The Alpha Must Marry My Lady But I'm His Fated Mate

At dawn, the archive smelled of dust, ink, and the damp wool drying on the radiators. I had sorted Lyanna's travel papers twice, then a third time because the thin pile on my desk was supposed to carry Asterfall across a border it could not defend alone.

The first report listed two granaries emptied before spring. The second named three patrols recalled from the eastern ridge because there were not enough wolves to staff them. I placed both beside the selection documents, where Lyanna's careful signature waited under the seal of Haleward.

Lyanna stood at the window in a copper cloak, her hands linked too tightly at her waist. The pale morning made the freckles across her nose stand out. She looked toward the courtyard, where wagons were being loaded beneath the old stone wall.

"Tell me the truth," she said. "Not the version you give the council."

I turned the boundary report so she could see the broken wax on its last page. "Without a binding alliance, Flintscar will keep taking contracts and crossings from us. By winter, they will not need to ask permission to enter Asterfall."

Her mouth tightened, but she read every line. That was one reason I loved her, despite the title that sat between us. Lyanna never asked me to make danger prettier than it was.

"Then I will go," she said. "And I will give Haleward every reason to choose us."

I gathered the papers before my hands could betray how much I hated the word choose. Her marriage might save the pack. It would also turn every step of this journey into a test she had never wanted.

"You will not go alone," I said. "I have the household list, the accounts, and the border reports. If they ask what Asterfall needs, we will answer with more than fear."

A soft knock sounded against the open door. Tavian filled the threshold in his repaired commander’s coat, bringing in cold air and the scent of pine smoke. His eyes went first to Lyanna, then to the papers spread between us.

"The convoy is ready, my lady," he said. Then, quieter, to me: "Veyra."

That one word loosened something behind my ribs. I tucked the dossier under my arm and followed Lyanna into the courtyard. Asterfall watched from doorways and battlements. No one cheered. They knew what a marriage journey meant when a pack had run out of safer choices.

The road north blurred into wheels, rain, and short stops beside thinning woods. I kept Lyanna's papers dry beneath my cloak and counted each supply crate at every halt. At noon, I passed Lyanna the report on the eastern ridge and watched her fold it without letting the wagon staff see her hands shake. She gave it back without a word, but her thumb left a hard crease across the margin. Tavian rode near the lead wagon, never close enough to invite gossip, always close enough that I could find him when I lifted my head.

By the time the gates of Haleward rose from the last ridge, the rain had stopped. Dark stone climbed above the road, clean and severe against the late light. We halted in the final stretch of open ground while guards checked the convoy seals.

At the last halt before Haleward, I checked the dossier again beneath the wagon awning. The paper had softened at the corners from being handled all day. Lyanna's signature was still clean. So were the figures that mattered: grain, patrol strength, the crossings Flintscar had begun to treat as negotiable. Numbers were easier to carry than fear because they stayed where I put them. I could point to a line and ask someone to answer it.

I could not do that with the thought of Lyanna standing before strangers and offering them her future. When Tavian rode past the wagon, he did not slow, but his eyes found mine. I pressed the folder closed and set my palm over it. We had agreed that duty came first on this road. The agreement did not make the road shorter. The figures stayed steady even when everything else in me did not.

***

Lyanna stepped down from her carriage with her shoulders straight. I reached for the folder she had left on the seat, but Tavian caught my wrist before I could turn away.

"Wait," he said.

His hand eased open at once when I looked at it. He had learned my boundaries long before either of us had a future to promise. From inside his coat, he took a small oval of dark river stone, polished smooth and set on a plain leather cord.

"I had it made before the council called this journey," he said. "Not as a claim. Just so you would have something that says I meant what I told you."

The stone rested in his palm, ordinary enough to hide in a pocket. My throat closed anyway. We had planned a house near the south path after my service ended. A narrow kitchen. A door I could shut because it was mine. Tavian had never asked me to trade one cage for another while we waited for it.

"You still mean it?" I asked.

"I mean you get free first," he said. "Then you decide. I will wait for the decision, not borrow it from you."

Behind him, Lyanna was speaking with the Haleward guard. The gate remained closed. The choice was mine for the space of one breath, and that made it more precious than a public vow.

