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Eventually, she laughs, which doesn’t clarify anything.

“Tell me about the war college,” she says. “The real version. Not the tactical pitch you give potential clients.”

“What makes you think those two aren’t one and the same?”

“Give me a break. I know how it works. A sales pitch is just that: a pitch. And you’ve been doing it for a while, which means you would have smoothed the edges way too much by now for it to still be the truth.”

“Your instincts are annoyingly accurate sometimes.”

She beams. “Thank you for the compliment.”

I chuckle.

But then I realize what she’s asking, and humor dies quickly. She wants the real me. The true history. And nothing about that story is funny.

But I’m not going to lie. Not to her.

I look at the trees as we speed past. “My parents were members of the Black Moon Pack.”

She glances over at me, surprised. “That’s the pack Grey fought against when he left Indigo Hills.” Then surprise turns to somber understanding. “The pack that believed fated mates were weakness. They killed your parents for choosing each other.”

I nod, glad she remembers. Not just so I don’t have to tell it twice but because it means that night two years ago meant something to her too.

“I’m so sorry, Nash. How old were you when they died?”

“Ten. My aunt took me in, moved me to Canada, raised me. It was good after that. But I missed them.”

“I can imagine.”

“When my aunt passed five years ago, I inherited a piece of property that my father had left behind.”

“The war college.”

I nod. “It borders the Black Moon pack’s land.”

“They had a leadership change too,” she says. “Grey helped them win, though he doesn’t talk about it much. I know it’s different now. Co-alphas who accept and celebrate fated mates.”

“I know, and I’m glad for it. But it wasn’t like that five years ago. When I saw the property bordered their land, I decided to build something that would honor my parents and send a message at the same time.”

“Did you mean to fight the Black Moon pack with your soldiers?” she asks.

“If they hadn’t already been defeated by the time our first unit was ready? Yes.”

She nods.

“You built a training ground for your own war.” She gives me a smirk that’s nothing more than a wry, sideways slant. “Subtle. I like it.”

I chuckle, but there’s an edge to it. “Yeah, it wasn’t subtle, and I didn’t give a fuck back then. I was too angry. But now, I see the bigger picture.”

“Ah. The sales pitch.” She smiles playfully now. “Go on. I’m hooked.”

“Actually, the story behind the pitch is that everyone told me to sell the land and walk away. That it was a liability. That I should take the money and relocate my pack somewhere we could start fresh.” I pause. “But I’d spent five years before that running operations for three different packs as a contracted soldier. I was good at it. I was also watching good wolves get killed because they’d never been taught how to survive an op.”

“So, you built the school.”

“I built the school.” I glance at her. “And I filled it with runaways and rejects.”

“I didn’t know that part.”