The Voice in the Hollow

His eyes stayed soft for four seconds.

Then his jaw reset. His shoulders squared. The Alpha crawled back on top of whatever was underneath, and he was Marcus Hale again, future Alpha of Ashford Pack, and I was the wolfless girl he had just chosen not to apologize to.

"This is not how this ends," he said.

"Yes it is."

"You are pack. You belong to Ashford territory. You cannot run."

"I ran three miles in the wrong shoes, Marcus. I am clearly very good at not belonging."

He looked at me for a long moment. He did not step forward. He did not step back. Ryder did. The big beta took one step in my direction, hackles half-raised, and the thing behind my ribs lifted its head.

Ryder sat down.

He just sat down in the leaves. He did not heel. He did not whine. He sat, like his hindquarters had been politely told to, and Marcus watched his head beta submit to a wolfless girl in a torn dress, and something in his face went very quiet.

"We go back," Marcus said, to his betas, not to me. "We tell Ingrid Maren needs time. We give her a day."

"Three days," I said.

"One day."

"Two."

He looked at me. The gold behind my ribs pulsed once. He flinched. I watched him flinch the way I had watched my mother flinch at the kitchen table when I was twelve and the faucet handle broke off in my hand.

"One and a half," he said. "I will give you until sundown tomorrow."

"Sundown tomorrow," I said.

"Then I am coming back. With Ingrid. With Sera. With the pack elders. We are going to sit at a table and we are going to sort this out. The way packs sort things out."

"And if I do not want to sort it out. If I want to walk into that forest and not come back."

"You will come back." His voice went very flat. "You are Holt blood. This is Holt territory. There is nowhere on this continent you can run that I cannot find you."

He turned and walked back toward the pack lands. Ryder stood. Ryder followed. The other four betas peeled off after them, two on two legs, two still half-shifted, ears twitching at the treeline.

I stood in the leaves and watched the future Alpha of my pack walk out of my life without saying he was sorry.

The thing behind my ribs said, "He is afraid."

I almost laughed. "Of me. Of the wolfless girl."

"Of what I am. Of what I am going to do to his bloodline when he finds out."

"What are you going to do."

"Wait, child. You will see."

---

I made it another mile before I had to stop.

The cut on my left heel had opened back up. The skin across both soles was white and red in patches, and I had been too angry to notice I was leaving a trail. The thing behind my ribs suggested, very dryly, that the trail might be a problem, because Marcus's wolves tracked by blood the way most wolves tracked by scent.

"Then I will need new feet."

"You will need the creek. A quarter mile north. It will clean the blood off and it will confuse them."

I followed the creek. The water was ice cold and it bit at the cuts the way cold always did, which was the only way my body remembered to feel anything anymore. I sat on a flat stone at the edge of the water and put my feet in. The thing behind my ribs settled. It did not hum. It did not purr. It had the patient attention of something that had been sealed in a forest for a thousand years and was willing to wait another.

"What are you," I said, out loud, to no one in particular.

"You know what I am."

"I know what the books say you are. The books say you are an umbra-wolf. The books say you are not a wolf at all. The books say you are older than any of the packs. The books say you were sealed in my bloodline because you could not be killed."

"The books are mostly right."

"Mostly."

"I was not sealed because I could not be killed. I was sealed because the first Alpha of Ashford Pack was afraid I would not stay dead. He was right to be afraid."

"What did you do."

"I taught his great-granddaughter how to love him. He did not like what love did to his legacy."

I pulled my feet out of the water. The cuts were cleaner. The bleeding had slowed to a seep. The air smelled like wet stone and pine and a faint metallic tang I could not place.

"What is that smell."

"Iron. The water runs through an old ore vein. The pack elders sealed me near a vein of iron because they thought iron would weaken the seal."

"Did it."

"For nine hundred years. Yes. The seal was very good. The last two I could feel you running through the wood at the age of thirteen. You tripped over a root and broke your wrist and I tried to reach you from inside the seal and could not get out. I have been waiting for you to break the seal yourself ever since. Tonight you broke the seal when you held your hand flat against the oak. The oak was the door. The seal needed a Holt woman at the door with the blood. With grief. With rage. You brought all three."

