Chapter 1 Duty I never Choose

Elena 

"That’s all the Great Guardian Elena Vance had today?" Tracy's staff hit me again. It landed on my ribs, hard enough to steal my breath. "Come on, you're not even a true Guardian. No wonder Kai never looks your way." She mocked.

Tracy always knew which words hurt harder than the staff. I was destined to become the personal Guardian for Alpha Prince Kai once he officially took over as Alpha. The problem was, Kai didn't even know who I was.

I dodged the next swing, caught the staff mid-air, and used it to haul myself back to my feet.

At first glance, you'd have thought I was just another warrior trainee. Nothing about me stood out unless you were looking for it. Nineteen years old, still a trainee. That was the story most people in Silver Moon would tell you about Elena Vance, if you asked. But to the elders, I was a living reminder of sacrifice.

Tracy turned into a kick before I'd finished standing. It caught me square in the stomach and folded me half over.

"Don't let your mother's death go to waste," she said, circling me while I fought to get my breath back. "Though I suppose it already has. She died for people who don't even remember her name."

Something in my chest tightened.

My mother was a Guardian, and so was my father. Guardians aren't like other wolves. We train, fight, earn our rank, and that's the whole of it. A Guardian swears a blood oath to one Alpha bloodline, sealed under a full moon, marked into the skin over the heart. It isn't a job. It's a leash you put on yourself and call an honor. My parents wore that leash proudly. Eight years ago my mother died in it, saving our Luna and her four-year-old son. My father took the blow meant for the Alpha himself, and it split his spine clean through. He hadn't walked a single step since.

That was the debt Tracy loved to throw in my face like it was nothing. Like it hadn't shaped every single day of my life since I was eleven years old.

Personal Guardian to Kai, once he took the throne. Nobody had ever asked me if I wanted the job. It was just assumed, the way people assume the sun's coming up.

So most mornings, you'd have found me exactly where you'd expect, here on the training grounds, being humiliated by Tracy.

"At least she died for something," I said, straightening up despite the ache in my ribs. "What exactly would you die for, Tracy? A title you married your way into hoping for?"

Tracy's jaw went tight. A few trainees gasped. No one talked back to her like that, so she came back at me harder, faster, aiming for joints instead of center mass the way she always did when she was losing her composure.

Tracy Duskmoor was Silver Moon's Warrior Maiden Commander, which meant she was the one who decided who trained, how hard, and if she hated you, that determined how badly she’d humiliate you in front of thirty other she-wolves. She was Alpha Prince Kai's distant cousin, and to everyone in the Silver Moon pack, she was the Luna to be.

I took a hit to the same ribs twice and tasted copper where I'd bitten my own cheek.I’d learned her patterns over the years. The moment Tracy got angry, she always over-rotated on her left side. And when she did, I swept her leg clean out from under her.

Tracy hit the sand.

The yard went dead quiet.

For one full second I actually saw it on her face. Fear. Because for one second, in front of thirty of her own trainees, Tracy Duskmoor was about to lose to the girl she'd spent six years calling a nobody.

She wasn't going to let that stand.

"Foul," she said, scrambling up too fast, brushing sand off her knees like it was beneath her to have touched it at all. "Illegal takedown. Dismissed. All of you."

I picked my staff back up out of the sand and said nothing, because there was no version of that argument I won in front of her own trainees, and we both knew it.

I was still wrapping my bloodied knuckles when Wyatt found me.

"You let her get in your head," Wyatt said, dropping onto the bench across from me, arms crossed, gray eyes sizing me up like a problem he'd already started solving. "You should've hurt her. She wasn't holding back on you."

"She's Warrior Maiden Commander, Wyatt."

"She's jealous of you," he said, plainly, like he was correcting my footwork instead of talking about a person. "Six years of finding a reason to keep you exactly where you are, and you still nearly took her down without even trying. That's not hatred. That's fear wearing hatred as a mask." He stood, already turning toward the next set of trainees. "Get some water. And next time! Don’t hold back. Hurt her."

"You should've broken her nose," Lyra said the second he was out of earshot, dropping onto the bench beside me with two cups of water she'd definitely stolen from the mess hall. "I would have. And called it an accident."

"You're training to be a healer, Lyra. Not a criminal."

"Well, I can be both, when it comes to her." She grinned and pressed the cup into my hand, and for a second the whole ugly morning loosened its grip on my chest. Then her eyes drifted past me toward the gate, and stopped.

