Chapter 2

I spend the whole night with the rogue territory maps spread across my floor.

The intel we're chasing is huge. Last life Mira got caught three months in, tortured into telling them everything, and the whole operation collapsed. Warriors died. The war came back hotter than before. Caden died in the second wave shielding her. I died chasing his ghost.

This time I know the layout. I know the schedules. I know which rogue warlord is sleeping with which traitor. I have one shot to walk in there clean and walk out with the names.

I haven't slept when dawn breaks. I throw on a plain jacket and crack my bedroom door open —

A gun barrel presses straight into my forehead.

"Why," Caden grits out, "do you keep going after your sister?"

I don't even blink. I bring my arm up to knock the gun away. He's faster. He twists my wrist, spins me, pins me against my own door frame. Stronger than I remembered. Stronger than a Beta should be at this hour, when his wolf hasn't fed.

"Caden. Let go."

I kick back. He just presses harder.

"You'd let your own sister die just so I'd mate you? Is that the kind of she-wolf you are?"

His voice is shaking with something ugly. Rage. Disgust.

"Tell me, Raelynn. What gives a wolf like you the right to be loved?"

For one ugly second I'm right back in that bedroom in the old pack house. Eight years of mating. Same words. Same voice.

I snap.

I drive my heel into his gut, scoop the gun off the floor, and turn it back on him in one move. The barrel kisses his forehead.

"You drew a weapon on me. Inside our own pack territory. Do you have any idea what the Council does to wolves who do that?"

He goes very still.

His eyes drop to my wrist. It's bruising already, ugly purple blooming under the skin. The fury drains out of him so fast I almost feel sorry for him.

"...I'm sorry."

"Save it."

"I lost my head."

I toss the gun at his feet.

"Someone has to take this mission, Caden. Yelling at me won't change which name's on the paperwork. Maybe you'll get the result you want. Go home and prep for your ceremony."

He doesn't catch the bitterness in my voice. He bends down for the gun like a wolf with a broken back.

"You really think every wolf is as cold as you," he says quietly. "Talking about a ceremony at a time like this —"

I breathe in once. I walk past him. My teeth ache from biting down so hard.

I don't look back. If I look back I'll claw his face off.

*Caden. This life I'm going to give you everything you want. Watch.*

That evening I come back to find a small box on my desk. Inside it: a stack of blueberry tarts, warm, fresh, the kind they don't make in our pack kitchens. He'd have to have run them in from the human town to get them here.

My favorite. He remembered.

He always remembered the small things. That's what kept me hooked for eight years.

I don't touch them.

I know exactly what they are. They're not love. They're a thank-you note. My mother took him in when he was a starving pup with no pack. She raised him. She fed him. He owes her, and he's been paying that debt out in tarts and small kindnesses to her pup for fifteen years.

He doesn't love me. He never did.

I wrap the tarts back up and leave them out for the kitchen omegas in the morning.