HER ARRANGED MARRIAGE

Chapter 001

The Girl Who Fights

CECILIA

Kade came at me for the third time.

I sidestepped him before he could even commit to the swing, grabbed his arm mid-air, and used his own momentum to send him straight into the ground.

He hit the dirt hard, groaning, and stayed there for a moment before rolling onto his back and staring up at the sky like he was questioning every decision that had led him to this point.

The other warriors standing around the training ground went quiet.

I stepped back and rolled my shoulder, waiting.

"Get up," I ordered.

Kade let out a breath. "You know, most people slow down after the second round."

"I am not most people."

He sat up slowly, shaking his head with a short laugh. "No. You are really not."

He got to his feet and stepped back, signalling that he was done. Smart decision.

I turned to face the rest of them, scanning the line. Nobody moved to take his place. They never did after the third round.

They had all learned by now that coming at me tired was worse than coming at me fresh.

"Anyone else?" I asked.

Silence.

Rolan, one of the older warriors, crossed his arms from where he stood at the edge of the ground. "You fight like you have something to prove, Cecilia."

I looked at him. "And you block like you stopped trying two years ago. We all have our things."

A few of the younger warriors bit back smiles. Rolan did not look particularly amused, but he did not say anything else either.

I picked up my water flask from the ground and took a long drink, letting the noise of the training ground settle back into something normal.

Kade was talking to someone behind me. Two of the junior warriors were sparring half-heartedly near the far end. Everything was as it always was.

I found a quieter spot near the edge of the ground to cool down, away from the main group.

I stretched out my arms slowly, working through the tension in my muscles, and let myself breathe.

That was when I heard them.

Two female wolves standing a short distance away, half hidden by the shadow of the equipment shed. They were not sparring.

They were talking, and they were doing it in the low, careful way people do when they think nobody is listening.

I did not turn around. I just stilled.

"She is twenty-two," one of them murmured. "Twenty-two and still unmated. Does that not strike you as strange?"

"Very," the other one agreed. "An Alpha's daughter, at that. You would think the moon goddess would have given her someone by now."

A short pause.

"Unless she did not."

"What do you mean?"

The first one dropped her voice even lower. "Maybe the moon goddess looked at her and decided not to bother. I mean, look at her. She is cold. She does not let anyone close. What kind of mate would even want to deal with that?"

"Or," the second one said carefully, "her wolf is broken. I have heard people say it before. That she cannot shift properly. I mean she can before but not anymore. That something is wrong with her."

I kept my eyes forward. My jaw was tight but my face gave nothing away.

I had heard worse than this before and I would hear worse again. That was simply the truth of it.

But the words still landed somewhere they were not supposed to.

"Too cold to love."

I turned and walked away before they could say anything else.

***

The walk back to the pack house was quiet. Most of the pack was either training or occupied elsewhere, so I had the path mostly to myself. I preferred it that way.

The words those women said followed me without my permission.

I did not want to think about them. I was not the type to sit and pick apart what people said behind my back.

But something about hearing it out loud, in that easy, careless way, like it was simply a fact everyone had accepted, made it harder to shake off than usual.

"Broken. Too cold to love."

My mother had never been cold. That was the thing that came to me unbidden, the memory of her before all the rest.

She had been warm in the way that filled a room. Strong, but warm. Her wolf, Sera, had been one of the most powerful in the Greenville Pack, and yet there had been nothing hard about her.

She had loved openly and without apology.

And then the rogues came.

My chest tightened the way it always did when I went near that memory. I did not let myself go all the way into it. I never did.

But the edges of it were always there, and whenever anyone mentioned broken wolves or things going wrong without reason, my mind went to the same place.

The Redwood Pack.

My father had been in a land dispute with their Alpha right before the attack. That had never sat right with me. Rogues did not simply appear.

They were sent, or they were hired, and the timing had been too deliberate for me to believe otherwise. I had no proof. I had never had proof.

But I had never stopped believing it either.

I exhaled slowly and pushed the thought down.

This was not the time for it.

****

I tried anyway, like I always did when I was alone.

"Lavender."

Nothing.

I reached inward, toward the place where she was supposed to be, the warmth, the presence, the quiet hum of another soul living alongside mine.

There was only silence. The same silence that had been there for as long as I could remember.

I had stopped being surprised by it. But I had never stopped hating it.

My mother's wolf had been extraordinary. And I had nothing.

I shook my head and kept walking.

Darcy was standing at the entrance of the pack house when I arrived, her arms folded, her expression already carrying the look she wore when she had news I was not going to enjoy.

"Your father wants to see you," she said.

I stopped in front of her. "Now?"

"Now."

I looked at her for a moment, searching her face for something that would tell me what kind of meeting this was going to be.

She gave nothing away, which told me everything.

I nodded once and walked inside.

My father hardly sent for me except it was very important. And this must be something that seems my presence.