I took the cord. My fingers curled around the warm stone, then I caught Tavian's coat and drew him down to me. His mouth met mine gently, with no demand hidden in the pressure. I kissed him because I wanted the life we had imagined. Because I wanted his patience, his familiar hands, the quiet place we had promised to build after I was no longer someone else's responsibility.

When I stepped back, his forehead touched mine. "Go keep her steady," he murmured. "I will be here."

I nodded and turned toward Lyanna before courage could become delay.

The great gate began to open.

A seam of darkness widened between the doors. Cold air rolled over the road, carrying cedar, metal, and something that struck deeper than breath. My wolf, silent through every mile of the journey, surged against my skin.

The stone Tavian had given me cut into my fist.

Across the opening, a tall man in a dark formal coat stepped into view. I saw only the pale flash of his eyes before my wolf spoke inside me, clear and terrified.

Mate.

Mate. The word did not sound like mine. It scraped through me with teeth behind it, turning the open gate, the waiting guards, and Lyanna's copper cloak into distant shapes.

The man beyond the doors stopped as sharply as I had. He was too tall to miss in the stream of Haleward officials. Dark hair, silver-gray eyes, and a scar through one brow gave his face the hard stillness of a weapon laid on a table. Cedar and cold metal flooded the air again.

Lyanna glanced back at me. "Veyra?"

I forced my fingers open around Tavian's stone. "I'm here."

The stranger took one step forward. Every wolf near the gate lowered their heads. The guards made room without being told. Not a commander, then. Something higher.

"Orren Valdyr," Lyanna said, dipping into a formal bow. "I am Lyanna Aster. Thank you for receiving us."

His gaze did not leave me. "You are—"

I moved between him and Lyanna before the question could become a claim. My knee bent in the bow expected of someone in my position, but I kept my eyes on his boots. "Veyra Noll. Lady Lyanna's personal servant."

The title tasted like a locked door. His silence lasted one breath too long. Then I felt it: the pull in him answering the panic in my wolf, sudden and unmistakable.

He knew.

The recognition did not make him familiar. It made every difference between us sharper: his dark coat without a repaired seam, the guards who watched his smallest movement, the name Lyanna had given him with formal trust. My wolf wanted to cross the space. I wanted to put the gate back between us.

Orren's expression altered by degrees. Surprise went first, then a brief, fierce certainty that frightened me more than anger would have. He seemed ready to speak to the whole courtyard, to turn one impossible fact into the only fact that mattered. I could not let him do that to Lyanna. I could not let him do it to me.

I closed my fist around Tavian's stone and made myself breathe through the pull. The cord was a small thing against my palm, but it reminded me that a future existed because I had chosen it. A wolf naming it for me was not enough.

Orren's hand rose as if he meant to touch my face. I stepped back. The motion broke whatever had held the air still.

"The candidates will be shown to the ceremonial hall," he said. His voice was deep and level, but it had tightened at the edges. "Lady Lyanna, Haleward is honored by your arrival."

A woman in pale blue entered from the inner gate, composed enough to make the guards seem unfinished around her. She inclined her head to Lyanna, then let her ice-blue eyes pass over me and Orren. Nothing in her expression changed.

"Seraphine Drazan," she said. "We have both arrived at an interesting hour."

Lyanna answered with courtesy. I heard none of it. Orren was looking at me as though the crowd had fallen away and left us alone with the thing neither of us had chosen.

When an attendant gestured toward the hall, I caught the edge of Lyanna's sleeve. "Go with them," I whispered. "I will bring the documents."

Her eyes narrowed with concern, but she nodded. Orren watched her leave. Then he looked at the service door beside the hall and spoke so quietly that no one else could hear.

"Now."

The hall emptied around Lyanna in careful layers: attendants first, then guards who pretended not to watch Orren, then two officials carrying the candidate register between them. I stayed where I was until Lyanna reached the next doorway. Only then did I let myself notice how tightly I had been holding Tavian's stone. The edge of the cord had marked a red line across my palm. Orren saw it when my fingers opened.

His gaze dropped once and came back to my face without asking what I held. That small restraint mattered more than it should have. The bond kept insisting on closeness, on recognition, on a certainty neither of us had earned. The man in front of me had at least understood that recognition was not permission. It did not make him safe. It made the next conversation possible.

***

The service corridor smelled of beeswax and damp stone. I shut the door behind us, keeping my back to it. Orren filled the narrow space without moving closer, though the bond pulled at every breath between us.

