ログイン(Angelique)Maliyah catches me in the hall before I've made it ten steps from the study door."Walk with me.""No thank you."Her hand closes on my elbow.Light.A friendly touch, if anyone's watching.Her grip says otherwise."Five years I thought you were dead," she says, steering me toward the window alcove."It was the only worthwhile thing you ever did.""Let go of my arm.""You were a nuisance at six. You're a nuisance at twenty-five. The difference is that now you're a nuisance with a deadline."She stops at the window and turns me to face her.Up close she smells like white flowers over nothing warm."You have six days. Pack light."My heart wants to spike.I sit on it hard.There’s no need to involve Rene in this.Banishing me is the best thing for everyone.I refuse to give Maliyah the satisfaction of agreeing with her."You heard him in there," I say. "He didn't agree to banish me.""He didn't refuse either."She smiles."Men in Rene’s position don't have the luxury of deci
(Rene)"Tonight," Maliyah says."The guests start arriving next Friday. I want this buried before the first car's in the drive."She's got my study organized like it's hers.Brynn scrolling her phone in the window seat, bored on purpose.Angelique standing in the middle of the rug.Angelique's face is granite.Her heartbeat's a different story, and I'm the only one in the room getting that broadcast."Too many failures, Rene."Maliyah settles against my desk."I've watched packs gossip themselves into civil war over less. Say the words like you mean them and we can all move on with our lives.""Do you ever get tired of the sound of your own agenda?" Angelique asks her."Do you ever get tired of standing where you're not wanted?""Ask the man who dragged me here.""Enough."My voice drops the room's temperature."Both of you."Don't do it, the wolf says. Last time it wouldn't take. It's stronger now. This is a cliff.It's the smallest cliff left.Next Friday brings thirty wolves with f
(Victor)The Warden's office wants ten years of incident records before the crowning.Standard, apparently.Visiting Alphas, consecrated blood, everyone's history on the table.Cole's been hauling file boxes past my study door all morning like it's nothing.Because to him it is nothing."Last of them."He sets the box on my desk."Levi Knox's clerk wants them scanned by Friday.""Leave it. I'll go through them.""You're meant to be resting.""I'll rest when this circus is over."He goes.Decent man, Cole. Doesn't ask why an old wolf wants to sort paper personally.The folder's third from the top.PRUITT, T. — FATALITY — ROGUE INCURSION.Ten years, and my hands still remember the weight of that night better than they remember my own son's crowning suit.I’m fine.Open it.Read it like a stranger would.That's the job now. Read it like a stranger, find anything a stranger shouldn't find.Photos. The east ravine. Theodore on his back.You knew him forty years, the wolf says. You carried
(Angelique)Zack drinks his juice with the face of a child being poisoned."Dirt. And. Feet," he says, glaring at me."Every drop, bug."He drains it, gags theatrically, holds the cup upside down over his head to prove it's empty.Several droplets plop into his hair and I suppress a sigh.Washing his hair isn’t high on his list of favorite activities either.Somewhere in this house Rene Beck just felt a small warm flicker of me finding my son funny, because I can't even enjoy breakfast in private anymore.Tova appears with a tin of contraband cookies and today's report.She's got a report every morning.The woman collects the secrets in this house like stamps."Kitchen's at war. Brynn wants the salmon off the crowning menu, Maliyah wants it back on. Guess who wins?""Guess who doesn’t have to care.""You'd care if you saw the seating chart."She pries the tin open for Zack."One each, monster, your mother's watching. Anyway, have you heard the latest? Housekeeping's having a field day
(Rene)She's barely through the study door before I lock it behind her."You sent Cole to get me at eleven at night."She stops in the middle of the rug, arms crossed.She’s dressed in only a baggy t-shirt, legs bare, hair a mess."In front of the night guards.""We’re werewolves, Angelique. Were you under the impression there are pack members who are in the dark about what we do?""You summon me to your room for that. Not the study. What do you-""You know what."She does.I've been simmering since dinner and the bond carried every degree of it up to her room, the same way it's carrying her answer back to me right now.That low pull in her belly she'd die before admitting to."You're angry," she says."I'm loud. There's a difference."I cross to her."Three days I've had you in my head at full volume. Your temper. Your fear this afternoon. That thing you do at night when you think about my hands on you and hate yourself for it."Her chin comes up."You don't know who I’m thinking abo
ParkerThe woman in the gray cardigan has no scent.Not faint. Not masked badly. Nothing. A hole in the air shaped like a person.I've smelled that hole before.I walk out of the nursery wing at a pace that won't draw eyes.I keep walking, past the kitchen where Zack's negotiating a third cookie out of Tova, out the side door, across the lot to the staff quarters they stuck me in because the Warden said guest-right and Rene Beck said fine, the furthest building.Then I lock my door and call Donovan.He picks up on the second ring.Eleven years since I was his Alpha and he still answers like I never left."It's me. I need the file on the scent-dead ones."Quiet on the line. Then, "Where did you see one of them?""Here. In the Beck house. Middle-aged female, gray hair, plain, forgettable. She's been inside a week as a guest and I only crossed her path today.""Parker," his voice is careful. "Is it them?""It smells like the same nothing."He doesn't ask if I'm sure. He was there after.
(Angelique)"This floor's yours. Don't go near the west doors, don't go in the war room, don't talk to anyone who doesn't talk to you first. And don’t even think about going outside alone."Cole hands me a bucket like he's apologizing for it."And Zack?""He’s with the doctor's wife. She likes kids
(Angelique)I find out the rules of my new life by eavesdropping, which feels about right.I'm sent down to fetch Zack's lunch from the kitchens because the Alpha's pet doesn't get to sit and be served.I really don’t mind. Keeping everyone away from Zack right now is my top priority.On the way ba
(Rene)The boy falls asleep in the car before we clear the gate, and I'm glad, because it means she has nothing to hide behind when we get to the house.I have Cole take the kid to a room on the far side of the residence.Angelique watches him carried away down a corridor she doesn't know, in a hou
(Angelique)Twenty minutes to dismantle a life.It's not as hard as it should be.That's the part that hollows me out, how little there is.Zack's clothes.The shoebox of his drawings.One good blanket.My documents, the fake ones and the realer ones, taped inside a vent I pried open with a butter