I sat on the stone. I tried to think about something other than the past nine years. The nine years of being the wolfless girl. The nine years of being the joke of Ashford Pack. The nine years of watching Sera practice her moon-cycle howl with the rest of the unbonded females while I sat on the porch and pretended I was not ashamed of being the only one who could not do it.

"I never learned to howl," I said.

"You will not need to. You have me."

"That is not the same."

"No. It is better. The wolves at Ashford Pack are loud and they are arrogant. I am old. I am patient. I will teach you how to be quiet and how to make them listen."

"Teach me now. I have until sundown tomorrow. Then I am going back."

"Why."

"Because the pack is mine. Because the territory is Holt territory. Because my great-grandmother married into Ashford to keep the peace and I am the last Holt woman alive and if I walk away then Sera's children inherit everything I should have kept."

"Marcus's children."

"Sera's children. Who will be Marcus's children in name. Who will be Hales. The pack name will be Hale for the next three generations. I am not going to let that happen. I was not raised to be the wolfless girl. I was raised to keep the Holt line open."

"You were raised by Ingrid Hale after your mother died."

"My aunt kept me. Ingrid raised me. Yes."

"Do you remember your mother."

The question landed badly. I had not been expecting it.

"A little."

"Do you want to remember more."

"No."

"The truth is in this forest, child. That is why I am here. The truth is in the creek bed half a mile east and your mother knew it. She brought you to this forest when you were four years old. She put your hand on this same oak and she cried. You do not remember. The seal removed the memory. But the seal is gone and the memory is coming back."

I pressed my palms to my eyes. The gold behind my ribs had become a steady warmth. The thing inside me had shifted from sitting up to sitting at the edge of something, the way someone sits at the edge of a chair when they are about to say the thing they have been saving.

"Tell me one thing," I said.

"One thing."

"The truth about the wolf that died in me at thirteen."

"You did not have a wolf. You never had a wolf. You had me. At thirteen I tried to surface for the first time. The pack elders came to your house. Your aunt Ingrid told your mother she was calling the doctor. Your mother put a suppressant in your tea. You slept for three days. When you woke up, the wolf had gone back to sleep. That is the secret your aunt kept. That is the secret you are going to force her to admit tomorrow."

The creek was loud all of a sudden. The forest had gotten darker. The trees had not moved but their shadows had. I stood up. My feet hurt less. My hands had stopped shaking.

I walked east.

The thing behind my ribs walked with me, not as a hum this time, but as a steady pulse, the way a heartbeat sounds in the next room. I followed it half a mile. The creek turned south. The trees thinned. There was an opening in the canopy.

In the opening was a clearing. In the clearing was an oak older than the one I had collapsed against. The oak had a door cut into its trunk at exactly the height of a woman putting her hand out. Inside the door was dark. I could not see what was in the dark. I could feel it. It was looking at me. It had been looking at me my whole life.

I walked into the clearing.

I put my hand on the oak.

I closed my eyes.

The pulse behind my ribs jumped.

The pulse went from inside me to outside me. From inside me to outside me. From my chest to somewhere in the clearing. From somewhere in the clearing to a place inside me that was not the umbra-wolf and was not Vael and was not any of the names the books had given what lived inside Holt women.

It was a second heartbeat. A second pulse. A second something that was not mine.

A mate connection.

The thing Vael had not warned me about. The thing the books had warned me about in a hundred different ways. The thing the pack elders had lied to me about when they told me the rejected omega at the altar would never feel a bond again because she had been bred out.

I opened my eyes.

Forty feet away, on the far edge of the clearing, half in shadow, half in moonlight, stood a man I had sent away seven hours ago. Black coat. Dark hair. Grey eyes that had gone soft again and were not going soft this time because he was tired or because it was the end of a long day.

They were going soft because he had felt it too.

He had felt the bond snap into place across the clearing.

His mouth was open.

He had one hand out toward me.

He said, in a voice I had not heard him use before, a voice that did not sound like an Alpha, that did not sound like a future pack leader, that did not sound like the man who had stood me up at the altar six hours ago because the heir was more important than the bride:

"Maren."

He said it like it was the first word he had ever learned.

I took my hand off the oak.

The bond did not break.

---