Page 23 of Alpha’s Divine Claim

“Hours in the old holdings,” I say. “I ended up in one corner with no reason for it. Last case I opened, I put my hand right on it.”

“How?” Nova asks.

“Instinct. Same answer I’ve always given for the things I get right with no way to explain how. It’s always been true. It’s never explained anything.”

Ben’s been quiet through all of it. Then he asks the question sitting under everyone else’s.

“Rhonan and Serena are still there,” he says. “If the portals can’t be trusted, how do they get home?”

Harper looks at him. Kari looks at the table. Evren straightens off the chimney stone.

“I don’t know yet,” Nyxiana says. “I’m working on it. Rhonan stays where he is until I do.”

“He’ll love hearing that,” Evren says.

Callum huffs something close to a laugh. “He’s going to be furious.”

“Then we get word to him right after this meeting,” Dane says. He leans on the back of a chair. “Does any of this change anything with the marks?”

“Let me check,” Nyxiana says.

Kari’s right hand comes up and closes over her own palm. Harper’s fingers go to the inside of her wrist, to the knotwork sitting there.

Nyxiana turns to Kari. “May I see it?”

Kari holds her hand out, palm up. Nyxiana’s fingers hover just above the skin. Everyone waits on her.

“It’s moving,” she says. “And this time it answers clean. The North Range.”

She looks to Rafe when she says it. “Further north than your territory,” she adds. “The most northern part of it.”

I look down at the shard on the table instead of at her.

I know that ground. Ridge country, harsh and high, the far end of it, past where Rafe’s people ever ran. I spent generations there, long enough to watch everyone I grew up with grow old and die while I didn’t.

Dane straightens up. He’s talking to Nyxiana, looking at me. “The North Range. You phase the two of you there and back, carrying him the whole way. Is that safe for you?”

“I can handle it,” she says.

The questions run down.

“Take it somewhere warded and hold onto it,” Dane says. “Nobody else touches it.”

Lyanna wraps the shard in cloth from her bag and puts it away.

The hardest part of the meeting is over. Everyone eases up now that the worst of it has already landed. Chairs go back. Callum says something to Rafe about the east ridge run in the morning. Rafe answers him low. Ben’s arm goes around Harper. Neither of them looks like they planned it. Rafe’s hand finds the back of Kari’s chair. She leans into it while she talks to Nova.

Nyxiana stays near me. The overhead light catches in the silver of her hair. It shines. I don’t belong to anyone the way everyone else in this room belongs to someone. Wanting to shows up anyway.

“You two leave for the North Range at first light,” Dane says. “Get what rest you can before then.”

Chairs finish emptying. Full dark has come down outside while we talked. I pick my moment. “I need some air,” I say.

Dane nods once.

I step outside. The door closes behind me, cutting off the warmth. I stand out there until the cool actually reaches me, through my shirt and into the skin underneath it.

Kari’s mark already told us where we’re headed. The North Range. The pack that raised me on that ground and never once called it mine.