"Say it," he said.

"No."

His jaw set. "You felt it."

"I felt something I did not ask for. That is not the same as permission."

For the first time, he looked less like the heir every guard had made room for and more like a man who had been struck. It did not soften the fear in me. His rank could turn one word into an order. His bond could turn one instinct into another kind of cage.

He came closer anyway, then stopped when I lifted my palm. The air between my hand and his chest trembled with the need to close it.

"Three paces," I said. "Stay there."

Orren stepped back at once. One. Two. Three. His hands remained at his sides.

My wolf pressed against my ribs, furious at the distance. I held the leather cord tighter until the stone bit my skin. "You will not tell Lyanna. You will not tell your court. You will not use that word where it can ruin her place here."

"She deserves honesty."

"She deserves a chance to save her pack without becoming collateral to your revelation."

His gaze dropped to the stone in my fist, then returned to my face. He did not ask about it. I was grateful for that much, and angry that gratitude arrived so easily.

"This bond is not a question of convenience," he said.

"Neither is Asterfall." I squared my shoulders. "You can be whatever your wolves expect in that room. I am still the woman who serves Lyanna, and she is still the candidate you came here to consider."

The silence stretched. I thought he would argue. I thought he would call for the guards, or reach for the authority that had opened every path in front of him.

Instead, he said, "I will not touch you."

The words were not enough, but they were an answer to the only test I had given him.

Then his expression changed, certainty returning beneath the restraint. "I will enter that room and declare what you are to me."

The corridor seemed to tilt. I looked at him until he had to see that I had not bowed my head.

"You will enter that room to choose Lyanna."

Orren did not argue in the corridor. He opened the door to a private study instead, and I followed because standing beside the ceremonial hall would turn every passing servant into a witness.

The room was spare for a man who could have filled it with trophies. A long desk faced the window. Maps were stacked beside a clean silver letter knife. Nothing in it made me forget that Haleward could decide the shape of Asterfall’s future without asking us.

Orren shut the door and stayed near it. He had kept his three paces. I noticed before I wanted to.

"You asked me to choose Lyanna," he said. "Tell me why."

I set the dossier on his desk and opened it to the border reports. "Because Asterfall cannot survive on pity. Our patrols are thin. Our stores are low. Flintscar keeps taking what our council cannot protect. Without a binding alliance, someone will decide our land is easier to own than to defend."

His eyes moved over the pages, quick and exact. "Haleward can send guards."

"For a season, perhaps. Then your council will ask what it gains. A marriage gives Asterfall a place at the table before the wolves who want our routes can carve it apart."

"I could give you protection," he said. "A house here. A place outside service."

The offer landed like a hand closing around my wrist. It was more than I had ever been allowed to expect, and that was why I hated how easily it could sound generous.

"You do not get to rescue me around Lyanna," I said. "She is not a problem you can set aside because your wolf chose badly timed hunger."

His face hardened. "My wolf did not choose badly."

"Then prove it can wait. Choose the woman whose marriage can keep my pack from being conquered."

For a long moment, he looked at the dossier instead of me. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its certainty. "I will keep silent until we know what this selection requires. That is all I can promise today."

It was not enough. It was also the first thing he had offered that did not take my decision for granted.

I pointed to the thin patrol lines. Every mark represented wolves I knew by name, families who would have no wall between them and Flintscar if Asterfall failed. "Lyanna has studied our accounts. She knows our healers, our workers, our people. She is not a bride you can use as a seal. She is the strongest argument my pack has left."

Orren rested both palms on the desk but did not reach for me. "And what do you gain if she becomes my Luna?"

The question was cruel only because it was practical. I looked at the service cuff around my wrist, then at the plain cord hidden in my glove. "Time. A chance to finish my service without watching Asterfall pay for it. Nothing you are entitled to offer."

His silence shifted again. This time it held shame. "I have spent my life being told that duty makes a choice honorable."

"Duty does not make it mine," I said. "It only makes the cost visible."

He turned toward the window. Below, attendants guided Lyanna into the hall. "If I accept silence, I am asking you to stand beside her while I consider another woman."

"You are asking nothing. I am telling you what I need to survive this."

When he faced me again, the certainty was gone from his eyes. "Then I will keep silent until we know what this selection requires. That is all I can promise today."

