Chapter Fourteen- What I Wanted To Keep.

Seren’s Pov

Silence was deafening.

The hall stirred. Chair screeched. Gasps. A woman at the back clapped both hands over her mouth. An old warrior at the third table slowly sank onto a knee, head bowed. Then another.

Then it clicked.

There were two heirs in this house.

I should have felt elated. Thorne's face had gone completely blank and calculating. His grin had slipped from his face for a brief moment. But my knees buckled and my ears began to fill.

"Out."

Caelum didn't yell. He didn't have to. With one word spoken, the hall emptied. Two hundred wolves with their heads bowed and eyes bright with fire filed out. Rysen was already at my side, one arm looped around my back as he supported me.

"I've got you." His voice was muffled against my temple. "Look at me."I can't feel my hands."Oh perfect. I can feel it. And there's plenty for both of us."

We walked out the back way. Rysen had my arm looped around his back as I walked through the servants passage. As we passed the kitchen I saw Della standing pale against the wall with her hands clasped over her mouth. I didn't look at her. I didn't look at anyone. The silver dress was dragging over my ankles and suddenly it felt like a mockery.

---

Caelum's study. Same chair I had discovered my worth in. Rysen dropped to his knees in front of me and gently took off my silver slippers. Caelum stood at the window facing away from me. I could see his shoulders and knew he was battling something huge.

No one spoke.

"Say it." I whispered.

He turned.

I was expecting anger. I had prepared for it. I had expected him to look at me with the icy rage he had shown towards Davan, Ashgrove and Thorne. What I hadn't expected was for him to look like a broken man. His face was damp. His eyes were wide. He looked completely defeated and angry with himself.

"How long?" His voice was rough.

"Three days. Since the healer. I was going to tell you. I promise I was going to tell you. I just..." My voice cracked. "I wanted it to be mine."

I hadn't meant to say that. It just slipped out.

Rysen sank onto his heels. "Yours."

"No." I pressed my palms against my eyes. "Not theirs. Not the council. Not a book. Not a register. Not a prize for two Alphas. Everything important to me has been decided, sold or announced to me in the last nineteen years. I just wanted to have something that was mine. Even if it was only for a short amount of time."

The room was silent.

In three strides Caelum was stood in front of me, dropping onto his knees so quickly I could hear them thump onto the floor.

"Seren." His hands gripped mine. His eyes were red around the rims. "Look at me. You never owed us anything. Not telling me. Not when. Not a single minute."

"That's not..."

"It is." His voice cracked. "I was terrified when Thorne said that in my own hall. I was terrified that I had failed you so much that you had to hide the biggest part of yourself behind a pantry door because you didn't trust us to make room for it. This is my problem to deal with. Not yours."

"We didn't make it easy." Rysen said softly. "The contract. The clause. Everything we spoke about in those first few weeks was about what you could do for us. Of course you wanted to keep something from us. I would have."

I was crying. Again. I hated crying. I had cried more in the last month than I had in the last nineteen years.

"I wasn't scared you would be angry. I was scared you would be happy. For the wrong reasons. I didn't want to look at you and see that you knew I was an heir. That you knew I was part of the line. That it had finally happened. I didn't want to know which of you was looking at me and which was looking at what I carry."

They didn't look away.

"Look at me now." Caelum said. "What do you see?"

I looked.

His eyes were wet. His jaw trembled. He wasn't looking at me like I was part of a bloodline. Or part of a charter. Or part of some political victory. He was looking at me like I was just a girl in a silver dress sitting on a chair with my shoes off and my face splitting down the middle.

"I see a terrified man."

"Yes."

"And happy."

"Yes! Gods." He let out a broken laugh. "I am so happy I can't breathe. I'm so terrified I could throw up. And none of it has to do with a registry."

Rysen squeezed our hands. "Twins." He said in a strange, questioning tone. "Seren. We're having twins."

That was when it hit me. Not in the hall. Not in the healer's cottage. Right here. In this dim study. With Rysen's thumb circling my knuckles and Caelum's forehead pressed against mine. It was real. Big. Ours.

I laughed. A watery, half crazy laugh. They both laughed with me, helplessly. Caelum pressed his palm flat against my stomach in a reverent way that made me completely break down.

"Hello." He whispered to my stomach. To the darkness. "Hello. I'm your father. I'm a disaster apparently. But I'm yours."

Rysen let out a sound I had never heard from him. A mix between a cry and a laugh. He buried his face in my knee.

---

It wouldn't last.

Caelum stood first, wiping his face with his wrist. The Alpha slid back over him like he didn't want to wear the coat. "Thorne gave us seven days,"He didn't come here to negotiate. He came to show us we're leaks."

"Healer's girl."

"Sorted." Rysen's face was grim. "Two guards found her trying to cross the northern fence at dawn. She had a purse of silver in her apron. She says Redmoor's man paid her three weeks ago to keep an eye on Marguerite's door."

My stomach twisted. Three weeks ago. Before the shift. Before the registry. Before anyone knew what I was.

"They knew." I said slowly. "Before I did. Thorne was watching me before I even went white."

They exchanged a look.

"That's what's getting to me." Caelum said. "How did Redmoor know to look?"

A heavy silence fell.

"Seren." Rysen said carefully. "The anomaly clause. The council's suspicions. Marcus reading it out loud in that meeting. Who else knew you had the marker before we did?"

I thought of a small, slanted handwriting. A file under a bed. A man who had valued me low knowing exactly what I could turn into.

Ashgrove's icy voice. Convenient.

"Thorne was sold the same secret as me." I whispered. "Someone has been selling me for a very long time."

Caelum's hand went to the back of my neck. "We will find out who. And we will do it before Redmoor. And we will do it together."

Outside the window it was pitch black. Somewhere out there a wolf began to howl. Another joined in. And another. The whole territory seemed to echo with the sound. It wasn't fear. It was something ancient. Something that told the pack their future had a pulse.

Two of them.

I placed both hands on my stomach. For the first time since the pantry door, I didn't feel alone.

I just felt like there was so much to lose.