Chapter 11

Briony's POV

"Whose scent is it?" I asked, my voice lower than I meant it to come out.

Kieran straightened, still staring at the doorframe like it might give him more if he looked hard enough. "Not fresh. A few hours old, maybe more. Faint enough that if I hadn't been standing right here I would've missed it completely."

"But you know whose it is."

His jaw ticked. "I have a guess."

"Petra."

"I said a guess." He said it fast, like he wanted to hold off naming her out loud until he was sure, but I could see it in his face, he already knew. "Get inside. Bolt the door. I'll send someone to sit outside your window tonight."

"I don't need a babysitter."

"You need somebody who isn't asleep when the next note gets passed." He didn't wait for me to argue further, already moving down the hall, the tracker jogging to keep pace with him.

I went inside like he told me to. I bolted the door like he told me to. I did not, however, plan on staying quiet about any of it, and the second I heard his boots headed toward the main house, I followed at a distance close enough to hear.

He found Petra in the training yard, running drills with two other warriors like nothing in the world was wrong. She saw him coming and stopped mid-swing, lowering her blade with a look on her face that was almost bored.

"Alpha." She said it with ease, no nerves in it at all. "Something I can help with?"

"A word." Kieran didn't ask. The other two warriors took the hint fast and cleared out without being told twice.

I stayed back by the fence, half-hidden in the shadow of the equipment shed, close enough to hear every word.

"You were seen at the border market," Kieran said. "Passing a note to a man who didn't carry an Ashvale scent."

Petra's face didn't change at all. "I go to that market every week, same as half the pack. Buy thread, buy salt, whatever we're short on."

"That's not what I asked."

"No, but it's what I'm answering." She crossed her arms, unbothered, like she rehearsed this exact conversation in her head a dozen times before it happened. "I don't remember passing a note to anybody. Maybe your source got confused. It was crowded out there."

"My source watched you do it."

"Your source," Petra said, tilting her head, "also thinks she can heal a silver wound with her bare hands and nobody's supposed to notice, so I'm not sure how much weight I'd put on what she claims to see."

That landed exactly the way she meant it to. I saw Kieran's shoulders go tight.

"This isn't about her," he said, voice dropping colder. "This is about you standing outside her door hours after that market run, close enough to leave a scent trail on the wood."

For the first time, something flickered across Petra's face, not fear, not guilt, something closer to irritation, like he made a move she hadn't planned for. It was gone almost as fast as it came.

"I walked past the healing house on my way back from the well last night," she said. "Might've paused. Wondering if Faro needed checking on, since apparently that root cure worked so well nobody's bothered explaining exactly how." She let that sit a second. "Didn't realize standing near a hallway was a crime now."

"It is when you're passing information to people who shouldn't have it."

"Prove it." Her voice didn't rise. If anything it got quieter. "You've got a note nobody actually saw the contents of, a man nobody can name, and a scent that could belong to half this pack if you're being honest about how faint it was. That's not proof, Alpha. That's a story."

Kieran didn't answer immediately, and I watched him work through it, hands flexing at his sides like he wanted to do something the pack laws wouldn't let him do without more than a guess.

"I'm watching you," he said finally.

"I'd expect nothing less." She picked her blade back up off the ground, like the conversation hadn't cost her anything at all. "Was there anything else, Alpha? Or can I get back to drills?"

He let her go. There wasn't anything else to say, not without proof, and we both knew it.

I caught up with him halfway back to the main house, matching his stride even though he didn't slow down for me.

"She's lying," I said.

"I know she's lying."

"Then do something."

"With what?" He finally stopped, turning to face me, frustration bleeding through the calm he held together in front of her. "I can't strip somebody of rank or throw them in the holding cells because a scent might be theirs and a note might've said something. Pack law needs more than a maybe, or every accusation turns into an excuse to settle old grudges."

"So she just gets to keep doing this. Passing notes, standing outside my door, and there's nothing anybody can do about it."

"I didn't say nothing." His voice softened, just slightly. "I said not tonight. I've got somebody watching her now. Somebody is watching your window too. The second she slips, I'll have something real to act on."

"And until then?"

"Until then you bolt your door and you trust that I'm not going to let anything happen to you." He held my eyes long enough that I almost believed it completely. "I mean that."

I wanted to believe it completely. I told myself I did, walking back to my room alone once he peeled off to check the night watch, bolting the door behind me exactly like I promised, telling myself the guard he'd posted outside was enough.

I fell asleep faster than I expected to, worn down from the whole day, and I didn't dream about Petra or notes or strangers who didn't smell like home.

I woke instead to a soft, deliberate scrape at my window,metal against metal, someone working the old lock like they had all the time in the world and didn't want to be heard doing it.