Chapter 63

In the late afternoon, after the last bell rang, Lara Winters stood in the courtyard by the low wall with her arms folded and watched students spill out through the double doors in uneven streams. A strange mixture of satisfaction and something darker moved through her. The school still looked the same, yet something within the pack had subtly altered underneath.

The movement around Kelsey no longer jittered with the same raw instability. Males no longer circled or looked when they thought they weren't being watched. The perimeter around her remained wide and stable. Lara supposed Jason's order had finally landed, underlined by the example Ethan had set, enough to make them internalize the lesson.

Beside her, Irene tucked her fingers deeper into the sleeves of her coat and squinted toward the school doors as though she expected something entertaining to emerge at any given moment. Tess, leaning one hip against the wall with all the grace of someone deliberately trying to seem careless, let out a short breath that fogged the air.

"So," Tess said. "You really think that's it?"

Lara did not look at her. "If by that you mean the collective craziness of some of the boys in this school finally getting beaten back into line, then yes."

Tess gave a soft, humorless huff. "You sound very sure."

Lara turned then, slowly, giving Tess the full weight of her attention. Tess held the look for a second, then lowered her eyes before it had the chance to become a challenge.

Good.

"You should be careful with that tone," Lara said, her own voice staying smooth. "Your boyfriend thought disrespectfulness looked good on him too. Until it didn't."

Tess's face tightened. "He's not my boyfriend anymore."

"Oh?" Lara asked, one eyebrow lifting. "That's interesting. But then again, I understand where you're coming from. I don't have a preference for weak males either."

Tess's jaw worked. For one second, genuine heat flashed in her eyes, anger, humiliation, perhaps even grief, though Lara had very little patience for any of the three.

Then Irene, who hated direct conflict almost as much as she loved being near it as a spectator, shifted her weight and cut in before Tess could decide whether to escalate or retreat.

"Did either of you hear that sound this morning?" Irene asked, too casually.

Lara glanced at her. "What sound?"

"In the southern wing. Upstairs somewhere." Irene lowered her voice in a way that guaranteed it would carry more rather than less. "Something huge, metallic. Third period. Everyone on the second floor heard it. Like a whole piece of furniture hit the floor."

Tess frowned. "I heard something. Someone said it was one of the metal cabinets in the old music room. A janitor apparently knocked it over."

Lara huffed. She had heard it too, distantly, between classes. A single violent crash from somewhere above, loud enough to pull heads up for a second and then vanish into rumor before anyone had time to track it properly.

"Yeah, a janitor knocked over a file cabinet," Lara said. "Shocking."

Irene made a face. "You're no fun."

"No," Lara said. "I'm just not interested."

And she wasn't. Not in that. Not when the more important fact of the day stood all around them in the rearranged space of the lot and the way the younger males now lowered their eyes before they lifted their heads toward Kelsey. Not when Ethan had gone an entire school day without once visibly pulling toward her. That mattered. That mattered more than any sound in some forgotten corner of the building.

It had taken only a day after the forest incident for the whole atmosphere around him to change. He was still distant, but the old appearance of a man trying to stay upright on a rocking boat had quieted. He looked more like his old self than Lara had seen in months. Better, even. Stable. Focused. Everything this valley needed in an heir, and everything she needed in a mate.

Lara had waited for relief to feel better than it did, because relief, in her experience, always came with caution tied to it. Something must have happened in that forest, something apart from the challenge. Lara didn't like not knowing. But she knew humans had a saying, 'don't look a gift horse in the mouth', and this new stability was a gift she wasn't going to nitpick.

The school doors opened again and a new stream of bodies spilled out into the courtyard. Irene straightened. Tess went quiet. Lara did not need either of them to tell her why. The shift in the air was enough.

Ethan had come out. She felt it first in the sway of the bodies of students around him, followed by a small automatic retreat of the other girls nearest the path, then in the quick lowering of the eyes of the few males farther off.

He crossed the courtyard without hurry. The muted light drained the color from everything but could not make him look anything less than what he was. He moved with a contained focus that had always been dangerous in him, but now seemed less distracted, almost severe. Irene and Tess both shifted back a little on instinct. Ethan ignored them.

He stopped in front of Lara only because stopping was required for the words he intended to say.

"We're running tonight," he said. Nothing in his voice invited discussion, intimacy, or interpretation. It was information delivered in clean, cold lines.

And yet Irene's eyes widened at once. Tess looked from Ethan to Lara and back again, something like incredulous interest sharpening her whole face. Lara kept her own expression still.

"In the snow?" she asked him.

"Yes."

He gave one short nod, his gaze already moving past her toward the parking lot, the tree line, the broader part of the territory that always seemed to exist in his awareness even while he stood still. Then he turned and walked away.