***

The balcony beside the hall overlooked the arriving carriages. Below us, Lyanna stood with the attendants, copper cloak bright against Haleward stone. Tavian had moved to the edge of the courtyard, his repaired uniform unmistakable even at a distance.

I stayed beside the balcony door rather than the rail. Distance was a poor defense against the bond, but it was one I could choose. Below us, a porter shifted trunks away from the arriving carriages and Tavian stepped aside without needing to be asked. I knew the exact turn of his shoulders when he was making room for someone weaker. I knew how he checked a doorway before Lyanna crossed it.

None of that had vanished because my wolf had spoken one word at a gate. Orren followed my attention without pressing closer. The difference between the two men was almost unbearable in its simplicity: one belonged to a future I had built slowly, and one had arrived as a fact written into my blood. Facts could be true without becoming orders. I needed Orren to understand that before he learned anything else about me. I kept that distinction with me when Orren finally spoke.

Orren followed my gaze. "Who is he?"

I should have lied. A lie would have protected the narrow space between one disaster and the next. But Orren had asked for silence, not falsehood.

"Tavian Rowe. He is Asterfall’s commander."

"That is not what I meant."

The stone on its cord rested beneath my glove. I drew it out and let it lie in my palm. "He is the man I planned to marry when my service ended."

Orren went still. The bond pressed hot and furious between us, but I did not move toward him. I had not given him the right to be wounded on my behalf.

"You chose him," he said.

"I did. I still have the right to choose what my life becomes."

His hand tightened around the balcony rail. "And you expect me to court Lyanna while you carry his promise?"

"I expect you to decide whether your title means anything beyond getting what you want." I closed my fingers over Tavian’s stone. "You will judge Lyanna fairly. You will keep our bond private. And you will not treat Tavian as an enemy for existing before you."

Orren looked down at the courtyard again. When he answered, each word seemed pulled from somewhere deeper than pride. "I will keep the silence. I will consider Lyanna as a candidate."

"Not for me."

His gaze returned to mine. "No. For Asterfall."

The answer did not settle anything. It only made the triangle between us real enough to cut.

The choice left no room for comfort.

A soft voice came from the balcony door. "I hope I am not interrupting anything."

Seraphine stood on the threshold, one pale hand resting on the frame. Her smile was small and perfect. I knew, before she said another word, that our secret had already found a witness.

Seraphine’s smile followed me down the corridor long after I left the balcony. I did not look back. Looking would have given her another thing to measure: the speed of my steps, the way my fingers closed over Tavian’s stone, the fact that Orren’s cedar-and-metal scent still clung to the air behind me.

Lyanna was by the window when I entered. She had taken off her copper cloak, but she still wore the silver candidate’s insignia at her breast. Its bright edge caught the afternoon light. Her face softened when she saw me, then tightened when she saw mine.

“What happened?” she asked.

I shut the door. The latch sounded too loud in the quiet room. “I need to tell you something before anyone else can use it against us.”

Her hand went to the insignia. “Is this about the Alpha?”

I had rehearsed no version of the truth that did not sound cruel. “Orren Valdyr is my mate.”

For one heartbeat, Lyanna did not move. Then she sat on the edge of the dressing table, as if her knees had made the decision without asking her. “Your mate,” she said. “The man I came here to marry.”

“I did not know until he met us at the gate.” I kept my hands open at my sides. “Neither of us chose it. I told him he could not announce it. I told him he had to keep considering you.”

Her eyes lifted to mine. Hurt arrived there before anger, which made it worse. “And you were going to let me stand in that hall without knowing?”

“No.” The word came out rough. “I was trying to get you out of the corridor before Seraphine could turn a glance into a weapon. But I should have told you first.”

Lyanna looked down at the silver badge. “You should have.”

“I am sorry,” I said. “Not because I regret telling you. Because I made your trust something I could schedule around my fear.”

She pressed her thumb over the metal crest. “Do you want him?”

Lyanna’s mouth trembled once before she made it still. “Then I will withdraw. I will not compete with you for a man your wolf has already named.”

She reached for the fastening at her collar. I crossed the room before I understood I had moved. My fingers closed around her wrist, light enough that she could have pulled away. The pulse beneath my thumb beat fast and thin.

“Please,” I said.

