ANMELDENToday, I didn’t lower mine, Rowan’s gaze moved from me to Gabriel and then to the documents in his arms. He leaned back in his chair, his expression guarded. “What is the meaning of this?” he asked.I walked toward the center of the chamber and placed the first set of records on the table before facing the council. “I requested this hearing because I have evidence concerning Silvercrest’s financial decline after my mother’s death.”A murmur passed through the room and Rowan rested one hand against the arm of his chair. “Your mother’s death was years ago, Samantha. If you have concerns about old financial records, they could have been brought to me privately.”“I tried to understand what happened privately,” I replied, keeping my voice steady. “What I found was too serious to keep between us.”His expression hardened, but before he could respond, one of the older council members lifted his hand. “Let her speak,” Elder Tomas said firmly.Rowan glanced toward him before settling back int
While everyone believed my mother had died during a difficult period for the pack, the truth had been buried underneath years of lies. Someone had wanted her silenced, someone had wanted the information she carried and Rowan had been perfectly positioned to benefit from her death.I looked at Amara, refusing to let the thought remain unanswered. “Was Rowan the one who ordered it?”Amara hesitated, lowering her gaze for a moment before meeting mine again. “I don’t know.”The answer frustrated me, but I appreciated that she didn’t pretend to know something she couldn’t prove. “Then we find out,” I said, closing my fingers around the edge of the table.Gabriel leaned forward, his expression suddenly changing as though he had noticed something I hadn’t. “There is something else.”I turned toward him. “What?”He pointed toward the bottom of the page. “There.”I followed his finger and saw a name written beside a note about the northern connection, Elias Thorn. My heart sank. “My mother tru
The financial records had finally exposed their betrayal, but they had also opened another door. Behind it waited the truth about what Rowan and Vivianne had been trying so desperately to bury, and I intended to uncover that truth no matter how much it cost me.By the time I returned to the old archive house, the sky over Silvercrest had darkened. Gabriel carried the copied ledgers beneath his arm while Amara followed closely behind us, her expression unusually tense. None of us spoke until we were back inside the hidden chamber, where I placed the documents on the wooden table and stared at the growing pile we had gathered over the past few days.Every discovery seemed to lead to another question, and somehow, every question brought me back to my mother. Why had she been investigating the northern territories? Why had she contacted Elias Thorn? Why had she hidden records instead of taking them to the council? Most importantly, why had she become so afraid shortly before her death?Am
I turned another page and found a document dated only months after my mother’s death. It was an order transferring control of several Silvercrest resource stores to an external merchant. Rowan’s authorization appeared at the bottom, and beside it was Vivianne’s approval. My heart sank. “This was deliberate.”Gabriel rested one hand against the table. “We have enough evidence to establish a pattern.”I shook my head. “Not yet.”He studied me. “What else do you want to find?”“I want to know why they needed Silvercrest this weak.” I said.Gabriel was silent for a moment before reaching into another stack of documents. He pulled out a land report and placed it in front of me. “These transfers weren’t only about supplies.”I read the first paragraph then the second, and several areas of Silvercrest land had been leased to outside merchants after the pack could no longer afford to maintain them. The leases were unusually cheap, and the merchants were connected to the same network that had
My mother had spent years searching for the truth, and now it was my turn to finish what she had started. I held the packet against my chest for another moment before carefully placing it inside the leather satchel Gabriel had brought with him. The symbol was still fresh in my mind, along with everything we had learned about Elias Thorn, the Silver Moon Wolf, and the ancient bloodline my mother had been desperately trying to understand. Yet beneath all those questions, another one refused to leave me alone. If my mother had been investigating all of this before her death, why had Silvercrest fallen so quickly after she was gone?I looked across the chamber at the shelves of forgotten records before turning toward Gabriel. “We have enough here to keep us searching for weeks,” I said as I closed the satchel. “But I want to know what happened to Silvercrest after my mother died.”Gabriel gathered the remaining documents and gave me a thoughtful look. “We already know the pack lost suppli
I picked up the page and examined the symbol again. There was something unsettling about it, not because it frightened me, but because it felt strangely familiar. I had never seen it before, yet the shape seemed to settle somewhere in the back of my mind as though I had encountered it in another place. I pushed the strange sensation aside. “Did she ever give it a name?”Amara shook her head. “Not to me. She only said it was connected to something very old.”Before I could respond, Gabriel reached for another sheet. “There’s more here.” He placed the document beside the first one. Several symbols had been drawn across the page, but the same crescent and circle appeared among them. Beside it, my mother had written a short note.The Silver Moon mark appears in records predating the founding of Silvercrest.I read the sentence twice before slowly looking up. “The Silver Moon,” I murmured.Amara nodded. “That was the name Elias used when he spoke about the old prophecy.”I turned toward he







