Chapter 2

RAMIEL

~•~

The noise in my head stopped.

I’d carried it my whole life, that low roar behind my eyes that never quit, and then I walked past the fountain and it just went out, like somebody hit a switch, and I stopped where I stood.

Then I caught her. One clean note under all of it, the coffee and the sweat and two hundred kids, and my body turned toward the girl before I told it to.

A resonator. Here. Standing in wet socks getting laughed at.

“Stahl.” Tobias was at my shoulder out of nowhere, his voice down low. “Whatever you’re smelling, walk away from it.”

“You smell it.”

“Everybody’s going to smell it.” He moved in close so the humans couldn’t hear. “Which is exactly why you walk. Right now. Before someone with less control than you puts it together.”

“And then what happens to her?”

“Not our problem.”

“She’s standing in the open, Tobias. No name, no pack, no one behind her.” I watched the boy lean into her face. “How long?”

“Don’t.”

“How long before one of ours takes her?”

He didn’t answer. That was the answer.

The boy knocked the cup out of her hand. It burst all over the stones and the crowd made that ugly delighted sound and she stood there and took it, and the quiet in my head turned into something with teeth.

“You’re promised to Adelheid,” Tobias said fast, because he saw my face. “You do this, there’s no walking it back. Your father—”

“I know what it means.”

“Ramiel—”

I was already gone.

“Don’t look at me like that, just trust—” I heard him start, and then I was out of range, crossing the stones, and he had to make a choice behind me and I didn’t have time to care which one he made.

The girl turned her head and looked right at me. She felt it. She wasn’t supposed to feel anything, that’s the whole story of what she is, empty, a still pool, takes and never gives. But she looked at me like a rabbit looks at the grass moving, and the pull came back doubled, and I thought, that’s not in any story I was ever told.

I didn’t look at her. I’d stop if I looked at her.

“Step away from the girl,” I said.

They reacted before I finished. Good. Every gasp was a witness, every witness carried it home, that was the entire point.

The boy laughed, but it came apart. “I’m sorry, who—”

“You should be ashamed of yourself.”

He went white. I held his eyes long enough for him to feel how small he was, then I quit looking at him, because he was already finished.

“Walk away,” I told him.

“This is, okay, this is insane, she’s not even—”

“I won’t say it twice.”

He walked. Took his bet money and his laughing friends and he walked, and the crowd watched the most popular boy in school back down from me without a hand laid on him, and they’d talk about that for a week. Let them.

Then I turned to her.

This close the quiet was an ocean. I could’ve stood there a year and never moved.

“What is happening?” she said. Her voice was shaking. “Who are you?”

“You’re going to play along. I’ll explain everything, but not here.”

“Play along with—”

“What’s your name?”

“What?”

“Your name.” Quieter. The clock was running. Half of these kids had phones up and half of them weren’t human and I could feel the second group starting to understand. “Quickly.”

“Sorel.” She said it like a question. “Sorel Vance, but I don’t—”

I took her hand. She froze.

“Sorel Vance.” I turned us both to face all of them, every staring face, every wolf I could feel lighting up around the edges of the crowd. “Then I’m sorry. You’re going to hate me for about a minute.”

“What are you—”

“She’s mine,” I said, loud, to all of them. “Under our law. Witnessed.”

The humans went quiet because they thought it was romantic.

The wolves went quiet because they knew exactly what I’d just done.

And at the back, past the fountain, a girl I’d known my whole life dropped her bag on the stones and looked at me like I’d put a knife in her.

“Adelheid,” I said, under my breath, only for myself.

Sorel was staring up at me, her hand stiff in mine, her face wet, completely lost.

“You said a minute,” she said. “It’s been a minute. Explain.”

“Not here,” I said.

“You keep saying that—”

“Because here is about to get worse.”

I felt him before I saw him. Off to the right, pushing up through the crowd, one of ours, young and stupid and already too far gone on her scent to think straight. Pheromones coming off him in waves, that sweet rot smell of an Alpha who’s stopped deciding things.

“Stahl.” He said my name wrong, too friendly, his eyes locked on Sorel. “Didn’t know you were claiming today. Funny. I don’t think it took.”

“It took. You heard it.”

“I heard you say words.” He smiled at her. She stepped back into me without meaning to. “She doesn’t smell like yours yet. She doesn’t smell like anybody’s.”

“Marcus.” I put her behind me with one arm. “Walk away while you still can.”

“What’s happening?” Sorel’s hand grabbed the back of my coat. “Why is he looking at me like that?”

“Don’t talk to her,” I said.

“Or what?” Marcus took a step. The crowd, the human half, had no idea anything was wrong, they thought two rich boys were squaring up over a girl. The other half had gone dead silent and pulled back, making room, because they knew. “You going to fight me over a human, Stahl? In the open? Your father would love that.”

“Ramiel.” Tobias. Back at my side, low and tight. “He’s not the only one. There’s three more by the steps. Get her out. Now.”

“Three,” Sorel said. “Three what? Three what?”

“Marcus is going to apologize,” I said, “and then he’s going to remember who I am.”

“Or,” Marcus said, “you hand her over, and nobody tells the clan you broke the law for a girl who isn’t even—”

I hit him.

Once. He didn’t see it because nobody sees it, that’s the thing about me nobody believes until it’s happening to them, and he went down onto the stones and stayed there, and the human half of the crowd screamed and the wolf half went very, very still.

“Anybody else want to test whether it took?” I said it to all of them. Loud. To the steps, to the three I couldn’t see but could feel. “She’s mine. Witnessed. Come through me.”

Nobody moved.

“Oh my God.” Sorel had both hands on my coat now, staring at Marcus on the ground. “You hit him. You just—is he—what is wrong with all of you?”

“Tobias. Car.”

“Already coming.”

“I’m not getting in a car.” Her voice climbed. “I don’t know you. I don’t know any of you. I want to go home, I want to call my—”

“You can’t go home.”

“Why not?”

A black car came up over the curb and stopped hard at the edge of the courtyard, and Tobias had the door open, and every wolf in that crowd was watching to see what I’d do, and the clock in my chest was screaming.

“Because they know where you live now,” I said. “All of them. And I’m the only thing standing between you and that.”

She looked at the car. She looked at Marcus, still down. She looked at me, and I watched it land, the real fear, the kind that finally believes.

“What are you?” she whispered.

“Get in the car, Sorel.”