Chapter 6

Adrian's Pov

"The Lycans?" Alan repeated, his brow creasing, "Lia, those are myths."

"So were the wolves until they showed up at our doorstep." I replied flatly.

He opened his mouth, closed it again. Smart man.

"Everything I'm asking you to do, the silver weapons, the wolfsbane, treat it the same way you treated every other impossible thing we've done together." I looked between them both. "With your full attention and zero questions.

"Kane scratched the back of his neck, "The wolfsbane I can source, but it's going to take some digging, it's not exactly sitting on market shelves."

"Then start digging today." I said. "Not tomorrow. Today."

"And the silver weapons?" Alan asked.

"I need enough to outfit our entire unit." I said. "Bullets, blades, anything that can be deployed fast in close range combat.

"Alan let out a low whistle. "That's a significant order Lia."

"Edgar isn't coming here to make friends Alan." I said quietly. "He's coming here to take everything we have and wrap it in a bow called peace." I held his gaze. "I need us to be ready before he steps foot through our doors.

"The humor had completely left Alan's face now, replaced by the steady seriousness of a soldier who had been with me long enough to know when I was being literal. "You'll have it." He said.

"Good." I turned. "Both of you, not a word of this to anyone outside this circle. Not yet.

"They nodded.

"Go."

They dispersed without another word and I stood alone in the corridor for a moment, the noise from the hall still filtering through the walls, the sound of my people celebrating a decision that had no idea yet how much weight it carried.

Elle appeared at my shoulder so quietly I nearly missed her.

"Want to tell me what that dream of yours actually was?" She said,I looked at her sideways. "No.""Lia.""Elle."She folded her arms.

"You walked into that hall knowing exactly what you were going to say, you knew Alan would back you, you knew the room would follow, and now you're ordering silver weapons and herbs I've never heard of against an enemy we haven't even met yet." Her eyes narrowed. "That is not a dream. That is a plan.

A very detailed, very specific plan from someone who has very specific information."iI said nothing."I'm your second in command." She said quietly. "Whatever you know, I should know.

"The words hit somewhere tender.

In my past life this was exactly the argument she had made and exactly the one I had dismissed, choosing Edgar's counsel over hers until there was nothing left to choose between.

Not this time."Walk with me." I said.We moved away from the hall, deeper into the corridor where the walls swallowed sound and there was no one to overhear.

I stopped and turned to face her."What I'm about to tell you is going to sound insane." I said."Most things you say sound insane." She replied. "I'm still here.

"Despite everything I almost smiled.

"I know what Edgar is going to do because I've already lived through it.

" I said.

"Every single piece of it. The alliance, the marriage, what comes after." I held her gaze and did not look away. "I died Elle. I died and something brought me back three years before it started and I remember all of it."The corridor was very quiet.Elle stared at me."Say something." I said."I'm thinking." She said."About whether I've lost my mind.""No." She said slowly.

"About the way you hugged me this morning like you hadn't seen me in years." Her eyes searched mine. "About the way you looked at everyone in that field like they were something you thought you'd never see again." A pause. "About the fact that you've been different since the second you opened your eyes today and not different in a way that's performance." She was quiet for another moment.

"What did he do."My jaw tightened. "Everything." I said. "He did everything."Something fierce moved through Elle's face. Not surprise. Fury. Controlled, cold, absolute. "Tell me." She said."Not all of it. Not yet." I said. "But enough." I looked at her.

"He used me as a shield to get to our people. The marriage was a calculated move from the start. Every day of those three years was a transaction we didn't know we were making." I paused. "And when we were no longer useful, he made sure we couldn't come back."Elle was very still.

"We.

" She said.I met her eyes. "Yes."Something moved through her face that she folded away quickly. Her jaw set. Her shoulders straightened by a fraction."Right." She said, in the voice she used when she had made a decision that was not negotiable and required no further discussion.

"What do you need from me?""Everything." I said. "Eyes and ears on anything that moves in Edgar's direction before next week. Anyone who comes into our camp that we don't know. Any communication that seems off." I paused. "And I need you to trust me even when what I'm doing doesn't make sense to you yet."

"I've always trusted you." She said."I know." I said quietly. "This time I'm going to deserve it."Her expression shifted, something soft breaking through the soldier's face for just a moment before she tucked it away. "Don't get sentimental on me." She said briskly."Never." I agreed.

We turned back toward the main corridor, falling into step, and I let the familiar rhythm of walking beside her settle something in my chest that had been tight since I woke up.Then my steps slowed.Those eyes.I had not imagined them.

In that hall, through the noise and the crowd and the cheering, a pair of onyx eyes had been watching me with an attention that felt nothing like curiosity and everything like recognition.

Like whoever it was had been looking for me specifically and had found what they came for.

I had never seen eyes like that in my first life.Which meant something was already different."Elle." I said."Hm.""The man in the hall earlier." I said carefully. "The one standing near the back pillar. Did you see him?"She thought for a moment. "Which one, the hall was full.""He wasn't one of ours.

" I said. "I would have remembered."She looked at me. "You think someone slipped into that hall.""I think someone was in that hall who had no business being there." I said. "And I think he heard every word I said."Elle's expression sharpened immediately. "I'll pull the entry log.""Do it quietly." I said. "Don't alarm anyone."

as already moving, phone out, the shift from best friend to second in command seamless and immediate in the way it always was with her.

