Rain thinned the morning light to a dull gray. Kael rode out before dawn with half the pack. The stables echoed with hoofbeats and curses. Lyria watched them go from the east wing window, feeling the thread between her and him pull tight with each step he took.
She could sit and watch him leave. She could curl up and sink under the new rules that kept her inside these walls. Instead she packed a small satchel and followed.
By the time the war council assembled, the hall hummed with men who smelled like iron and mud. Maps lay across the table. Candles guttered. Elders muttered about protocol and enemies and who to blame when things went bad. Lyria came in with boots still wet. Heads turned. Some faces tightened into old scowls.
"You do not belong at this table," one elder said before Kael could. The words were sharp and meant to slice her small.
She answered without thinking. Her voice was rough and not practiced, the way it sounded when she had cried into her pillow in the smoke after her brother died. "If you want to know where they will strike next, listen."
A laugh circled the room. Another elder leaned on his cane and smirked. "What would a wolf from a burned pack know about tactics?"
She did not tell them about the night her brother dragged her through the trees, how he counted the steps of enemies so they could slip past. She did not tell them how he pressed his palm to her face and taught her to read the land. She only said what she saw.
"They will not come at the main road," she said. "They will try the ridge. They will split east and west and cut the scouts off. If you leave the patrols thin on the ridge they will trap them."
The hall grew louder. People argued. Kael did not interrupt. He watched her with that unreadable stare. He let the elders tear at her words until they turned the suggestion into mockery. They called it bravado and youth. They joked about letting her lead and then laughed at the thought.
Kael dismissed her in front of them. He said she was reckless. He told the council they needed seasoned voices, not grief-struck ones. He made a show of respect and then walked out with his men.
She left too, burning with shame and anger. The elder's snickers and the way Kael had not defended her scraped under her skin. The thread between her and Kael thrummed angry answers she did not want to hear.
Hours later a patrol did not return. Warriors went out in force. Then a runner burst into the courtyard, mud streaking his face, breath shredded from running.
"Ambushed," he panted. "Ridge trap. They were waiting. The first patrol is down."
Kael's face changed then. The arrogance slipped. He barked orders like a man whose throat had been cut and he was learning to breathe again. They rode hard. Lyria followed, even though guards tried to stop her. She would not be left behind when people died.
On the ridge the scene was bloody. Men lay in cruel angles. Smoke rose. The rogues had left marks claiming a score. But the scouts who had replaced the first patrol had managed to flank the flank, cutting off the rogues' exit.
Kael found her there, chest heaving from the ride, mud spattered on her boots. He watched the way she stood, hands on hips, eyes narrow.
"You were right," he said, and the sound was small and thin, like someone admitting they had lost a fight inside themselves. He did not say it loud. He did not look proud. He only said it.
The patrol's leader came up to him, flushed and still angry in that fresh way of men who face death. "If she had not warned them, we would have lost more," he said. "She saved lives."
The elders back at the estate would scowl and deny what happened. They would twist it into talk. But in that ridge mud and blood did not lie. Kael watched the leader and then looked at Lyria. For a flash, anger and something raw and complicated passed over his face. Then he closed his mouth like a man who swallowed a blade.
They rode back to the estate with less swagger. The pack murmured differently now. Some who had spat now nodded without saying it out loud. Others glared like wounded beasts.
When they returned, Kael's mother waited in the great hall. She had the lean build of a woman who had once run with wolves and the face of someone who had kept grief like a stone in her chest. She studied Lyria as if she were a stain on a blanket that would not come out.
"So she warns your patrols now," she said. The words were polite but the tone was a knife. "You brought ashes into my house."
Lyria's mouth went dry. "I did not ask to be sold," she said.
Kael's mother's laugh sounded like wind over dead leaves. "No one asked to be sold. Some deserve it more than others." She stepped closer. "You were at Selene's fall."
Heat spiked in Lyria's chest. "I was running," she said. "I tried to save my brother. I did not know Selene—"
"She was your sister," the woman cut in. Her eyes sharpened to stone. "Your half sister by the Alpha's indiscretion."
The room tilted. Lyria's heart hammered so loud she feared it would drown out everything else. Selene. Her sister. The woman whose name had been whispered with mourning. Lyria's breath came fast and ragged.
"You are lying," she said.
The woman did not blink. "You are a convenient story and your father sold you like a coin. Fate was meant for Selene. You were not supposed to stand in that place. Yet here you are, smelling like her and wearing the mark of an Alpha who will not let go."
Lyria's hands balled at her sides. She wanted to scream at her father, to tear something from him for doing this. But he was safe in his seat and politics had a way of swallowing screams.
Kael was quiet. For a long time he simply watched Lyria while the old woman flayed her with cold words. She could feel his gaze like a blade. It cut and did not heal.
"You should have died instead," he told her then, without turning his face away, voice low and full of a hatred that had roots deeper than any of them had seen.
The words hit like a stone. Lyria felt air leave her lungs. Around them conversations stopped. The world narrowed to the ring of sound in her ears and the pounding of her heart.
She had survived the fire. She had survived the auction. She had survived poison and mockery. But no one had ever wished her dead out loud using the old love of their Alpha as the reason.
The hall smelled of damp wool and old anger. Her vision wavered for a second and then sharpened. Something cold and bright slid across her skin. It was not pain. It was recognition.
She had thought she wanted answers. She had thought the truth would set her free. Now the truth was a weight no one had told her how to carry.
Outside the hall, thunder growled like a warning. Inside, Kael's words hung between them.
"You should have died instead."
Lyria opened her mouth to answer. The hall waited for what she would say.