Chapter 52: The Order

Puck

Miguel Hale says four words to his son, and my whole world rearranges itself.

"You will stay away," he states, flat and final, like he’s reading off a schedule.

My jaw locks before I’ve decided to let it.

That’s it. That’s all he gives me. No raised voice, no theatrics. He says it from behind his desk, hands folded on top of a stack of papers I don’t bother reading, and the words land in my chest like something physical, like he reached across the room and pressed his palm flat against my sternum.

I stand there for a second, jaw tight, saying nothing, because some part of me already knew this was coming the moment his assistant found me at breakfast and told me my father wanted to see me before first period. You don’t get summoned to the Alpha’s study for good news. You get summoned when something needs to be corrected.

"Stay away from who," I ask, guarded, even though I already know. I want to make him say her name. I don’t know why. Maybe I want it to cost him something too.

"The human," he answers, unblinking. "Georgia."

Hearing her name in his mouth is worse than I expected. It sounds wrong there, like a word borrowed from a language he doesn’t speak fluently, and I have to fight the urge to tell him not to say it again.

"She has a name," I mutter, defiant, which is as close to arguing as I let myself get.

"I’m aware," he replies, dry. He leans back in his chair, and for a moment he just studies me, the way he studies everyone, like he’s weighing how much explanation I’ve earned. "You know why."

I do. That’s the worst part. He doesn’t have to spell it out because I’ve been dreading this exact conversation since the moment I caught her arm on the cobblestones and felt something in my chest lock into place that I couldn’t unlock again if I tried. A bond this early. This strong. Unconfirmed, untested, unprecedented. And now, with the Valentine Pack posturing at our borders and a territorial challenge closing in like weather on the horizon, my father doesn’t have room in his calculations for a variable he can’t control.

"It’s not something I chose," I say, low. "You know that too."

"I know," he concedes, though his voice doesn’t soften, exactly. Something in it shifts, just slightly, like a door easing open a crack before it shuts again. "That doesn’t change what it costs us if it goes wrong. A bond that isn’t confirmed, that isn’t understood, in the middle of a challenge that could decide this pack’s territory for the next fifty years. The Valentine Pack has already sent word. They intend to challenge before the month is out. Do you understand what they would do with information like that? A weakness in the heir, right when we can least afford one."

I don’t answer, because there isn’t an answer that changes anything. He isn’t wrong. That’s what makes this unbearable instead of just unfair. If I were in his position, staring down a challenge with everything on the line, I’d probably say the same four words to my own son.

"I’m not asking you to explain yourself to her," he continues, measured. "I’m not asking you to hurt her, or frighten her, or do anything that draws more attention than you’ve already drawn. I’m telling you to create distance. Now, while it can still be managed. Before it becomes something none of us can walk back."

Before it becomes something none of us can walk back. Like it isn’t already. Like some part of me didn’t become hers the second she looked up at me on that path with confusion and something like recognition in her eyes, like her body understood what mine did before either of our minds caught up.

"And if I can’t," I ask, quiet. "Create distance."

"You will," he says, certain, like a fact and not a threat, which is somehow worse. My father doesn’t waste time threatening things he knows are already true. "Because you understand what’s at stake better than anyone in this room. You’ve understood it since you were old enough to understand anything."

I don’t argue. There’s nothing to argue with. He’s not wrong that I know what’s at stake, and he’s not wrong that I’ll do what he’s asking, because I was raised to put the pack first in a way that’s stitched into my bones as tightly as the shift itself. I don’t have to be told twice. I don’t even have to be told once, not really. I just needed him to say it out loud so I’d stop pretending I had a choice.

"That’s all," he finishes, dismissive, already looking back down at the papers on his desk, already moving on to whatever comes next in a day that doesn’t stop just because mine has cracked down the middle. "Go to class."

I nod, even though he isn’t looking, and turn for the door. My legs feel heavier than they should, like gravity has decided to take a personal interest in me this morning, and by the time my hand closes around the handle, something in my chest has already started to ache in a way I don’t have a name for yet. Not pain exactly. Something closer to hunger, if hunger lived behind your ribs and pulled instead of gnawed.

I step out into the hallway. The study door clicks shut behind me, final in a way that feels bigger than it should for something so small.

Down the corridor, past the row of framed portraits of Hale ancestors who probably had to have this same conversation with their own fathers, there’s a window. It looks out over the east lawn, past the stone paths, all the way to the dormitories on the far side of campus. Her dormitory. I know exactly which window is hers, third floor, second from the left, because some part of me has been quietly cataloguing that information since the day I first saw her carry her bags up the front steps.

*Don’t,* I tell myself, and my feet slow down anyway.

I could look. It would take nothing at all, just a turn of my head, one glance out of a window I’m going to walk past anyway. Nobody would know. Nobody would ever have to find out that for three seconds, standing in this hallway, I let myself want something my father just told me I’m not allowed to have.

I keep my eyes forward.

It costs more than it should, not looking. It costs more than climbing five flights of stairs after a full shift, more than holding my human shape through an entire hockey game while my body screams to be something else. I walk past that window with my jaw locked and my hands curled at my sides, and something in my chest gives a low, silent crack, like ice under weight that hasn’t broken yet but will.

I don’t look.

*I’m sorry,* I think, and I don’t know which one of them I mean anymore.

I keep walking.