Across the field, Kai was sparring, disarming two senior trainees in under ten seconds without breaking a sweat that mattered. Cheers went up around him like they did every morning. He tossed his practice sword in the dirt, wiped his forehead, and didn't look my way.

"One of these days," Lyra said, quieter now, "he's going to actually see you standing there, and it's going to hit him like a truck."

I drank my water instead of answering.

"See you later” she said standing up “I snuck out, and if Head Healer Lily finds out, I'm dead." She was already running off before she finished the sentence.

I stared at him. Kai never once looked my way. Nineteen years standing in the same yard as him, and to Kai I might as well have been part of the stone wall behind me.

"You're staring again."

I didn't have to turn to know it was Dad. His wheelchair creaked over the packed dirt as he rolled up beside me, and even sitting down he held himself like a Guardian still straight and squared shoulders, like his body had never gotten the memo his legs did.

"I'm not staring, Dad." I lied, pulling the strap tighter than it needed to be. "I'm reading his footwork. If I'm guarding his back one day, I need to know how he moves."

He let out a slow breath and patted my arm. His hand was warm. It was always warm. "Elena. You don't have to carry your mother on your shoulders every single morning. The bloodline is strong. Your life is still yours to spend."

"She gave hers for them." I looked down at my hands instead of at him. "You gave your legs. I have to finish it. It's the only way any of it meant something."

"A Guardian's path is paved in sacrifice." His voice went soft, the way it did when he wasn't really talking to me anymore, just to her memory. "I only ever wanted you to find something worth living for. Not just something worth dying for."

I didn't have an answer for that. I never did.

That was when the horn went off.

One blast. Two. Three, long horns, and every conversation on the field just stopped. Weapons hit the ground. Spines snapped straight. Three blasts meant visitors nobody invited, and around here that was never good news.

I stepped in front of Dad's chair without thinking about it, hand on his shoulder, as the iron gates ground open. Dust rolled in ahead of a line of black SUVs, polished to a shine that didn't belong on our dirt roads. Crimson and gold on the doors.

Bloodfang.

They were the biggest pack bordering ours. Rich. Vicious when it counted. Their Alpha had a reputation that traveled faster than he did. Alpha Lucian. Brutal in a fight, sharper in a negotiation, and not the kind of man who showed up somewhere by accident.

The lead door opened. He stepped out like the courtyard already belonged to him wearing a long black coat, black shirt, raven hair cut close, and eyes so pale blue they didn't look real. He didn't have to say a word. The whole yard felt it.

Beside me, Dad's breath caught.

Alpha Thomas walked out from the packhouse, Kai and two councilors flanking him. "Alpha Lucian," he said, even, careful. "We weren't expecting you until the summit, which is a month away."

"Formalities slow things down." Lucian's smile didn't touch his eyes. "I'm here about the border. And a personal matter."

His eyes moved. Not to Alpha Thomas. Not to Prince Kai, whose jaw was already locked tight, hands curling into fists.

They moved across the yard, row by row, until they landed on me.

I froze. Something ice-cold slid down my spine, and underneath it, something else. A pull, low in my chest, that had no business being there. My heart was suddenly very loud in my own ears.

"What is he doing here," I breathed, not really asking anyone.

"Stay back." Dad's hand clamped down on the armrest of his chair, knuckles white. "Don't let him notice you."

Too late for that.

Lucian crossed the yard in three long strides, ignoring the way every guard around him tensed like he was a blade someone had forgotten to sheathe. He stopped ten feet from me. Just looked at me. Like he'd already decided something and was only now getting around to telling me.

"I came to make an offer," he said, his voice clear, the kind of voice built to be heard whether you wanted to hear it or not. "A treaty. Something that binds our packs for good."

Kai stepped in front of me before I even registered him moving. "Whatever you want to discuss, you discuss with my father. In the council chamber. Not out here like you own the ground you're standing on."

Lucian's mouth curled, slow. "Still quick to anger, young prince." His gaze slid past Kai's shoulder, back to me. "But this isn't about you."

He lifted a hand. Pointed it, more or less, at me.

"I want Elena Vance," he said. "She comes back with me to Bloodfang. As my Luna."

The yard went dead silent. Not a breath. Not a boot scuffing dirt.

His Luna. I had never spoken one word to this man in my life.

Kai turned, slow, like the words hadn't fully landed yet, and then his eyes found mine, really found mine, for the first time since I could remember. His Amber eyes widened, something dark and startled burning behind them.

And for the first time, I wondered if being invisible to him had never been the problem.

Maybe he’d been trying very hard not to see me.