I kept walking.The onyx eyes stayed in my mind, steady and fixed and carrying something I couldn't name yet.Whoever he was, he had been in that hall for a reason.And something in the pit of my stomach told me that reason was going to change everything.

---**Adrian's Pov**

"That was reckless." Astra said the second I came through the door."Noted." I replied, dropping into the chair."Adrian." She stepped in front of me, arms crossed, using the tone that meant she was not moving until this conversation happened. "You walked into a human military compound. Alone."

"I walked into a public hall." I corrected. "There is a difference.""There is no difference when the person standing at the front of that hall just announced that she knows about silver and wolfsbane."

She said. "Do you understand what I'm saying? She named both weaknesses in the same breath, casually, like someone reading from a list." Her eyes narrowed.

"That is not a human woman guessing. That is someone with specific knowledge."I said nothing because she was correct and we both knew it."How does she know." Astra said."I don't know yet." I said."And instead of watching from a safe distance you let her see your face."

"She didn't see my face." I said. "She saw my eyes.""Oh wonderful." Astra threw her hands up. "Just your eyes. Perfectly safe.""She won't know what I am from eyes alone." I said."No.

" Astra said.

"But she'll remember them. And she'll look for them. And when she finds them she's going to ask questions that you're going to have to answer.

"I was quiet for a moment, turning over what I had seen in that hall.

The way she had stood at the front of her people and delivered that decision not as a suggestion but as an absolute, the way the room had followed her without hesitation, the way her eyes had cut through the crowd and found mine with the directness of someone who trusted their own instincts completely.

The photo had not prepared me for her."She rejected the alliance.

" I said.

"I heard." Astra said."Before Edgar even arrived." I said. "She didn't wait to hear his terms, she didn't wait to be pressured or swayed. She walked into that room knowing exactly what she was going to say and she said it.

" I leaned forward. "Edgar's plan depends entirely on her accepting. If she holds that position—""His timeline collapses." Astra said slowly."And while his timeline is collapsing he becomes exposed." I said.

"He overextended to orchestrate this alliance. If it falls apart publicly he has to regroup and regrouping takes time he doesn't have."Astra was quiet, working through it. "So she's not just refusing him." She said. "She's pulling a structural piece out of his foundation."

"Yes." I said.

"Knowingly or not.""Knowingly." Astra said firmly. "Silver and wolfsbane Adrian. She knows."I nodded slowly. "Which is why I need to understand how." I said. "Because whatever she knows and wherever she got it from, it's either an asset we can use or a complication we need to account for.""And you plan to find out which by doing what exactly." Astra said carefully.

I looked at her. "By making sure that the next time she sees my eyes she can ask the question."Astra stared at me for a long moment. Something moved through her expression that she didn't bother hiding because she had long since given up hiding things from me.

"You felt it." She said quietly."Don't." I said."Adrian—""I said don't." I stood. "What matters is that she's the only variable that can collapse Edgar's plan from the inside and we need to understand her before he arrives next week.

"Astra held my gaze for a moment longer than comfortable. Then she exhaled slowly. "I'll pull whatever our contacts have on her movements." She said. "But Adrian." She stopped me at the door.

"If she's what I think she is to you. If that pull was real.""It changes nothing." I said."It changes everything." She said quietly. "Whether you want it to or not."I walked out before she could see that she was right.

Aurelia's Pov

Elle came back forty minutes later with the entry log and an expression I didn't like.

"What." I said.

"No record." She said, "Whoever he was, he didn't sign in.""Which means he was never officially there.

" I said."Which means he knew how to be somewhere without a trace." Elle set the log down. "That's not civilian skill Lia.""No." I agreed. "It isn't." I looked at the log. "Pull the perimeter reports for this morning. Anyone flagged near the compound that didn't belong.""Already requested."

She said, "But there's something else." She paused. "I asked around quietly. Three of our people saw him. All three said the same thing.""Which was.""That he didn't move like us." She said, "One of them said watching him walk was like watching something that had decided to look human for the afternoon.

"The hairs on the back of my neck rose.I kept my face still."Did anyone follow him when he left.

" I said."Tried."

Elle said. "Lost him two blocks out. He was just gone."I sat back.In my first life I had never encountered anyone like this before Edgar arrived. The world I had known before the marriage had been clean, our side and theirs, humans and wolves, lines that were visible even when they were dangerous. But I had come back knowing that the lines were more complicated than I had understood, knowing that there were things in this world that Edgar himself feared, knowing that somewhere out there the remnants of something older and more powerful than the wolf pack were quietly surviving.

And apparently, quietly watching."Elle." I said carefully. "What do you know about Lycans."She blinked. "You said that in the meeting.

The others laughed it off as a figure of speech.""It wasn't." I said.She looked at me for a long moment. "Bedtime stories." She said slowly. "Creatures older than the wolves. Stronger. Faster. The kind of thing that made wolves look like house pets." She paused. "Supposedly extinct.""Supposedly." I said.The silence stretched between us."Lia." Her voice was very careful now.

"Are you telling me that the man in the hall""I'm telling you that someone was in that hall this morning who didn't sign in, didn't move like us, and disappeared without a trace." I said. "Draw your own conclusions."Elle sat down slowly. "God." She said,"Yes." I agreed.We sat with it for a moment, the weight of it settling over the room like something physical.

Then my phone buzzed on the table.A number I didn't recognise.I stared at it.One message. No name. No introduction.“You're looking for the wrong enemies. Meet me tonight. Come alone.”