What She Left Behind

I spent the rest of the morning tucked away in the pack records room. It’s a small space off the main hallway—packed floor to ceiling with filing cabinets and old files, smelling like paper and that familiar dust from things nobody’s touched in ages. I’d been in here plenty of times before, back when I was Luna. Usually, it was all admin stuff—checking over finances, membership lists, the paperwork that keeps a pack running.

But I never thought I’d sit in here looking for proof that someone had been plotting against me for four years.

I started with the visitor logs. Every pack keeps these—it’s standard security, lists every wolf who comes onto the territory, where they came from, why they showed up, how long they stayed. Most Alphas treat them like a checkbox. I never did. I always knew the most dangerous threats don’t announce themselves.

Selene’s first recorded visit to Darkwood? Three years and eight months ago. Not three years—three years and eight months. That’s eight months before the rejection. Meaning for eight months she had been coming and going, learning the ins and outs of the packhouse, figuring out how things worked, seeing who Damien trusted and who he didn’t. Eight months of observation. Eight months of watching me.

Her stated reason was council liaison business. Elder Rowan signed off every entry—seven visits over eight months, each one lasting between two and five days, every single visit under the same reason, signed by the same elder. Then, after the rejection, the visits stopped. Because she was already in the pack.

I moved on to the financial records. These took longer. Packs keep dense, detailed finances, and I had to sift through three years trying to spot anything unusual—payments to outsiders that didn’t make sense, money heading somewhere it shouldn’t.

Found something in the second year: Monthly payments to an external consulting firm, Voss Strategic Advisory. They started four months after the rejection and kept coming, month after month. Not huge amounts, but enough to raise suspicion if you were looking. And Voss—Selene Voss. The woman living in Damien’s packhouse was getting paid out of pack funds, through a shell company she owned. Damien signed off every payment, probably without realizing what he was authorizing.

I sat back and looked at my notes. Selene hadn’t been improvising. Everything here was carefully planned, executed with the kind of precision that takes real resources and serious intelligence.

That brought me straight to Elder Vance. He’s a senior council member, with access to intelligence across multiple packs, the kind of person who could fund an operation like this and shield himself when questions pop up. He’s also the one who confirmed the existence of a faction that doesn’t exist.

I called Cassian. He picked up after the second ring.

“Aria,” he said, sounding like he was in the middle of something but willing to drop it. “I was wondering when you’d call.”

“Elder Vance,” I told him.

A beat. “What about him?”

“How well do you know him?”

He paused longer this time. “Well enough to find the question interesting. Why?”

“I’m sitting in Darkwood’s records room and his name just keeps showing up. He confirmed fake intelligence to Damien three years ago. He’s tied to the woman poisoning Damien since the rejection. And I think he’s been connected to something bigger, for a long time.”

Cassian was silent for a moment—a silence that makes it clear you’ve just confirmed something he suspected.

“Cassian,” I said, “what do you know?”

He breathed out slowly. “I know Elder Vance’s been under informal Lycan observation for fourteen months. They’ve found financial irregularities in at least four packs. And honestly, until now, I didn’t have anything solid enough to act on.”

“I might have something concrete.”

“I’m coming to Darkwood,” Cassian said.

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

“Tomorrow morning,” he promised. “Listen, Aria. Be careful today. If Vance knows you’re digging, he won’t wait for you to find everything.”

I thought about Wren’s message: Someone tried to access foundation records last night.

“I know. Tomorrow morning.”

I hung up and sat in the quiet, just letting everything settle.

Then the door opened.

I looked up and saw someone I hadn’t expected—Berta. In her sixties, broad-shouldered, grey hair in a neat braid, her face weathered from actually living life. She was one of the first wolves to welcome me when I became Luna, made me feel like I belonged.

She stood in the doorway with a tray. Tea, a cup, and the pack’s bread she baked every morning, still warm.

I just stared. It hit way harder than you’d expect, like something small and familiar I didn’t realize I’d missed. It was just bread and tea—but it was also Berta remembering, after three years, what I liked and bringing it for me, unprompted. The pack remembered me, even when I’d tried to forget them.

“I thought you might not have eaten,” she said simply.

I cleared my throat. “Thanks, Berta.”

She set down the tray and stayed in the room for a moment, hands folded, looking at me with that steady gaze you only earn after sixty years.

“It was wrong—what happened to you,” she said. “I want you to know a lot of us knew it was wrong and just didn’t know how to say so.”

I looked at her. “Why tell me now?”

