MATED TO FATHER, FATED TO SONS

Chapter 171: WHAT WE MADE

FREYA

I have made it through a dungeon cell, a year of exile, a fake death, and Victor Hale’s hands around my throat twice.

First time when he found out I had fucked Alpha Corvin the day he introduced me to him.

Second time when I had fucked him the next day after surviving his stranglation.

I was not going to be intimidated by a girl in a pink dress.

She held my wrist and she did not look away and I gave her credit for that much. Most people dropped their gaze when I held direct eye contact with them. She did not. Her eyes were steady and her grip was firm and she had crossed a kitchen in three steps without thinking about it, which told me more about her than anything Corvin had ever said.

Fast. Instinctive. Not afraid.

I pulled my wrist back.

She let it go.

The kitchen staff had gone very still. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. Every single one of them was deciding whether staying was worth it.

Mrs. Caroline stood at the counter with her chin up and her back straight like she had won something.

I turned toward her.

She held her chin up at me with the composed certainty of a woman who had said what she came to say and intended to stand behind it.

"You should take today off." I kept my voice pleasant. I tilted my head toward Amaris and then back to Mrs. Caroline, slow enough that she could follow exactly where my gaze went.

"The person who pays your salary is the same one who fucks the person you just called a whore. Come back tomorrow when you have thought carefully about what that means."

Her jaw tightened. The color climbed her face. She took her apron off, folded it, set it on the counter, and walked out through the back door without another word.

The two junior staff near the stove suddenly found urgent things to do in the storage room.

Then it was just the two of us.

"Why the hell did you put your hands on me." I bit out.

Amaris turned to face me properly and I studied her and we both did the thing where you sized someone up and neither of you was subtle about it.

She was younger than I had expected. She was also more composed than I had expected, standing there in her pink dress with her chin level and her hands easy at her sides. I had expected someone who had been brought here for a transaction and had shrunk to fit it.

What I was looking at was a woman who had walked into this pack, understood exactly what had been done to her, and decided to stay upright inside it anyway. She was measuring me the same way I was measuring her and not hiding it.

I could work with that.

Amaris folded her arms. "You were going to slap a member of pack staff."

"I was going to correct a woman who needed correcting." I folded my arms right back. "You stopped me."

"She’s staff. I’ll handle it."

"You were not handling it. You walked in at the end of a sentence."

"I caught enough."

"Did you." I tilted my head. "Because I heard that particular speech start at breakfast and continue at every interval since. You have not been handling it for three days till now so now I am handling it, Luna."

Her jaw shifted. Her chin went up. She was adding it to a column somewhere, working out what it meant and what it cost me to say it and whether the cost was real.

She lifted her chin. "Why."

Oh, I see. She’s going to ask why. She’s going to stand there in that pink dress and ask me why I have been defending her and she is going to mean it as a challenge. Fine. I have answered harder questions.

I took a slow breath. "Why have I been handling it?"

She stepped forward slightly. "Why have you been handling it? You could have gone to Corvin. You could have let it go. You don’t owe me anything."

Because I need this pack to function and it does not function when kitchen staff publicly insults me.

Because I have been watching that woman say it to every person who would listen and someone had to stop it. Because I have my own reasons for needing this household standing when Corvin gets back and a destabilized kitchen is not part of that plan.

But I was not going to say all of that.

"Because she was doing it in front of staff and that is bad for the order of this house." I held Amaris’s gaze. "And because calling someone a fuck whore before eight in the morning is beneath the standard of this pack regardless of what I personally think of the Luna they are so called defending."

Her eyes sharpened. "And what do you personally think of the Luna they are so called defending."

I held her gaze. "I think I walked into a room over a week ago and found her on my fated mate’s bed."

I was deliberate with calling him my fated mate because I needed her to understand that.

"Your fated mate or my mate?"

There it was.

The thing that had been sitting between us since the moment I walked through the kitchen door.

She did not drop her eyes. I would have respected her less if she had.

"You knocked," she murmured carefully.

"I did."

"So you knew what was happening."

"I have a fairly clear picture."

"And."

I took her in. The girl who had come here as a breeder and had somehow become the center of a situation that involved my fated mate, my brother, a madman who wanted us both dead, and me standing in a kitchen defending myself to her own staff. Life had a peculiar sense of humor.

"And you are mated to Corvin by law." I kept my voice even. "And you are my fated mate’s mate, which means you and I have more feelings about each other than either of us probably wants to deal with in a kitchen."

She blinked.

"I am not your enemy, Amaris."

She arched her brow. "You were about to slap my kitchen staff."

"I was about to slap a woman who called you a whore to your face." I held her gaze. "There is a difference. You can be angry at me for what I am to Corvin and I can be conflicted about what you are to Corvin and both those things can be true and we can still be on the same side of this."

Her eyes stayed on mine for a long moment.

"I don’t know what side you’re on," she murmured finally.

"I know." I kept my voice flat. "That’s fair. We haven’t had a real conversation."

"We’re having one now."

"We are having the beginning of one." I held her gaze. "The rest can wait until we know each other better."

Her eyes held mine, steady, and I could see her weighing something. I did not push. I had learned a long time ago that you did not push people when they were deciding whether to trust you. You waited. You let them arrive at it on their own. You let them feel like the choice was theirs because it was. And if it wasn’t, you had already lost anyway.

She was not walking away.

She opened her mouth.

The door flew open.

Nia came through it at a run. Still dressed from sleep, her hair still up from the night before. Her eyes went from Amaris to me and back to Amaris and she made the calculation in a second and kept talking.

"Amaris." She grabbed the doorframe. "Victor’s men are at the north gate."

The kitchen went silent in a different way than it had been silent before.

"How many?" I asked my heart racing at the speed of light and my mouth speaking even before Amaris could process.

Nia’s eyes cut to me. "A lot. Already past the tree line. Marco says the sentinels have held the perimeter for now but they are outnumbered. They won’t hold for long."

"How long ago?" Amaris asked, her mouth finally catching up with reality.

"Ten minutes. Maybe less."

Ten minutes. Corvin still twenty four hours out. Rowan acting Alpha. Whatever Victor had sent today already inside the tree line and moving fast.

He’ll see you soon, Lila had said nights ago, smiling at the door.

He had moved faster than I expected.

My eyes went to Amaris.

Her eyes were already on me.

"Ryker." I kept my voice steady. "We need Ryker. He is our best shot right now with Corvin out."

Amaris was already at the door. "I’ll get him. Let’s go Nia,"

Nia did not move.

We both turned toward her.

Her hands went loose at her sides. Her lips pressed together once. Whatever was coming next, she was not in a hurry to say it and we were not going to like it.

"That’s the other thing," she whispered.

Nobody spoke.

"We can’t find Ryker."