Silence held for a moment. Then Irene let out the breath she had clearly been storing for the sole purpose of making meaning out of what she had just witnessed.

"He invited you. You're back in the game."

Lara did not answer immediately. Beside her, Tess folded her arms tighter.

"That's what that was," Irene insisted. "He came over here just to tell you that."

Lara watched Ethan's back recede across the lot. He did not look back.

"Yes," she said at last, then turned to Irene coldly. "Are you suggesting I was out of the game?"

The sharpness of her tone suggested it wasn't a question. Irene looked down. "No, of course not."

Lara briefly considered the offense, then decided to let it slide. Because whatever else was true, whatever she did not know, whatever the forest had done to him or failed to do, Ethan had just made a choice in public. He had crossed a crowded courtyard and spoken to her, not because he had to in any bare logistical sense, a text would have served, a message through Nell, a dozen quieter alternatives, but because he wanted the pack to see. Because status still mattered. Because appearances still mattered. Because whatever mistakes he might have made while out of his mind, he was now visibly placing her where she was meant to stand.

Tess's mouth twisted. "Or," she said, "he's only performing because he knows everyone is watching."

Lara turned her head slightly. "And?"

Tess opened her mouth, then shut it again.

Because Lara was right. In a pack, what one did in front of witnesses mattered more than what one thought in private. Ryan had forgotten that. Now he dragged a ruined shoulder through the halls, and no one in the pack could look at him without remembering exactly what came of that mistake.

Lara looked across the lot and found Matt and Ryan standing alone near the outer edge. They did not belong anywhere anymore. Not with the males. Not with the females. Not with the old easy social patterns of school. She had no pity for them. Such was the fate of those who challenged the alpha and failed.

Lara's gaze flicked away from them too fast, like lingering there for too long could somehow stain her as well.

Irene, on the other hand, was still looking after Ethan with bright, speculative eyes. "He didn't even look toward her today," she said. Her meaning was obvious. No name needed.

Lara kept her face smooth. Maybe. That possibility, that Ethan wasn't fully cured, still lived in her, quiet and very carefully caged. She would not feed it in front of Irene and Tess. Would not speak it and make it more real. Would not let doubt show where rank ought to stand.

Her father had never hidden his view of Jason Greystone, competent perhaps, but soft in the places that mattered, too willing to accommodate old Blackwell sentiment, too willing to let compromise masquerade as strength at the cost of the pack. Gary Winters would never have phrased it quite so plainly in public, but Lara had grown up listening to those thoughts shaped into words. She knew them as well as she knew her own reflection.

Her marriage to Ethan wasn't supposed to be romance, but an alliance. Once, however, she had harbored hopes. She dreamed of a bond forming between them, the one that would make them as magnificent and formidable as Jack and Elise Blackwell had been in their youth, or so she was told. But the years passed and a bond hadn't formed. She managed to convince herself it didn't matter since many alpha pairs were mated without a bond anyway. And then Kelsey Blackwell strolled into town and tore down the carefully laid plans like a house of cards.

To say that Lara hated her would be inaccurate. She despised her in a way one despises a rodent in the house. A pest that destroyed everything yet one she was forced to tolerate.

Still, another more pressing issue remained. Bond or no bond, Lara's mating to Ethan was the one bloodless road by which Winters power could fold itself back into the center of this valley without having to rip it open first. If that road failed, her father would not simply smile and accept it. He would move. And if he moved openly against Jason and won, the future would not belong to Lara.

She thought, briefly, of the girl her father had already begun to consider for her younger brother Alex, and the future in which that girl was alpha female. That was not a future Lara intended to live in.

"We should go," she said.

Irene blinked. "Already?"

"It's late."

That was not the real reason, but it was sufficient. Tess pushed off the wall with a sigh.

As they started toward the lot, Irene fell into step on Lara's right, still too curious to leave silence alone for long.

"So you're running with him tonight."

Lara kept her eyes ahead. "Apparently."

Irene smiled sideways. "You sound pleased."

Lara considered that. Then she allowed herself the smallest, most controlled version of the truth.

"I sound," she said, "like someone who prefers things in their natural order."

Tess laughed once under her breath, bitterly. As they walked, snow crunched under their boots where the slush hadn't reached. Behind them, the school lot slowly emptied, settling into silence.

With a sigh, Lara got into her car, shut the door on the school and the watching pack, and sat for a moment with her hands on the wheel.

Whatever had happened in the forest, whatever had happened inside Ethan afterward, if it had returned him to himself enough to stand straight and remember where he was meant to place his public weight, then Lara would take that and use it. Later, if necessary, she could worry about the cracks. For now, the structure mattered.

Lara started the engine.

Whatever doubts she might carry, they didn't matter.

The tree line at the far edge of town stood dark against the grey sky. Somewhere beyond it, the forest waited for them, veiled in white.