Matilda POV

I had imagined Blood Moon territory as wild chaos, a lawless sprawl of rogues drunk on freedom, tents and fires scattered without care, the air thick with violence and unspoken threats. That was the picture painted in every tale I’d ever heard. A place in which madness was the order of the day, in which cruelty and hunger were the two laws.

But when crossing the invisible boundary, I noticed that the land was from that.

It was… orderly.

Not clean, not polished, nothing about the Blood Moon rogues was meant to be beautiful, but organized, structured, purposeful. The camp was in a valley, and the lean-toes and cabins made of found wood and stone were in neat groups.

Chimneys and fire pits began to curl up smoke, and meat roasting could be smelled in the air. Men, and women, wolves with direction, with bundles of wood in arms, with blades sharped, with practice in the dirt, with calculation, with precision.

It was more of a working village than the mess of savages I had heard about.

But once my feet were on their ground I felt the air change.

Eyes.

Everywhere, eyes turned toward me. Some narrowed with suspicion, others lingered with hunger, and many filled with something sharper, disdain. The whispers followed before I had taken three steps.

“That’s her?”

“The wolf-less one?”

“Our Alpha married that?”

The expressions were more epithets than swords, although no one of them was directly addressed to me. My heart ached and I felt like going back a little, I wanted to go into the woods and act like this was not happening. But I didn't. I had my head up, but I was as naked as possible inside.

Michael walked beside me, and did not speak. His presence should have been a shield, but the murmurs didn’t quiet even for him. In fact, they grew louder, as if his silence fed their boldness.

“Does she even belong here?”

“She’ll bring weakness.”

“She’s not one of us.”

I clenched my jaw and kept walking.

“Do not listen,” Michael said finally, his deep voice low enough that only I could hear.

I turned to him sharply. “Hard not to, when they make no effort to whisper softer.”

He looked past the assemblage, and there was a growl in his chest. In a flash a silence fell upon the closest group of rascals. And they lowered their eyes and went on with their work, but the resentment in their stance persisted.

I swallowed hard. "They hate me."

“They are afraid of what they know nothing about,”he corrected.

I laughed bitterly under my breath. “Fear? No. That’s hatred. That’s contempt.”

He didn’t argue, and that silence spoke louder than any denial.

He made no protest, and such an unprotested silence was eloquent.

We went further into the camp, and I realized that my position was so stiff that I could almost hear my back cracking under the pressure of their glares. My hands were sweating in spite of the cold mountain air. A woman who was washing clothes in a basin spat at the ground as we went by. A party of young men grinned openly, one of them whispering loudly enough that I could hear him.

“Better to bed a corpse than one without a wolf.”

Before I could restrain myself I stood still. The words hit too close. I felt my throat tightening, and I was about to call out something in response, when Michael turned with a snarl so fierce as to make the whole camp keep silent.

“Speak again,” he growled at the youth with the voice of impending violence. “And you’ll learn what it means to lose more than a wolf.”

The young fellow blanched, and his smile collapsed in dismay. His head came down, though it was too late. My flushed cheeks were betrayed with humiliation.

“Michael,” I pulled his sleeve, and muttered. "Don't."

“They need to know how to respect,” he said sternly, and his gaze was still on the quailing young fellow.

“You can not beat respect into them,” I replied. “Nothing will get them to like me any more.”

At last he turned his eyes on me, keen and critical. "Do you care about their hatred?"

I stared at him a long time then turned my head. “I feel like I already feel like an intruder in my own life. I don't need them reminding me.”

For the first time since we entered camp, his expression softened. Just a fraction. He touched me, stroking my fingers gently in such a way that he made no impression on anybody. I was startled by how warm that little touch was.

But it did not blot out the eyes, the whispers, the sense that I was trespassing with every step I made.

We came upon a group of more permanent buildings, cabins, better and more competently constructed than the others. Clearly, these were meant for those closest to the Alpha. Michael led me to one that stood apart from the others, its porch shadowed by a slanting roof.

“This will be yours,” he said.

“Mine?” I turned to him, startled.

“Ours, if you wish. But I thought you might want space.”

The word lingered on my tongue. Space. I wanted it, yes. But it also sounded dangerously like distance. Still, I nodded. “Thank you.”

We stepped inside. The interior was scented slightly of cedar and smoke. Plain wood on the walls, a stone hearth, a table and two chairs, a bed in the corner by the wall. No ornaments, no softness. Just survival.

I went over to the little window and looked out at the camp. And already I could see more heads turning to the cabin, as though they could not look away at the sight of me.

I whispered before I could stop myself, “Did I trade one prison for another?”

Michael was behind me in an instant. “You are not a prisoner here.”

I spun to face him, my voice cracking. “Then what am I, Michael? To them, I am a mistake. An outsider. A weakness.”

His eyes darkened. “To me, you are my mate.”

The word rang through me like a bell, heavy and undeniable. But it didn’t silence the storm in my chest.

“They don’t see it that way.”

“They will learn.” His tone left no room for argument.

I wanted to believe him. But as another round of laughter drifted from outside, I hugged my arms around myself. “And if they never do?”

His jaw clenched. He came nearer, his hand went up towards touching my face but was halted a few inches short. “Then I will make them.”

The intensity in his voice stole my breath. I stared at him, quite frankly at him, the man who has taken me, in spite of my unfitness to be a wolf, in spite of the taint of exile. And yet, without having left the center of his world, I was unable to dislodge the question that was hooking at my chest.

What if he had made a mistake?

There was a silence between us, until at last I had to say what had been building up since we got there. "I don't belong here."

His eyes narrowed. “You belong with me.”

The words were a promise, but also a command. And I wasn't certain which to be more frightened at.

I looked round and back to the window, where I saw myself in the glass. The rogues were outside, looking the cabin over, and talking to one another. The order I’d seen in their camp now looked like another kind of prison. Not of walls and chains, but of judgment and rejection.

And though I stood beside the Alpha of Blood Moon, I had never felt smaller.