LOGINKael was already waiting outside the administration building when we arrived, pacing a short line back and forth across the cracked pavement. His expression softened the instant he saw me — and then hardened again the moment his eyes shifted to Nadia."What did you find?" he asked, all business now, like the phone call minutes ago hadn't happened.Nadia handed him the photograph without a word.He looked down at it. His face drained of color in real time, and I watched every second of it, cataloguing his reaction like evidence."You recognize the pendant," I said. It wasn't a question. He lifted his eyes to mine, jaw tight. "I've seen it before.""Where?""My father's office."My stomach dropped straight through the ground. "You've been in his office? When?""When I was younger. I used to sneak in sometimes.""And you never once thought to mention that?""I didn't know what it meant back then."I laughed, short and bitter, no humor in it at all. "Of course you didn't. Nobody in your f
The photograph slipped from my fingers and landed on the table between Nadia and me.For several seconds, I couldn't move an inch. The little girl in the picture was me. I knew it the way you know your own name — the scar beneath her eyebrow, the exact shape of her face, even the tiny silver bracelet wrapped around her wrist. My bracelet. The one I still had, tucked in a drawer I never opened anymore.But the most frightening part wasn't seeing myself as a child. It was seeing Kael's father carrying me into the sealed building."That's impossible, there is definitely no way it could be," I whispered. Nadia didn't answer. She just kept staring at the photograph like it might rearrange itself into something less damning if she looked hard enough."You said this was from eleven years ago," I said."It is, but that is a long time, Serena.""I wasn't here. I've never set foot in this territory in my life.""I know.""Then why am I in that photograph, Nadia?" My voice climbed, sharper than
I didn't remember the drive to the council archive. One moment, I was standing in the study with Kael's kiss still warm on my palm, the next I was pushing through the heavy oak doors, my heart slamming against my ribs hard enough to hurt.Nadia was waiting inside, three folders fanned across the long table like a woman bracing for battle. She looked up, and whatever composed, businesslike mask she usually wore had cracked at the edges."You look terrible," she said."Thank you. I've had a night.""I meant emotionally, Serena, not the dress. The dress is fine. The dress is doing better than you are.""That's marginally more comforting, and also somehow not comforting at all."She almost smiled — gone as fast as it appeared — before she actually looked at my face and the humor drained out of her entirely. "What happened?"I set my phone on the table without a word. The photograph glowed up at both of us — the little girl's scarred face, an accusation with no one to answer for it yet.Na
I couldn't breathe.The photograph sat frozen on my phone screen, and my fingers had gone so rigid around it that my knuckles ached. Two minutes ago I'd been laughing, half-tangled in Kael's arms on the study couch, teasing him about Daniel's terrible taste in ties. Then the message had chimed, and everything good in the room had died at once."Serena?"I looked at him.His expression shifted from sleepy amusement to something sharper — the particular stillness he gets right before deciding whether a situation calls for diplomacy or violence."What happened?"I turned the phone toward him without a word.He looked. And then his face did something I'd never seen it do before — not the guarded-still of a man hiding something, not the amused-still of a man pretending not to be affected by me. This was the stillness of someone watching the ground open beneath his own feet."Kael. Say something. You're scaring me more than the photo is.""Give me a second.""You don't get a second. I didn'
I woke before sunrise the next morning.Kael was asleep beside me, and for once his face looked entirely peaceful — no Alpha, no council business weighing down his features, no Frenzy lurking beneath the surface. Just Kael. In sleep, the sharp lines that usually framed his jaw when he was holding back some instinct or another had gone soft, and his breathing was slow and even against the pillow. I found myself memorizing it, the way you memorize something you're afraid might not last.I watched him a moment longer than I probably should have. Then my gaze drifted to the bedside table, where the silver key sat exactly where I'd left it, catching the faintest gray light through the curtains.I reached for it carefully.Before my fingers even touched the metal, Kael's hand closed around my wrist. My heart jumped straight into my throat.His eyes were still closed. "Where do you think you're going?""Nowhere.""You're lying to me.""And how, exactly, would you know that?""Because you get
SERENA POVThe silver key felt heavier than it should have.I stood outside the old administration building long after Kael had walked away, staring at the rusted doors and wondering how one tiny piece of metal could suddenly make my entire marriage feel different.Eleven years. A sealed room. Kael's father. My mother. Vale Holdings. And now, apparently, me.My life had decided to become a conspiracy novel without bothering to ask whether I wanted the role of heroine.I slipped the key into my pocket. I wasn't opening that door tonight. Not alone, and definitely not while I was this angry.I turned toward the estate. Kael was waiting for me, of course he was, standing beneath the balcony with his arms folded across his chest, looking annoyingly handsome for a man who had just handed me a key capable of detonating whatever peace I had left."You followed me?""No.""Then why are you standing there like you've been waiting all evening?""I live here. It's technically difficult to avoid







