What the Records Hide

 Luna POV 

Declan the guard with the scar walks me to my room without a single wasted word.

He doesn't trust me. I can tell by the two steps of distance he keeps the entire way, like he's waiting for me to do something that proves him right.

"Dinner's at seven," he says at my door. "Alpha likes his guests to be punctual."

"Noted."

He lingers a beat too long, reading me like a lock he can't quite pick. "You're not what I expected from Ashwood."

"What did you expect?"

"Someone easier to read." He walks off before I can decide if that was an insult or a warning.

Alone, I press my palms flat against the cold windowsill and force my breathing steady. Below, pack members run drills in the fading light, movements sharp and synchronized. Exactly what I'd expect from Blackthorn.

I am not here to wonder if Kian ever thinks about me. I am here to work.

I pull the folded map from my jacket, Maren's handwriting marking the last three border attacks in red, and patrol routes in blue. Ashwood took the blame for all three. Ashwood didn't commit a single one. I know that the way I know my own pulse, because I tracked the aftermath of the second attack myself, and the wolf prints at the scene were wrong. Too clean. Too deliberate. Violence staged to look like violence, instead of actually being it.

Someone inside Blackthorn wants a war with Ashwood. I intend to find out who, and why, before it starts.

Dinner fills the long table with faces I don't know and a few I remember, aged five years harder. I keep my head down, my manners sharp, my ears open. Kian sits at the head of the table, and I catch him glancing my way more than once, quick, involuntary, the kind he thinks nobody notices.

I notice everything about him. I always have.

The woman in green sits close to him. Elder Cassia, someone murmurs. She studies me the way a hunter studies a blood trail.

"Tell us, Ms. Sorensen," she says partway through the meal, voice smooth as oil over water. "What exactly does Ashwood hope to gain by sending a liaison so... unfamiliar?"

The table stills. Every eye lands on me.

"I was chosen because I'm thorough." I keep it flat. "Ashwood values results over familiarity."

"Thorough." Her smile doesn't touch her eyes. "How reassuring."

"Elder Cassia." Kian's voice cuts in before she can press further. "Ms. Sorensen is our guest."

"Of course, Alpha." She inclines her head, but she doesn't release me from her stare. "I only wish to understand who we're dealing with."

I hold her gaze until she breaks first. Something coils tight behind my ribs. She suspects something. That changes how carefully I move from here.

I slip away the moment Cassia has Kian cornered in pack business, heading for the east wing where the old records used to live. If someone's staging these attacks, there's a paper trail. There's always a paper trail.

The hallway sits empty, lantern light flickering shadows across stone. I move silent on the old wood floor, trained to leave no trace of having been there at all. The records room door gives without resistance. Unlocked. That should stop me from getting a cold.

It doesn't. I tear through the shelves, scanning dates and signatures.

Twenty minutes in, I find it a requisition form buried under older paperwork, dated the same week as the second attack. Scent-masking herbs, the expensive kind, the kind only an elder could authorize.

Signed by Elder Cassia.

My hands lock around the paper. This is it. Proof she staged at least one attack to frame Ashwood. But why? What does an elder gain from a war her own Alpha didn't order?

The footstep behind me lands half a second too late to save me.

"Interesting reading material."

My whole body snaps rigid. I spin, pulse hammering, and find Kian filling the doorway, arms crossed, watching me with an expression I can't crack open. He's shed his dinner clothes for something plainer, dark pants, a simple shirt and somehow that makes him more dangerous, not less.

"Alpha." I keep my voice level, my mind already sprinting through excuses. "I got turned around looking for the library."

"This isn't the library." He steps closer, and I fold the requisition form into my sleeve before he catches a clear look. "And you don't move like someone who's lost."

He closes the distance until I catch the growl banked under his calm, until his eyes drop to my mouth and snap back up like he's caught himself doing something forbidden.

"Who are you?" The question comes low, stripped of pretense, a question his wolf has been clawing at since the second I crossed his threshold, demanding an answer

he can't quite reach.

For one terrible second, I almost told him.