“Because you’re here. And because I’m old enough to know that words you don’t say when you should have said them turn heavy.” She straightened. “Drink your tea while it’s hot.”

She left.

I sat there, feeling the weight of her words mixing in with everything else I was holding. I poured the tea. I ate the bread. Then I dove back into work.

A little while later, as I dug through the third year of records, I heard raised voices from the hallway. Selene’s voice was unmistakable.

I slipped to the door and opened it quietly. She was twenty feet away, facing Marcus. Her posture screamed control, but the edges of her voice were sharp.

“I have every right to be here,” she insisted. “Damien asked me.”

“Damien’s resting,” Marcus replied, blocking her path—not aggressively, but he wasn’t budging. “His medical advisor wants things calm and restricted today.”

Selene’s tone tightened. “You mean that woman Aria brought in, without anyone’s consent.”

“The woman whose treatment is keeping him alive,” Marcus said, flat.

Silence. Selene glanced down the hall at me.

We locked eyes.

Her composure shifted—quick, subtle, almost amused.

“Hard at work,” she said.

“Always.”

“Find anything interesting?”

I held her gaze. “A few things.”

She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Be careful what you think you’ve found. Documents can be misinterpreted. Records can be incomplete. Accusations without evidence hurt the accuser more than the accused.”

“That sounds like advice.”

“Consider it a courtesy.”

“Like your text last night? Another courtesy?”

Something flickered in her expression—there, then gone.

“I’ll check on Damien later,” she told Marcus. Then she turned and walked away, unhurried. She never rushed. Rushing meant you were afraid something was catching up.

I watched her go. Marcus came to stand beside me.

“She’s been at it all morning,” he said quietly. “Moving through the packhouse like she owns the place. Checking rooms. Talking to members. I’ve had two wolves tell me she asked about you—what you’re doing here, how long you’re staying, who you’ve talked to.”

“She’s tracking me,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Who did she talk to?”

He listed names. I stored them away.

“Keep an eye on her,” I said. “Make sure none of those wolves touch Damien’s food or drink.”

Marcus nodded and walked off.

I went back into the records room, closed the door, leaned against it. Selene was moving faster than I expected. I needed to move faster, too.

I kept digging through the financials and, an hour later, I found something that made me stop cold.

Buried in the fourth year, among routine expenses, was a payment to an external legal firm—Harrow and Associates. The name rang loud. Every wolf who follows council politics knows Harrow and Associates. They represented Elder Vance in three council inquiries in the last eight years—each time, the inquiry quietly dropped.

Darkwood made the payment fourteen months ago. Four months before Nadia started watching Vance.

Someone in Darkwood was covering Vance’s legal bills.

I stayed perfectly still. Then I snapped a photo and added it to the file.

Outside, the packhouse carried on. Damien was somewhere upstairs, resting. Selene was moving inside, scanning, calculating. Elder Vance, wherever he was, was either waiting to see what I’d find or already gearing up to respond.

I remembered Cassian: Be careful today.

My phone buzzed. Nadia: Second compound partially identified. Synthetic. Custom made—not from a standard supplier. Someone had this manufactured. Aria, this took serious resources.

I read it twice. Custom poison. Serious money and connections.

This wasn’t about one shady elder and one ambitious woman. It was funded, organized—a network that decided four years ago that Aria Cole had to be removed, and spent four years and big money making it happen.

But why? Why go through all this trouble?

I still didn’t have the answer. Something was missing—a piece that explained why I, specifically, had been worth this much hassle. Vance was corrupt, sure, but regular corruption doesn’t usually justify a campaign like this.

There was something about me I didn’t know yet. Something that made me worth all this trouble before I’d even done anything.

I closed the records and thought hard. Then, the shape of an idea came to me—not the answer itself, but where to look.

I crossed to the shelves with the oldest records—decades old. Bloodline records. Pack history. Documents of every wolf born or mated into Darkwood going back five generations.

I found my entry: Aria Sutton, mated to Alpha Damien Cole, Luna of Darkwood.

My maiden name: Sutton.

I never knew much about my family. My mother died when I was twelve, and after that, nothing. I knew my father was a pack wolf somewhere, but his name had never meant anything to me.

I ran my finger along the records. Thirty years. Forty. Fifty. I searched for the name Sutton.

Found it. A record from thirty-eight years ago.

And what I read made me sit down on the floor, holding the file. Sunlight streamed through the small window. Everything I thought I understood about why I was here shifted.

I saw my mother’s name.

But that wasn’t what froze me.

It was the name written beside hers.

My father’s name.

A name I recognized.

A name that explained everything.