Chapter 5: The first Crack

POV: Evana

Something was wrong. I knew it. I just didn’t know what.

Ever since Arthur took that book, the whole house had started hiding things from me. Conversations stopped when I walked into a room. Any mention of the old Alpha and people suddenly remembered somewhere else they needed to be.

I decided to ask someone who’d actually known him.

I found an older servant in the kitchen, arranging cups on a tray.

“Can I ask you something?”

She was startled. “Of course, Luna.”

“What was Arthur’s father like?”

The cup slipped out of her hand and shattered on the floor. She went white.

“I’m sorry,” she said, already crouching to gather the pieces.

I crouched with her. “You don’t have to be afraid of me.”

She grabbed my wrist, tight, urgent. “You shouldn’t ask about the late Alpha.”

“Why not?”

Her eyes flicked to the doorway. “Because some answers are dangerous.”

She left before I could stop her.

I stayed on the floor for a moment, holding a piece of broken porcelain, wondering what a dead man could still have that was dangerous about him.

Arthur walked in a minute later. His eyes went straight to the mess on the floor.

“What happened?”

“Nothing.” I said

His jaw tightened. “Who did that?”

“I said it was nothing.”

He looked at me a beat too long. Then he walked away.

Something had shifted in him. He was still cold. Still distant in all the old, familiar ways. But underneath it now there was something else.

He was watching me. Too closely.

At dinner his eyes kept finding mine and holding a half-second longer than they should have. When one of the guards complimented my dress, Arthur’s jaw went tight enough to see the muscle jump. When I laughed at something Corwin said, Arthur put down his fork and didn’t pick it back up.

I almost smiled. Jealous.

The thought was absurd. Arthur didn’t get jealous over me. Arthur barely tolerated me most days.

I decided not to think about it.

The next morning I was sent to training, which I’d always hated, mostly because I was always terrible at it. The instructor paired me with a warrior twice my size.

“Don’t hold back,” he warned.

I almost laughed. “I wasn’t planning to.”

He lunged.

I moved before I decided to. One second he was charging at me, the next I’d twisted around his arm and grabbed hold of it, and something surged through me, hot, sudden, alive.

I pulled.

He flew across the yard and hit the dirt hard.

Silence.

Everyone stared. I stared too, at my own hands, like they belonged to someone else.

“What…”

He groaned, got up slowly. “Again.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t mean to…”

He charged again. This time I didn’t have to think at all. I ducked under his swing and struck his chest, and he went flying just like the first time, and a gasp went through the small crowd that had gathered.

My hands were shaking. Not from effort. From something underneath it, something awake now that hadn’t been awake yesterday.

“Stop!” Arthur’s voice cut across the yard.

He crossed the training ground fast, eyes locked on me. Not angry. Not proud, either, I would have understood if it was a proud look.

Afraid.

“Everyone out,” he said, and the yard emptied in seconds.

He looked at me like he was trying to see something moving under my skin.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“You don’t look like it’s nothing.”

He stepped closer. My wolf stirred. His did too, I could feel it, somehow, the way a held breath feels before it’s released.

Then he turned sharply toward the gate, where his Beta was waiting.

He lowered his voice. I heard it anyway.

“When did Evana’s wolf start showing signs of Alpha-level strength?”

My heart stopped in my chest.

Alpha-level?.

I looked down at my own hands again, and for the first time since I’d married Arthur, I understood that whatever this was, he was only just beginning to understand how much it frightened him.