The Alpha Who Threw Me Away

I do not sleep well.

This is not new. Sleep has been a negotiation since the rejection, something I have to coax and bargain with every night. Some nights I win. Other nights I lie in the dark staring at the ceiling of my small room on the third floor and wait for morning to come and end the argument.

Last night was the second kind.

I get up at five-thirty, earlier than I need to, and wash my face with cold water and stand in front of the small mirror above the basin for a moment. I look tired. I always look tired lately, but today there is something else underneath it, a restlessness I cannot locate or name. I think about Caden Voss in the corridor. I think about what he said. I am not here only for the diplomatic visit.

I think about Lucian's face.

I stop thinking and go make the coffee.

The pack house is quiet at this hour. The kitchen staff do not arrive until six and the halls carry that particular early morning stillness, the kind that feels borrowed, like the day has not committed to itself yet. I move through it easily. I know every room in this state, have learned the house in darkness as well as light.

Two sugars, no cream.

I carry the tray up to the study and find, as I always do, that the door is already ajar. Lucian is an early riser. Earlier than me, most mornings, which I discovered in my first week and filed away without examining what it meant that he was always already awake when I arrived.

I push the door open.

He is standing at the window this time, not at his desk. His back is to me and he is looking out at the mountains, still and quiet the way he gets when something is sitting heavy on him. I have learned his versions of quiet too, without meaning to. This one is different from his working quiet. This one has weight in it.

I set the tray down without a word.

"You were speaking to Voss last night."

It is not a question. His voice is level, controlled, but there is something underneath it that reminds me of a floorboard under too much pressure. Holding. But only just.

"He came out of the dining room," I say. "I was in the corridor finishing the evening log."

"What did he say to you?"

I look at the back of his head. At the set of his shoulders, rigid in a way that has nothing to do with his Alpha posture and everything to do with something personal.

"He complimented the east wing," I say. "He said the heating was better than his last visit."

A pause. "That was all?"

I think about the rest of it. I am not here only for the diplomatic visit, Selene. I do not know what Caden meant by it. I do not know enough to repeat it and I do not know enough to explain it and I am not in the business of handing Lucian anything he has not earned.

"That was all," I say.

He turns around.

I have been careful about his face since the day I started this job. I keep my eyes at a practical distance, focused on whatever is functional, the papers on his desk, the mug in his hand, the space slightly to the left of him. Looking directly at Lucian Blackthorn has always cost me something and I have been very disciplined about not spending what I no longer have.

But he turns around and looks at me in a way that makes it difficult to look anywhere else.

There are shadows under his eyes. He has not slept either and somehow that bothers me more than it should. I do not want to notice things about him. I do not want to file them away. I want him to be furniture the way the rest of this house is furniture, functional and unremarkable, and instead he is standing in morning light looking like a man who is carrying something that is getting too heavy to carry alone.

"You do not have to be comfortable around him," Lucian says. "Voss."

I stare at him. "I am staff. I am comfortable around all guests as the job requires."

Something moves through his expression. "That is not what I meant."

"Then say what you mean, Alpha."

The words come out steadier than I feel. He looks at me for a long moment, and I can see the shape of whatever he wants to say, the outline of it, but he does not say it. He turns back to the window instead. Back to the mountains. Back to the safe and manageable distance of not finishing sentences.

Some things, it seems, have not changed.

"That will be all," he says quietly.

I leave.

Mara puts a plate of toast in front of me at half past seven and sits across the table with her own tea and does not say anything for a full two minutes, which must cost her considerably.

"You look awful," she says finally.

"Good morning to you too."

"Did you sleep?"

"Some." I pick up a piece of toast and eat it because I told her I would eat and I keep my promises even the small ones. It tastes like nothing. "Voss was asking questions last night. About the pack. About me, apparently."

Mara wraps both hands around her mug. "What kind of questions about you?"

"He said he was not here only for the diplomatic visit. He did not explain what he meant."

She is quiet for a moment. The kind of quiet that means she is sorting through something she knows and deciding how much to hand over.

"Mara."

"I am thinking."

"Think out loud."

She sets her mug down. "There was a conversation, about two weeks ago. Between Elder Bowen and someone from Voss's territory. I only caught pieces of it. But Selene, Bowen has been watching you since before he placed you in this role. That was not an accident. None of this was an accident."

I look at her. "What does that mean?"

She opens her mouth.

And then footsteps in the corridor outside stop directly in front of the kitchen door and someone knocks twice, sharp and deliberate, and when I turn around it is not a staff member standing in the doorway.

It is Elder Bowen.

And the expression on his face tells me that whatever conversation I was about to have with Mara just became one he intends to have with me himself.