Extended version of Message On The Wall

Sera POV

Lyra shows me a picture on her phone. The word UNWORTHY is gouged into the wooden door in letters six inches tall. Deep cuts that went all the way through the wood.

I feel something inside me crack. The bakery is all Mom has left since Dad got sick. It's her safe place, her pride. And someone violated it. Someone wanted to hurt me so they hurt her instead.

"When?" My voice sounds strange, distant.

"Sometime this afternoon. Mrs. Patterson across the street heard glass breaking around two."

Glass breaking. They didn't just vandalize the door. They broke in.

"Did they take anything?"

"That's the weird part. Nothing's missing. They just trashed the place and carved up the door. Like they wanted to send a message."

I'm already walking toward my car when Kaelen steps out of the house. "What's going on?"

"Someone vandalized my mother's bakery," I say without stopping. "I need to—"

"I'll come with you."

"No."

"Sera—"

"I said no." I turn on him. "This is family business. Pack business. Your people made it clear I don't belong, so stay out of it."

His face goes hard. "Fine."

I drive to the bakery with Lyra following behind me. The damage is worse than the picture showed. The back door is destroyed, hanging off its hinges. Inside, flour is scattered everywhere like snow. Chairs are overturned. The display cases are smashed.

But the worst part is the door. UNWORTHY carved so deep you could stick your fingers in the grooves.

"I called the police," Lyra says. "They dusted for prints but didn't find anything useful."

Mom is inside, sweeping up glass with shaking hands. When she sees me, she starts crying. "I don't understand. Who would do this?"

I help her clean up, but my mind is racing. The timing. Right after the rejection, right after I got locked up in the Neutral House. Someone wanted to make sure I knew exactly where I stood in this town.

"Mom, did you see anyone suspicious today?"

"Just the usual customers. Oh, and that security company van was parked across the street for a while this afternoon."

"Security company?"

Lyra looks up from where she's sweeping. "What kind of van?"

"Dark blue. Had a logo on the side."

Lyra and I exchange looks. The Ardyns own half the security companies in town.

Later, after Mom goes home and we've boarded up the door, Lyra pulls me aside. "I checked the neighbor's CCTV footage."

"And?"

"A guy in dark clothes, baseball cap pulled low. But he walks with a limp. Distinctive one, his left leg to be precise."

I know that limp. There's only one person in Kaelen's circle who moves like that. Marcus Webb, his father's head of security. The man who's been cleaning up Ardyn messes for twenty years.

"There's more," Lyra says. "I got a copy of the security logs from the building next door. An Ardyn security pass was scanned at the side entrance at 1:47 PM."

Just when Mrs. Patterson heard a glass breaking.

In a terrible passion, I drive back to the Neutral House, my hands trembling uncontrollably on the steering wheel. Kaelen is sitting in the living room when I go inside, reading a book as if nothing ever happened.

"Have a nice evening?" he asks without looking up.

"Go to hell."

Now he looks up. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me." I throw my keys on the coffee table hard enough to make him jump. "Go straight to hell."

He closes his book carefully. "What exactly is your problem?"

"My problem?" I laugh, and it sounds bitter even to me. "My problem is that someone carved UNWORTHY into my mother's bakery door this afternoon."

His face goes blank. "What?"

"Don't act surprised. Your security pass was scanned right around the time it happened."

"My what?"

"Marcus Webb. Your father's attack dog. Distinctive limp, just like the guy on the security footage."

Kaelen stands up slowly. There's something dangerous in his posture. "You think I sent someone to vandalize your mother's bakery?"

"I don't think so. I know it."

"You're insane."

"Am I? You reject me in front of the whole town, call me unworthy, and then someone carves that exact word into my family's business. What a coincidence."

"I didn't…" He stops. Runs his hands through his hair. "I don't know anything about this."

"Right. And I'm sure it's just a coincidence that an Ardyn security pass was used."

"There are dozens of those passes. Anyone could have…" He stops again. Something flickers across his face. Confusion, then anger. "Someone's setting me up."

"Or you're lying."

"I'm telling the truth!" He growls. Though his facade is beginning to break down, underneath I see something raw and vicious."I might have refused you, but I definitely wouldn't go after your family. What kind of man do you take me for?"

"I don't know what kind of man you are. That's the problem.”

Face to face across the living room, we just stare at each other. His chest is lifting and falling as though running. His hands are fisted. I think for a moment he might move, might release the wolf inside himself, but he pulls it back.

"I didn't do it," he says quietly.

"Then who did it?"

"I don't know. But I'm going to find out."

I want to believe him. The look in his eyes, the way his whole body is vibrating with suppressed rage, it feels real. But I've been fooled before.

"Whatever," I say. "I'm going to bed."

"Sera—"

"Don't."

I stomp upstairs, slamming my door hard enough to rattle its frame. My hands are still trembling from adrenaline and rage. I need a shower. I have to rub the smell of violated space and broken glass from my skin.

I’m yanking my shirt over my head when something grabs my attention. A small red light flashing in the smoke detector above my bed.

Half-shirted, I freeze, staring at that small light. It is not supposed to be in there. Smoke detectors do not flash red lights unless they’re —

"No way," I whisper.

I pull the chair over from the desk and stand on it so I can see better. A camera is imbedded inside the smoke detector; it is so small that I might not have noticed it, pointing directly to my bed.

I can tell someone’s been observing me.

Someone’s been observing every detail of me: my slumber, my shifts of clothing, the shreds of me crying silently into my pillow.

It strikes me like a heavy punch. I fall off the chair, my skin itching and my threatened dignity gagged by a bloated reflux. How long has it been there? From the very first night? Before I even came?

With a trembling grip, I tear the camera from the smoke detector. The plastic gives way but it is negligible. The true harm is that someone, for reasons beyond my comprehension, has been watching me in the deepest recesses of privacy, and for all I know, it could have been an eternity.

The red light ceases its blinking. It turns off. Yet I sense the stain will never wash off.