Chapter 2

“Only the migratory elk,” Audra replied smoothly without looking at Ozias for permission. “Calder keeps the timber and the quartz. You take the meat for your winter stores. In exchange, the Frostbane vanguard withdraws three leagues north of the riverbank until the formal boundary line is inked tomorrow at dusk.”

Torin stared at Ozias.

Ozias, realizing within the span of a single heartbeat that the rogue translator had somehow thrown a lifeline directly into his bleeding tactical nightmare, did not drop his icy facade. He slowly leaned back in his high-backed chair, interlacing his thick, battle-scarred fingers. The posture radiated the bored contempt of an apex predator who had just offered scraps to a starving dog.

“Those are my terms,” Ozias rumbled, his voice dropping an octave, carrying the dark, resonant weight of an Alpha’s absolute command. “Take the elk and give me my riverbank, Torin. Or leave the meat, cross the water, and let me feed your wolves to the crows before sundown.”

*Please take it,* Ozias’s mind whispered beneath the iron roar of his Alpha aura. *Take it, you stubborn northern bastard. Buy me until dusk. Just twelve hours.*

Torin held Ozias’s amber stare for five agonizing seconds.

The air in the pavilion was so thick with pheromones that Audra’s lungs stung. The walls of the structure were lined with vertical bands of cold iron and woven silver filigree—the traditional neutral wards required by the Lupine Concord. The silver hummed in the back of Audra’s teeth, a dull, metallic ache that made her wolf whine in the dark recesses of her soul. Silver was poison to them all, suppressing their regenerative speed and dampening their shifting reflexes, ensuring that no Alpha could simply slaughter an entire diplomatic room in a fit of feral rage.

Finally, Torin spat onto the flagstones.

“Twelve hours,” Torin hissed. “We withdraw to the pine line. But tomorrow night, when the full moon clears the ridge, the treaty must be sealed in blood. If there is no ink on this parchment by midnight, Alpha Ozias, the harvest rights are void—and the Whispering Gorge will drown in red.”

The Frostbane envoy rose violently, his heavy cloak sweeping over the back of his chair. With a sharp jerk of his chin, he signaled his guard. The four northern warriors turned on their heels, their iron-plated boots thudding against the stone, and marched out into the blinding white glare of the mountain afternoon. The heavy canvas flap of the pavilion snapped shut behind them, cutting off the chill draft of snow.

Silence descended upon the pavilion.

It was not a peaceful silence. It was the breathless, shuddering quiet that followed an artillery barrage.

Audra kept her eyes lowered, calmly organizing her parchment sheets. She aligned the edges with military precision, capped her silver-nibbed pen, and began slipping her notes into her leather satchel. She did not look at the hulking Alpha sitting less than three feet from her side.

Behind them, Ozias’s Beta, a wiry, sharp-eyed wolf named Nathan, let out a long, ragged exhale.

“Gods above,” Nathan whispered, leaning against the timber support beam. “He took it. He actually pulled back. I’ll send runners to the third battalion immediately—if we move the reserves from the southern gate now, we can shore up the riverbank before midnight.”

“Go,” Ozias commanded softly.

Nathan didn't hesitate. He bowed his head and slipped out through the rear exit of the pavilion, his leather armor creaking, leaving only the two of them in the dim, silver-lined hall.

The braziers crackled. A spark leaped from the pine log, dying in midair before it hit the cold stone.

Audra picked up her satchel, slung the strap over her shoulder, and prepared to rise. “If that concludes the preliminary session, Alpha Ozias, I will retire to the scribes' quarters to prepare the clean copies for tomorrow’s—”

A hand shot out.

Heavy, calloused fingers closed around her wrist.

The contact was an electric shock. Heat—blistering, terrifyingly intimate heat—shot up Audra’s arm, searing through the coarse wool of her sleeve straight into her bloodstream. Her breath hitched in her throat, her dormant inner wolf violently lurching against the silver-rue chains she had kept wrapped around its neck for over a decade.

She froze.

Ozias didn't release her. His grip was not bruising, but it was absolute. An Alpha’s grip. A man who held the lives of eight thousand pack members in the palm of his hand and knew the precise pressure required to snap bone or command worship.

He didn't speak immediately. He just sat there, breathing slowly, staring at the slender white wrist trapped beneath his dark skin.

Audra fought the instinctive urge to jerk away. Showing fear to a wolf like Ozias was the quickest way to end up pinned to the floorboards. Instead, she slowly raised her eyes, letting her gaze rest on his face with an expression of polished, professional detachment.

Ozias was twenty-eight, in the absolute zenith of his physical power. His dark hair was sheared short at the sides, long enough on top to fall across a brow marked by a pale, jagged scar that ran from his temple down to the edge of his cheekbone—a souvenir from the silver-tipped claws of a rogue grizzly two winters ago. His nose was straight and blade-like, his jaw shadowed by dark stubble, and his eyes...

His eyes were an unnatural, molten amber, flecked with rings of deep burnt gold that signaled an Alpha bloodline unbroken for six generations.

He was looking at her not as an employer looked at a hired clerk, but as a beast looked at something utterly baffling and intensely dangerous.

And in his mind?

Audra braced herself, opening that microscopic slit in her psychic barrier to gauge his threat level.

What she heard stole the air from her lungs.

*Look at her,* Ozias’s inner voice groaned, a dark, heavy, aching sound that vibrated with raw exhaustion and something far more feral. *Not a tremor in her hands. Not a single drop of sweat on that pale throat. She sat between two warbands ready to tear out each other's throats and carved a peace out of thin air.*

A pause, thick with an almost painful yearning.

*What are you, Audra? Where did you come from? Why does your scent drive my wolf insane when you’re near, and why can I never catch more than a ghost of it? Three months you’ve been under my roof, and every time you walk into a room, I want to tear the council table in half, lock the doors, and demand to know why you look at me like I’m a stranger.*

Audra’s heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic, frantic bird.

She kept her face carved of marble.

For three months, she had worked as his lead diplomatic translator across the northern borders. Calder Pack had paid her an exorbitant sum—chests of gold coin and refined silver-free bullion that would allow her to buy a secluded estate in the southern mortal territories where no werewolf pack could ever reach her. During those three months, she had maintained an ironclad wall of professional deference. She had bowed when custom demanded, spoken only when spoken to, and addressed him strictly by his rank.

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