Lyanna stared at my hand. I released her at once, but she did not step back.

“Why?” she asked. “Why should I stay?”

***

Lyanna crossed into the adjoining sitting room without answering. I followed with the dossier. The smaller room held a narrow writing desk and two chairs; nothing in it softened the question she had asked.

I opened the dossier I had carried from the balcony. The border reports were folded inside, their wax seals cracked from too many readings. I laid the pages between us.

“Because Flintscar is testing the eastern crossings,” I said. “Because our patrols cannot hold another winter with half their numbers. Because if you leave this selection today, Haleward will read it as Asterfall arriving without the courage to bargain for its own survival.”

Lyanna looked down at the open reports, then flattened the crease her thumb had made on the road. It was such a familiar gesture that I nearly reached across the desk to help her. I stopped myself. She did not need soothing; she needed room to decide what she could live with. Outside the room, footsteps passed and faded toward the selection hall. Every sound reminded us that Haleward had already begun measuring candidates while we were still trying to decide what our honesty would cost.

I turned the eastern report so the patrol numbers faced her rather than me. If she stayed, those numbers would be part of her reason. If she left, I would not turn them into chains after promising that this was a choice. The distinction felt thin enough to cut, but it was the only one I trusted. Lyanna deserved the same freedom I kept demanding for myself.

Her expression changed, not softer but sharper. She had read those reports with me before we left. She knew every name on the patrol lists. “That is a reason for Asterfall,” she said. “It is not a reason for me to marry a man who belongs to someone else.”

“He does not belong to me.” I met her gaze. “And you do not belong to this selection. That is why I am asking, not ordering.”

“If you leave,” I said, “I will stand beside you when you tell the council. I will go back to Asterfall with you. I will not call you selfish. But if you stay, it has to be because you can still see a future you want to protect.”

Lyanna turned from the desk and walked to the mirror. In the mirror, she looked like the woman the council had sent: copper hair pinned carefully, shoulders straight, a candidate made presentable for a wolf she had never met. Then she looked at me in the glass.

“You asked your mate to court me,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And you still mean it?”

My throat closed. I thought of the bond pulling like a bruise beneath my skin. “For now, I do. He needs to judge you fairly, and Asterfall needs a real chance. I will not let his claim on me decide your life for you.”

Lyanna faced me again. “You keep saying you will not decide my life. But you have built your whole life around deciding what will hurt you least if it saves everyone else.”

I had no answer that did not prove her right.

She came close enough to take my hands. Her palms were warm, her grip steady. It was not a servant’s gesture or a lady’s command. She held me as the girl who had once hidden beside her during storms, before either of us knew how much duty could cost.

“Then hear me,” Lyanna said. “I will not stay because you can make suffering sound noble. I will stay only if I am allowed to choose what I want from this, too.”

“You are.”

“Even if that choice is not Orren?”

“Even then.”

She searched my face as if she could find the lie I had learned to hide from myself. At last, she let go of one hand and unfastened the candidate’s insignia.

The silver badge made a small, final sound when she set it in my palm. Its edge was colder than I expected. Lyanna curled my fingers around it, but she did not let my hand fall.

“Tell me why I should put it back,” she said.

Lyanna did not take the badge back. She closed my fingers around it and waited.

The answer should have been simple. Asterfall needs you. Orren needs a Luna. Haleward needs a treaty. I had spent years making hard truths sound neat enough to survive.

But Lyanna had asked why she should put it back, not why everyone else needed her to.

“Because you deserve the chance to decide what it means,” I said.

Her eyes narrowed. “That sounds kind. It is not an answer.”

“No.” I swallowed. “It is the beginning of one.”

The preparation room smelled of rosemary and silver polish. Beyond the door, servants and guards pretended not to listen.

“You would still ask me to marry him,” Lyanna said.

“I would ask you to remain a candidate.”

“For Asterfall.”

“For yourself, too.”

The words felt late. That did not make them false.

Lyanna looked down at the insignia trapped between my palms. “And if I decide I do not want a future built around another pack’s mercy?”

“Then I will stand beside you when you say it.”

A knock sounded once. Seraphine entered before either of us answered.

She wore silver-blue silk and the expression of someone who had been invited to judge a room. Her gaze fell to my closed hand, then to Lyanna’s bare collar.

