath.

I sat on the edge of the bed and finally let myself shake.

Nobody was watching now. There were no elders, no Ravion, no mother with her hand still hovering somewhere near my memory of my own face. Just me, four stone walls, and the sound of my own breathing coming too fast.

A knock startled me upright.

"Come in," I said, before remembering I had no idea if that was even my choice to make here.

The maid from the courtyard slipped back in, a tray balanced in both hands, and closed the door softly behind her. "Alpha sent me," she said, before I could ask. "Said you probably hadn't eaten since before the ceremony."

I hadn't. I hadn't even thought about it until the smell hit me — bread and broth. My stomach grumbled instantly and I almost let out a moan of satisfaction.

"Thank you," I managed.

She set the tray on the small table near the fire and lingered, hands folding in front of her like she wasn't sure whether she was dismissed. She was younger than I'd assumed at first glance, maybe only a few years older than me, with dark hair pulled back severe enough to look older than she probably was.

"You're allowed to sit down," I said, because the silence between us was starting to feel worse than talking and she wasn't showing any signs of leaving. "I don't bite."

That got the faintest twitch of a smile out of her. "I'm Sable," she said, perching carefully on the very edge of a chair like she expected to be told to leave any second. "I look after this wing."

"Axira."

"I know." She said it gently and there was no judgment in it, though we both knew exactly how much the whole valley probably already knew about the girl the Alpha dragged in tonight. "For what it's worth— the elders don't speak for everyone here."

"They speak pretty loud for a small group."

"They always do." Something flickered across her face carefully, like she was deciding how much to say. "They didn't want him taking this territory either, when it happened. Said he was too young, too unstable, that the pack needed someone steadier. He proved them wrong for eight years running. They still don't love him for it."

I turned that over, surprised. "You've been here that long?"

"My whole life. My mother served this pack before me." She glanced toward the fire, and for a second the calm in her face softened into something more genuine. "He's not what they say about him. Not entirely."

"Everyone here seems to think that and you're actually telling me." I picked at the bread, not quite hungry anymore despite everything, my stomach still too wound tight from the day to properly want it. "Nobody's told me what he actually is instead."

Sable considered that for a moment. "The alpha is patient," she said finally. "More than anyone gives him credit for. He's also fair, when people let him be. And alone, mostly, because most people are too afraid of the stories to find out if they're true."

"Are they? True?"

"Some of them." She stood, smoothing her apron, the careful mask sliding back into place like she'd decided she'd said enough for one night. "You should eat. And sleep, if you can. Tomorrow's going to be a lot to take in."

She left before I could ask what she meant by that, and I sat with the broth going lukewarm in front of me, turning over everything that had happened in the space of a single evening until exhaustion finally won out over the noise in my head and I slept off.

*************

I woke to the bright morning light and the disorienting half-second of not remembering where I was, followed immediately by remembering everything at once, all of it landing at the same time like someone threw a pail of cold water right at me.

Sable returned not long after, helping me into clothes that had apparently been left for me sometime in the night, and walked me through the wing with the familiarity of someone who'd done this a hundred times before.

"This is the east corridor," she said, gesturing down a long hall lined with closed doors. "Mostly unused rooms, guest quarters. Kitchens are below us, through that stairwell, though you're welcome to have meals sent up if you'd rather not—"

"Sable."

The voice cut through the hallway before I saw who it belonged to, and I recognized it instantly — the beta from last night, the one who'd looked at Malakar like he was making the worst decision of his life while I stood there listening to every word of it.

Kael.

He appeared at the end of the corridor, tall, dark-haired, moving with a kind of unhurried confidence that made it very clear he belonged here in a way I very much did not.

"I'll take it from here," he nodded.

Sable glanced at me, something apologetic in it, and dipped a small bow before retreating down the hall, leaving me alone with a man who'd spent last night looking at me like a problem his Alpha had created out of nowhere.

I took an involuntary step back before I could stop myself.

Something flickered across his face — not quite offense at my action, but more like tired recognition, the look of a man who'd expected exactly this reaction and was still a little weary of getting it.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said, echoing words I'd already heard once last night from someone else, and somehow it sounded even less convincing the second time.

"You didn't want me here."

"No," he agreed, without hesitation, which at least had the benefit of honesty. "I still don't, not entirely. But that's not the same thing as wanting to hurt you, so you can stop looking at me like I'm about to."

I made myself stop taking steps backward, though I couldn't quite make myself relax.

"The Alpha asked me to show you the wing properly," Kael continued, apparently deciding to move past the tension between us rather than address it further. "Where things are. What's expected. Since apparently that's my job now, in addition to everything else."

"You sound thrilled."

That, unexpectedly, got something almost like a huff of amusement out of him. "You're sharper than you looked standing in that courtyard last night."

"I was in shock last night."

"Fair." He started walking, clearly expecting me to follow, and after a beat, I did, keeping enough distance between us that it would've been obvious to anyone watching that I still didn't trust him further than I could see him. "This corridor's guest quarters, mostly empty. Yours is the third door, in case Sable didn't already cover that."

"She did."

"Then I'll skip ahead." He led me down a narrow staircase, gesturing at doors as we passed, rattling off the layout of the fortress with the tone of someone who considered this a chore rather than hospitality. Training grounds to the west, where pack members sparred most mornings. The great hall, where meals were taken together, though I was welcome to avoid it as long as I wanted. The library, which surprised me — I hadn't expected a place like this to keep one, and he caught the surprise on my face and almost, almost smiled at it.

"You read?"

"When I have the chance."

"You'll have plenty of it here." There was something in how he said it that made me think it wasn't entirely a comfort.

We reached the end of the tour back near the courtyard where I'd arrived, and Kael stopped, turning to face me properly for the first time since we'd started walking.

"I'll say this once," he said, "since nobody else is going to be direct with you. The elders aren't going to warm up easily. Some of the pack will follow their lead. It's not personal, not really — it's about what your being here means for how this territory is seen. You didn't ask for that weight, but you're carrying it now regardless."

"That's supposed to make me feel better?"

"It's supposed to make you understand what you're standing in the middle of." His expression didn't soften, but it didn't stay entirely hard either. "The Alpha doesn't do things without reason, whatever the rest of them think. If he decided you belong here, that's worth something, even if it doesn't feel like it yet."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I said nothing, and after a moment he nodded once, like that silence was answer enough, and left me standing alone in the courtyard.