Chapter3 Your fated mate. Still hasn't shown up?

Fenric's POV

I sat at the long table, a glass of wine the Omega had just set beside me, still catching the pale winter light. I hadn't touched it.

When the door opened, I only lifted my eyes.

Soren. Gold hair, dark coat, the unhurried steadiness in his walk that came from years on the border.

There was something in his expression that he was deliberately holding back. I had known him long enough to read it in a single glance: he'd come with something to ask.

Then I saw her.

She was half a step behind Soren—honey-brown curls falling loose at her ears, shoulders soft and rounded, a white cat cradled against her chest.

The cat's amber eyes moved across the room without expression, taking in the space with considerably more composure than its owner.

When she walked in, her gaze drifted briefly to the plant on the windowsill before pulling back—and landed directly on mine.

She startled.

I didn't. I had already looked away.

"Good evening," I said, and set the wine glass down.

I had known they were coming. Word had reached me ahead of their visit—Soren would be bringing his mate. I hadn't been pleased about it.

Tonight, we were here to finalize the supply lines for a campaign launching in three days against the feral wolf clans. Provisions, weapons, troop rotations—nothing about that conversation was casual, and none of it had any business being witnessed by someone who had no part in it.

And he was bringing her here anyway. I didn't know what he thought he was doing.

Soren took the seat across from me and drew her into the chair at his side. She settled with the cat still in her arms, her back very straight, the posture of someone making a deliberate effort to hold herself together.

"Before we get to business," Soren said, his tone level, "there's something I'd like to ask of you. While I'm off fighting, if anything goes wrong—"

The words landed. I heard her breath catch. I didn't look at her, but in my periphery, the figure beside Soren went slightly rigid, her fingers pressing tighter into the cat's fur.

"—I'm asking you to look after Ylva."

Ylva. So that was her name. It suited her better than I would have expected.

Soren stood, clasped his hands, and met my eyes without flinching. He had never been one to talk in circles. That was one of the reasons I had bothered with him at all.

I set the wine glass down and let my gaze settle on Ylva.

She was looking at the floor, biting the inside of her cheek—I could tell she was forcing herself not to come apart. Her hair fell across half her face, leaving only the line of her jaw and the curve of her neck exposed.

At her ears, a pair of white beads: rough-textured, worn smooth, sitting against her earlobes with a softness that didn't quite match the material.

My gaze stopped on them for one second.

Wolf bone.

I recognized it.

Soren's work.

I remembered the year Soren had nearly severed all ties with Ironblood Pack over this woman. Thelda had fainted on the spot. The elders had petitioned in a bloc.

The story had spread through every Pack in the capital, reached the ears of the Alpha King himself, and become the season's most talked-about scandal.

Ironblood had asked me to intervene; I'd agreed on the surface and had no intention of doing so.

Then Soren had shown up at my door uninvited, drunk my study dry over the course of an entire night, and talked about Ylva—how she was this, how she was that—with the single-minded devotion of a dog that had found a bone and refused to let go.

I had sat across from him for over an hour with one thought in my head: whether to have someone drag him out.

My assessment of her at the time had been straightforward: Greenvine farming stock, no combat ability, an Omega whose fated bond had given her access to something she hadn't earned. Not worth the cost Soren was paying.

I looked at her again now.

When she looked at Soren, there was something in her eyes I had never seen on anyone else's face. Not admiration. Not dependence. Something total and unguarded.

Something shifted in my chest—an irritation I couldn't quite name. Beside it, Frostblade stirred, restless in a way that made no sense to me. I pulled my gaze away.

"Understood."

Soren's expression brightened. Both of them turned to me at the same moment. My eyes went to Ylva first—I wasn't sure why—and I caught it immediately: the redness rimming her eyes, the kind that came after crying.

"Thank you, Fenric."

"Thank you, Alpha Silvermane."

One voice high, one low. Unexpectedly synchronized.

I paused. "You're both too kind."

Ylva rose and looked down to adjust the cat in her arms, not glancing at me again. Soren's hand settled naturally at her back as he guided her toward the door, and he reached over to pull the collar of her wrap closed without being asked.

I lifted the wine glass and looked down at the surface of the wine.

Frostblade was anything but quiet in the space behind my ribs—restless in a way I couldn't account for, edged with something that felt uncomfortably close to anger.

What are you doing. I addressed him inwardly.

Frost didn't answer. He only tilted his nose slightly upward, toward the direction she had left, and drew one long, slow breath.

Then he turned and looked directly at me with those pale blue eyes.

I pressed the reaction down, like holding a taut string flat with my palm.

The door hadn't fully closed before Soren pushed his head back through the gap, wearing the exact expression that made me want to have him removed from the premises.

"One more thing." He leaned against the doorframe, dropping his voice, glancing down the corridor to confirm Ylva was out of earshot before turning back. "Your fated mate. Still hasn't shown up?"

I looked at him. "No."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

Soren was quiet for a beat. Then his expression shifted into something that sat between sympathy and poorly concealed satisfaction. "So you might be waiting a long time. Or—" He paused. "Maybe you just don't have one."

I set the wine glass back on the table and said nothing.

"Though," Soren added, turning his head toward the corridor again, the corner of his mouth pulling upward in a way he clearly wasn't trying to stop, his voice dropping as though he were talking to himself, "I really am grateful I have her. You wouldn't know what it feels like—wherever you are, whatever you're doing, you just think of her and everything settles."

He glanced back at me then, something genuinely warm in his expression. "You should experience it sometime. Having a fated mate. As your best friend, I mean it—I hope you find yours soon."

"Logistics manifest for the campaign supply chain," I said. "Everything we agreed on. Follow it."

I picked up the stack of documents and tossed them at him. Soren caught them without looking.

I had been hearing variations of that blessing since the day I came of age—had, in the beginning, let myself hold onto them. But hope wore down with repetition, and whatever had once stirred in me at those words had long since gone quiet.

Perhaps Soren was right, in his own offhand way. Perhaps there had never been a mate for me to find.

He caught documents with one hand, unbothered, his gaze drifting toward the far end of the corridor as he turned the pages—carrying a satisfaction so unguarded and complete it didn't even register as showing off.

"Go find your mate," I said.

Soren laughed once, knocked the doorframe twice with his knuckles, and left.

His footsteps faded down the corridor.

I remained where I was. The waiting room settled back into quiet. I lifted the wine glass and drank. The wine had gone flat, bitter on the back of the throat.

No fated mate. I turned the words over once in my mind, my tone even. It doesn't matter. I had never needed that kind of thing.