Secret in the dark

LUNA POV

Declan, the guard with the scar, shows me to a room on the second floor that's all clean lines and cold politeness. He doesn't trust me. I can tell by the way he keeps two steps behind me the entire walk, like he's waiting for me to slip up and do something wrong so he'll have an excuse to throw me out.

"Dinner is at seven," he says when we reach my door. "Alpha likes his guests to be punctual."

"I'll remember that."

He lingers in the doorway a second too long, studying me like a puzzle he can't quite solve. "You're not what I expected from Ashwood."

"What did you expect?"

"Someone easier to read." He leaves before I can decide if that was an insult or a warning, and I'm not sure which one scares me more.

Alone, I let myself breathe. My hands are shaking, just a little, and I hate that they are. I press them flat against the cool stone windowsill and look out over the training yard below, where a group of pack members are running drills in the fading light. Their movements are synchronized, trained, disciplined- exactly what I'd expect from Blackthorn.

I am not here to fall apart; nor am I here to wonder if Kian ever thinks about me, but I am here to work…

I pull the small folded map from my jacket, the one Maren gave me before I left Ashwood, marked with the exact locations of the last three border attacks. Red circles for where they happened. Blue lines for the patrol routes. Ashwood has been blamed for all of them. Ashwood didn't do them.

I know that the way I know my own name, because I was tracking a completely different problem the night of the second attack. I was actually on the Blackthorn border, investigating rumors of something else entirely, when I saw the aftermath. Wolf tracks, yes. But something about them was wrong. Too clean. Too careful. Like someone was trying to stage what a real attack would look like instead of actually committing one.

Someone inside Blackthorn wants a war with Ashwood. I intend to find out who, and I intend to burn them for it.

At dinner, the long table is full. Pack members I don't recognize and a few faces I remember from a lifetime ago, aged five years harder in ways that make me wonder what's been happening here. I keep my head down, my manners polished, my ears open to every conversation I can catch.

Kian sits at the head of the table, and I feel his attention on me more than once. Glances, the kind a man thinks nobody notices. I notice everything about him. I always have. That's always been the problem.

someone who has already decided I'm a threat and is simply waiting for the right moment to prove it.

"Tell us, Ms. Sorensen," she says partway through the meal, her voice smooth as poison. "What exactly does Ashwood hope to gain by sending a liaison so... unfamiliar? Surely they have plenty of people who know Blackthorn customs?"

The table goes quiet, and all eyes are on me.

"I was chosen because I'm thorough," I say carefully. "Ashwood values results over familiarity."

"Thorough." She smiles, and it doesn't reach her eyes. "How reassuring. Though I wonder thoroughly at what exactly?"

Kian clears his throat before she can say more. "Elder Cassia, Ms. Sorensen is our guest. Let's show some hospitality."

"Of course, Alpha." Cassia's gaze doesn't leave me, even as she inclines her head toward him in false respect. "I only wish to understand whom we're dealing with. You understand,

I hold her stare until she looks away first, and something tightens behind my ribs. I don't know what she suspects. But I know she suspects something, and that changes everything about how carefully I need to move.

After dinner, I slip away from the group while Cassia has Kian cornered in conversation about pack business. I head for the east wing, where I remember from another life, from before everything fell apart, that the pack kept its supply records. If someone inside Blackthorn is behind the attacks, staging them with careful precision, there will be a trail. There always is.

The hallway is empty, lit by low lantern light that flickers and makes shadows dance across the stone walls. My footsteps are silent on the old wood floor. I've trained myself to move like this, like a ghost, like I don't exist, as I've already left.

I find the records room unlocked, which should make me suspicious, but I'm too focused on the shelves to stop and think about why a room this important is left unguarded and open. I move quickly through stacks of paperwork, my eyes scanning dates and signatures.

It takes me twenty minutes to find it. A requisition form, half-buried under older paperwork, dated the same week as the second attack. Scent-masking herbs. The expensive kind. The kind only an elder would have access to order.

Signed off by Elder Cassia.

My hands go very still on the paper. This is it. This is the proof I need. Cassia was behind at least one of the attacks. She was trying to frame Ashwood. But why? What would she gain from starting a war?

I hear the footsteps behind me a half second too late.

"Interesting reading material," says a voice I know too well, low and even, right behind my shoulder.

My entire body goes rigid.

I turn, heart slamming in my chest, to find Kian standing in the doorway, arms crossed over his broad chest, watching me with an expression I can't read. He's changed into something more casual than his dinner clothes, dark pants and a simple shirt, and somehow that makes him look even more dangerous.

"Alpha," I say, keeping my voice steady even as my mind races through every excuse I have prepared for exactly this situation. "I got lost looking for the library."

"This isn't the library." He steps further into the room, and I quickly fold the requisition form and slide it into my sleeve before he can see it clearly. "And you don't look lost to me."