“How touching,” she said. “Asterfall has brought its servant into the registration chamber. I had not realized the selection allowed private rehearsals.”

Lyanna turned toward her. The hurt left her face so quickly that I knew it had cost her.

“This is not a rehearsal,” Lyanna said. “It is my decision.”

Seraphine’s smile sharpened. “Then I hope it is a useful one. Haleward needs a Luna who can enter a room without needing someone else to speak first.”

I moved before I could stop myself, but Lyanna caught my sleeve.

“No,” she said quietly.

Not to Seraphine. To me.

She walked to the registration table. The clerk had gone still behind his papers. Orren stood near the tall windows, formal coat dark against the morning light.

Lyanna placed the insignia on the table. For one breath, the room watched her as if she were about to surrender.

Then she picked it up and fastened it back at her throat.

“I confirm my candidacy,” she said. Her voice carried to the door. “I will be judged for what I can do, not for whom I am convenient to.”

The clerk bent over the register.

Seraphine gave a soft laugh. “A brave speech. Let us hope Asterfall can afford bravery.”

Lyanna met her eyes. “Let us hope Haleward can recognize it.”

The silence after that belonged to Lyanna. She had earned every inch of it.

Orren crossed to the table when the clerk offered the sealed documents. He took them, read the confirmation, and turned toward Lyanna.

“Your candidacy is entered,” he said. “The standards will be the same for every woman here.”

It was not an apology. It was the first thing he had said that did not ask me to make his promise believable.

Lyanna nodded once. “Then I will meet them.”

I left before Seraphine could make the room smaller again.

I crossed the first corridor before I realized I had been matching my pace to Lyanna's breathing. The farther I moved from Seraphine's rooms, the easier it became to hear the palace again: doors closing, fabric brushing stone, a clerk calling for another copy of the candidate schedule. Ordinary sounds, indifferent to the fact that three women had just stood in one room and refused to make themselves smaller for the others.

Seraphine's confidence bothered me less than the precision behind it. She had not needed to raise her voice. She had tested Lyanna, tested me, and left with more information than she had entered with. I filed that away the way I filed a suspicious account entry. Not proof. Not yet. Only a reason to notice the next discrepancy instead of explaining it away.

***

The inner garden lay behind the east hall, enclosed by pale stone and winter-green hedges. Water moved in a narrow channel beneath the path. I had come there because it was the first place no one needed anything from me.

Orren found me anyway.

“I asked the guard not to announce me,” he said.

“I noticed.”

He stopped an arm’s length away. Close enough that cedar and cold metal threaded through the air. Not close enough to touch.

“You gave Lyanna back her choice.”

“I stopped holding it for her.”

His jaw tightened, then eased. “That was not the same thing.”

“No. It was worse.”

“For you?”

“For everyone who was used to me deciding what I could carry.”

The garden water clicked over stone. Orren looked toward the covered walk, not at me. He was giving me the exit before I asked for it. That, more than the words, made the bond stir under my ribs.

“I can remove you from this selection,” he said. “I can place you under Haleward protection. No one will question it.”

“There it is.”

His gaze came back to mine. “What?”

“The offer that makes you feel generous and me feel owned.”

Color rose along the scar at his brow. He could have used his title then. Instead, he lowered his voice.

“You are right.”

The answer unsettled me more than an argument would have.

“I do not want your protection,” I said. “I want Lyanna judged honestly. No favors because she is mine. No penalties because she is not yours.”

“She is not yours either.”

The correction landed cleanly. I almost hated him for it.

“No,” I said. “She is herself.”

Orren held out the confirmation papers. “Then I will judge her that way.”

I took them. Our fingers met along the sealed edge.

The bond answered with a hard, bright pull. My breath caught. Orren’s hand went still beneath mine, but he did not close it around my fingers.

“Is that all you can give me?” he asked.

It was not a demand. That made it harder.

“For today,” I said, “it is all you have earned.”

He nodded. “Then today is enough.”

A boot struck stone beyond the hedge.

Tavian stepped through the arch in his Asterfall uniform, two guards behind him. His eyes went first to the papers in my hand, then to Orren standing too near, then to the space I had put between us.

“Lady Lyanna asked me to take charge of the delegation’s security,” he said.

He did not look away from me.

His gaze dropped once more to the space between Orren and me. He had seen enough to start asking why it was there.