Chapter 15 Pack Law
DAVINA'S POV
I had approached it like it was a puzzle I could solve with a little research. I thought maybe if I found the right paragraph in the right document, everything would click into place, and I could neatly file it away and move on with my life.
Zane had started explaining, but I tuned him out somewhere around the third sentence. Not because he wasn’t making sense, in fact he was making too much sense and it felt like my brain hit a wall.
“Davina.”
“I heard you,” I replied, though I hadn’t really.
He looked at me like he was trying to figure out the gap between what I was saying and what was really going on behind my eyes. I hated that he could do that. I hated that, after less than two weeks, he could already see through me.
“You should go,” I said, trying to sound firm.
“We're not finished…”
“I know we’re not finished.” My voice came out sharper than I intended, but I didn’t apologize. “But I’m done for tonight. So you should go.”
He lingered in the chair for just a moment, then he stood, picked up his jacket from the back of the chair and walked toward the door, moving at a steady pace.
At the door, he paused. “We have a library in the main lodge,” he said. “It's on the third floor. Pack law goes back sixty years. There’s a section on Council jurisdiction, including Article Nine.” He hesitated for a moment. “In case you want to look it up tonight.” And just like that, he was gone.
I stood in the middle of the room for what felt like ages after the door clicked shut. The fire had dwindled down to a small glow, and the room felt bigger and colder than it had an hour ago. I stood there, letting everything settle because honestly, there was nothing else I could do with it right now.
His mate.
I turned the words over in my mind the way you prod a bruise, testing it, and waiting to understand just how deep the hurt really went.
This was something that had been decided long before I did anything to indicate I wanted to be part of this crazy world.
How damn annoying, I wasn't some piece of jewelry someone can just fancy and buy.
But the worst part of all these? The part that twisted my stomach in knots I couldn’t even face? I understood why he hadn’t told me right away. I got the reasoning behind it. A bad night, too much information, the wrong moment and then, one wrong moment after another kept piling up.
I understood all that, and yet it didn’t make things any easier.
I sank down on the edge of the bed and pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to block out the chaos.
The thing I had realised about my ex Steven was that, it hadn’t started with him making decisions for me. No, it began with small, seemingly reasonable things. He knew better about this, had more experience with that. I was just twenty-two, grieving from the loss of my parents, and so exhausted from navigating everything on my own that I let someone else take the wheel. By the time I realized I’d forgotten how to drive, it was almost too late.
I wasn’t going to let that happen again. I refused to stand in some room, being told my life had been decided for me by forces I didn’t understand and couldn’t control, just accepting it because the alternative felt too complicated.
Except… I dropped my hands.
Except there was someone who had apparently spent years plotting and had a specific interest in me that I didn't even understand.
I’d been too busy fuming about being yanked from my life to think clearly about what might have happened if Zane hadn’t shown up that day at the right time.
I pulled my knees to my chest and stared into the fire, lost in thought.
I remembered the clearing, the way those men shifted, one by one, transforming from people into wolves. The sounds the wet crack of it all. I had shoved most of that night into a box, tucked it away in a corner of my mind, and stapled it shut because I knew that opening it before I was ready would shatter me, and I couldn’t afford to be shattered right now.
But beneath all of the chaos, there was one undeniable truth. I had no idea this world existed, and yet, it seemed to have been aware of me all along.
That thought kept gnawing at me. It wasn’t just about Zane or the bond we shared, it was the realization that I’d been living my carefully constructed, ordinary life completely oblivious to the fact that something had already decided I mattered to it.
I stood up. The library, he’d said.
I hesitated, glancing at the door, then at the dying fire, and finally at the book I’d left on the bed, untouched since he’d walked in and turned everything upside down. Sleep was clearly not in the cards for me tonight, my mind was racing too fast, and the walls of this cabin felt like they were inching closer.
I grabbed my jacket. Sure, pack law was one thing, but if there was a library filled with years of records, there might be something else lurking in there, something older. Something that could shed light on why that silver-haired man had looked at me across a rainy clearing as if I were the most important thing he’d seen in years. And why that look had sent a chill down his spine.
With a determined breath, I opened the door. The compound was dark and quiet, the path to the main lodge was softly illuminated by warm amber lights draped between the cabins. Somewhere in the trees, a shadow shifted, and I inmediately knew it was one of Zane’s wolves, keeping watch over the perimeter. Watching me.
I pulled my jacket tighter around me and started walking anyway.