The pack hall has gone quiet the way a room does after a fight.
My lip is split and my mouth tastes like pennies.
Ryland: Look at me. Not at him. At me.
He tips my chin up and studies the cut, and his jaw works like he's chewing glass.
Ryland: Fintan. Clear the hall.
My brother squeezes my shoulder once, hard, before the chairs start scraping.
The room empties. Briony stops at the door and looks back at him.
Briony: You put her somewhere with a lock tonight. A real one.
Ryland: She'll have one.
Then it's just us and the empty tables.
Ryland: You're not sleeping in that salvage office anymore.
Maela: It has a door. It has a cot. It's fine.
Ryland: It sits at the back of the lot. One window. A lock that's been broken since before you left.
Ryland: Any wolf with a nose could find you there in the dark.
He says it flat, like he's listing parts off a shelf.
He picks up my bag before I can get to it.
Maela: I can carry my own bag.
Ryland: I know you can.
The room over the garage smells like sawdust and new paint.
A bed, a lamp, a chair, and one window looking down on the whole yard.
Ryland: Bathroom's through there. The lock is new. There's a bolt on the inside too.
Ryland: Nobody comes up those stairs unless you let them. Not even me.
Maela: Not even you?
He doesn't answer that. Then he goes still.
There's a folded paper on the floor just inside the door. My name on it.
Ryland: Don't touch it.
I already have it in my hand. It smells like cheap cologne and cigarettes.
The writing leans hard enough to dent the page.
*You don't get to bury me that easy, whore.*
*I know which window is yours now. Ask your Alpha who the room upstairs was built for.*
*Ask him whose name he says when his door is shut.*
*First time he turns his back on you, I finish it.*
He takes it out of my fingers and reads it. I watch his face go from cold to worse.
The paper crumples in his fist.
Ryland: He was in my yard. Under my nose.
Maela: It's just talk. He's always been good at talk.
Ryland: It isn't talk. Men like that don't write notes for fun.
He turns so fast I step back into the bed frame.
Ryland: I'm sorry. I didn't mean to crowd you.
But he doesn't move back. He stands close enough that I can feel the heat off his chest.
*Home,* my wolf whispers. *He smells like home.*
Ryland: You're Fintan's sister.
My chest goes tight. I know what comes after that. I've heard it before.
Ryland: That makes you pack. That makes you family. Keeping my family safe is the job I took.
Duty. There it is, out loud, like a work order.
Maela: Then I'm lucky. To have such a careful boss.
He flinches. Good. At least one of us feels it.
Ryland: Bolt it. Both of them. I'll have a rider on the lot all night.
He's halfway down when he stops with his back to me.
Ryland: I should have looked for you. Years ago. I should have looked.
I stand in a room he built safe, with a note in the trash and my lip still hot.
*Ask him who the room upstairs was built for.*
Below me a bike starts. I know that engine. It's his.
I watch him ride out and wonder whose name he says when his door is shut.