Chapter 2

The next morning Layla did a television interview alone.

Without the script I'd prepared, she couldn't even keep the order of the rescue straight. A reporter asked who had triggered the alarm, and she claimed she had. The reporter then asked how much blood she had donated to Seraphina. Layla paused and looked toward me off camera.

"Rowan, explain it."

In the past, all she had to do was say my name and I would have the answer ready at once.

This time I stayed where I was.

"The hospital has an official record."

The smile nearly slipped off Layla's face.

When the interview ended, she swept a bottle of water off the table.

"You made me look like a fool on purpose."

"You said you did all of it. I assumed you knew the details."

She raised her hand, but remembered the reporters outside and stopped herself before striking me.

My phone rang. Caleb Mercer of Blackwood Security confirmed my blood-donation details and told me they would provide whatever protection I needed until the investigation into the attack was over.

Layla heard the word protection and her eyes lit up at once.

"Did Adrian ask about me?"

"Caleb only confirmed who gave Seraphina blood."

"Of course he can't ask about me directly. Seraphina isn't dead yet. He has his reputation to consider."

She ordered me to tell Adrian he could thank her privately that evening.

I reminded her, "All he cares about right now is his wife's treatment."

Layla's face went cold.

"You keep insisting he loves his wife because you want me to back off, don't you? Rowan, you've never met a real man. The more self-control they show, the more it proves they feel something."

She turned and went into the dressing room.

Ten minutes later, Tessa emailed a schedule change to my work account. She asked me to meet her at the old training hall, claiming she needed to return the credentials I'd left at the event.

I forwarded the location and the time to Caleb and clipped a recorder inside my cuff.

The training hall had stood empty for six months. Once the door shut, the sound of traffic outside disappeared completely.

Tessa hadn't brought my credentials. She had brought two lackeys to film me.

"On your knees." She opened her phone camera. "Read out what Layla gave you."

On the screen was a fake confession. It said that because I was infatuated with Adrian and jealous that he had noticed Layla, I had planted the wolf-luring resin, staged the attack, and then framed the person who had actually saved Seraphina.

I didn't take the phone.

Tessa raised a hand and slapped me.

My ears rang, and there was blood in my mouth at once.

"Don't act so high-minded. You eat on the Vales' dime and live under their roof. What's wrong with Layla asking you to admit to one thing?"

I stepped back, and the two hangers-on took hold of my arms on either side.

Tessa kicked the back of my knee. As I went down she brought a training baton across my ribs.

"Read it."

Layla's voice came out of the phone. "Get the camera closer. Don't ruin her face. She still has to give me moonlight tomorrow night."

Tessa did as she was told and slapped me again.

I looked at the camera and suddenly smiled.

"Do you really believe she'll keep her promise?"

"Don't try to turn me against her."

"She wouldn't even show her face here. When this comes out, she'll say you were jealous of me and lured me here on your own."

Tessa's face changed, and then, to prove how much she was trusted, she played the full voice message Layla had sent. "Listen carefully. The place, the lines, how to hit her, Layla told me all of it herself. Once she's Luna I'll be her personal photographer."

The device inside my cuff captured every word.

I picked up the fake confession and stopped at the line "I opened the east door myself."

"Only Layla knows the code for the east door. How are you going to explain that?"

Tessa raised the baton.

"She sent me the code last night. Keep stalling, and I really will break your bones."

The baton had barely struck my shoulder when the training hall alarm went off.

Caleb and his men broke through the east door.

The two lackeys let go at once. Tessa grabbed my phone and, in her panic, deleted the visible recording. She never found the device inside my cuff.

I was taken to the hospital and diagnosed with soft-tissue damage to my face, a sprained knee, and bruised ribs.

Layla didn't come to see me. She only called. "Why did you drag a quarrel between friends into the Blackwoods' business?"

"Tessa abducted me and beat me. That isn't an argument between friends."

"She just has a quick temper. Drop the charges and I'll let the clinic go on treating you. Otherwise your wolf will never wake up as long as you live."

I pressed record.

"Send your terms to my work email."

Layla thought she had frightened me, and she actually sent it.

That afternoon Tessa uploaded the edited fake confession to MoonNet.

Layla went live right after it, weeping that she had been framed by an ungrateful assistant.

"I never kept Rowan anywhere. The east door of the old training hall was open the whole time. She could have walked out whenever she liked."

The comments went quiet for a few seconds. Someone asked why she knew it was the old training hall when the location wasn't in the video. Someone else asked how she knew whether the east door was open.

Layla's eyes flickered and she raised her voice at once. "Because Adrian keeps me informed about the investigation! What Adrian and I have is no one else's business."

To plug one hole, she had manufactured a rumor that a married man shared his secrets with her.

At the other end of the ward, Seraphina woke briefly.

She recognized me as the person who had pulled her away from the wolf, and she remembered that Layla had stood off camera waiting for the live light to come on.

After hearing her out, Adrian asked only one thing: "Are you tired?"

When Seraphina nodded, he pulled the blanket higher, turned, and had the lawyers preserve a full archive of Layla's stream.

I completed my discharge paperwork and returned to the Vale house to pack.

Layla leaned in the doorway watching me.

"Stop the act. Without me, you couldn't even find a job."

"Then don't trouble yourself about it."

"You'll come back and beg me."

She was certain she controlled where I lived, what I earned, and what medical treatment I received. She didn't know that the drug samples, the contracts, and nineteen years of medical records were already with my lawyer.

As I wheeled my case out the front door, a screenshot came in on my phone.

Layla had just messaged a brand: "If the training hall incident gets out of hand, we'll say Tessa acted on her own out of jealousy."

The screenshot came from Tessa.

She had finally worked out that the next person pushed forward to take the blame would be her.