Chapter 2: Strange Reflection
Nora's Point Of View
I backed into the shadows, my heart pounding in my chest. The golden-eyed Alpha raised an eyebrow, looking towards where I'd stood. His nostrils flared ever so slightly, as he sniffed the air.
He could smell me.
"I know you're there," he said softly. "Come on out. I won't hurt you."
His voice had the command of a man accustomed to being obeyed, but beneath, there was something else. Gentleness. That hit me harder than it should have.
I leaned back into the abrasive bark of an oak tree, resisting the need to flee. This was not how I'd rehearsed coming back. I was to watch first, find out who held power now that Marcus was dead.
Instead, I'd stumbled head-on into the new Alpha's patrol route like a rookie.
"Your scent is. unusual," he continued, taking another step closer to where I was concealed. "Moon-blessed, but something else, too. Something I don't recognize."
My lungs seized up. He could smell my Moon blessing? Not many wolves could unless they had the gift themselves. Elena always could, which was why she'd worked so hard to suppress it.
The Alpha paced with deadly beauty, every step deliberate and precise. "I'm Kai Blackwood. This is Silverback territory. You're on the wrong side of our land."
Blackwood. Not Silverstone like Marcus had been. This must be Marcus's son, the one Marcus had used to talk about bringing home after training with the northern packs. But Marcus had died five years ago, as I'd guessed before. Kai had clearly moved in as a youngster.
I closed my eyes and let Aria's memories surface, praying to discover something she had learned about him. Memories flashed before me like pages in a book. A serious boy with gold eyes, coming to the pack house during summers. Always watching, always learning. Never as cruel as his dad, but icy. Indifferent.
She'd caught sight of him once, years ago, when she was a member of a small pack of rogues. They'd watched the Silverback patrols far away, and she'd been amazed at the way the young Alpha moved. As if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.
"I can hear your heartbeat," Kai said, drawing nearer. "You're afraid, but not of me. What are you running from?"
Anything. Anyone. The past that would not stay hidden.
But I could not tell him. Not yet.
I stepped out from behind the tree, keeping my head down so my silver hair fell like a curtain over my face. Moonlight tangled at the strands, glistening them almost white.
Kai stood still.
When I finally did look up, meeting gazes with his golden eyes, something strange happened. Recognition creased his face, but not the kind that had him recognizing me. It was more than that. Basal.
His wolf was reacting to my own.
"What is your name?" he murmured.
"Aria." The lie was so natural now. It wasn't so much of a lie anymore, was it? Nora Silverback was long dead. I was something else now.
"Aria." I tested the name, and I fought not to shiver at the way it sounded on his lips in his deep voice. "You're alone."
Not a question. I nodded anyway.
"How long have you been rogue?"
Aria's memories provided the answer. "Three years."
"That's a long time to survive on your own." His eyes scanned me, noting my bare feet and the simple dress I woke up in. "You're hurt."
I looked down at myself, confused. I was okay. Okay and more than okay, actually. But then I looked and saw what he was pointing out. Aria's skin still bore the fading marks of her last fight. Scratches down my arms. A yellow-green bruise on my ribs that was a few days old.
"It's nothing," I said.
"Silver poisoning." His jaw tightened. "Hunters."
The name slipped my lips like an epithet. I nodded again, letting him make his own conclusions. Worse he should think that I was fleeing from humans than learn the truth about what I truly was.
"My pack does not turn away wolves in need," Kai said after a moment. "We have healers. Provisions. Somewhere to rest."
The offer teetered back and forth between us like a bridge I wasn't sure that I was ready to cross. Going into that pack house would be a meeting with Elena. It would be pretending to be someone else in front of wolves who might sense something about me.
But it would also bring me near my target.
"Why?" I said. "You don't know me."
Something dark flickered across his face. "Let's just say I'm used to having to contend with someone else's mistakes."
Before I could ask him what he meant, another recollection of Aria surfaced. She'd heard rumors when she was a rogue. Rumors of the old Alpha Marcus and what he'd done. The wolves he'd murdered. The territories he'd conquered.
And the Luna he'd killed.
My throat parched. People had known. Not necessarily the details, not necessarily the fact of Elena's involvement, but they had known Marcus killed me.
"The old ways passed with my father," Kai continued. "I'm trying to create something better."
In his voice, sincerity was ripping at my chest. This wasn't the ruthless, scheming heir I'd expected. This was a person genuinely attempting to make up for his father's sins.
A man who had never a thought one of them stood right in front of him.
"I have nowhere else to go," I admitted. That much was true.
"Then come home with me."
Home. The sound hit me like a body blow. The Silverback packhouse was home. The location that I had been loved and treasured as the Alpha's mate. Prior to that, it was the location where I was murdered.
I followed Kai across the clearing, my bare feet silent on the grass. With every step, memories came rushing back. Playing here as a child with Elena. Training to fight with the pack soldiers. Marching this very path on my wedding day, thinking I was the luckiest she-wolf alive.
The pack house loomed before us, just as I remembered. Vines-covered stone walls thick with ivy. Gently lit windows. The great oak door Marcus had spent all his first year as Alpha meticulously carving with the mark of the pack.
Kai reached out a hand toward the handle, hesitated. "Aria?"
"Yes?"
"Whatever you're running from, it can't reach you here. I swear."
If only he knew that what I was running from was already inside.
He swung the door open, and a cascade of recognizable scents rolled out to greet me. Pine smoke from the fire. The lavender soap pack women employed. And beneath it all, the familiar smell of home.
But then there was another one. One that had my wolf baring her teeth.
Elena's scent, more prevalent than she should be. She wasn't just living here anymore.
She was in charge.
"Elena!" Kai shouted. "We have a visitor."
Footsteps creaked from the front room, light and quick. My sister stood in the doorway, and I had to clamp my teeth down so hard on my tongue that I almost gasped.
She was as young looking as the day she'd killed me. Not a single wrinkle on her face. Not a thread of gray in her black hair. She should have had ten years' worth of lines etched into her face, but she looked frozen in time.
Impossible. Unless.
Elena's green eyes swept across my face, and for one heart-stopping moment, I thought she'd see me. But her eyes passed over my face without a beat of recognition.
"Another stray rogue, Kai?" she questioned, smiling but not quite hitting the mark with her eyes. "You know I don't want to take in stray rogues."
"She's hurt," Kai replied firmly. "She requires help."
Elena approached, and I caught the scent that had been irritating me. Magic. Dark magic, wrapping itself around her like smoke you couldn't see.
My sister had been playing around with things she shouldn't. Things that would preserve youth and steal power from other individuals.
"Your name, please, dear?" Elena cooed.
I gazed my murderer in the eye and grinned.
"Aria," I said. "And I think I'm going to love it here."