Chapter 6

TATE'S POV

Nicole had been unusually quiet for days. I am not a man who misses things. I was trained from the time I was old enough to stand not to miss things. Caesar believed that an alpha who could be surprised deserved whatever found him.

So I learned to read rooms, read people, read the air itself before anyone in it had decided what they were going to do. It was the first and most fundamental lesson of my entire life.

Two days ago, my beta received intelligence that unauthorized individuals were attempting to breach our western border. I was in the middle of collaborative discussions with the North Maple delegation at the time and I did not personally attend to it. I told Jonathan to monitor the situation and dispatched an elite squad to investigate. The matter felt minor. Probably rogues testing the perimeter, it has happened twice a year.

But underneath the dismissal, something else had been running quietly. I had woken that morning with a familiar unease sitting in my chest. That specific, sourceless unease that my father always called superstition and I had spent years learning to distrust in myself.

The last time I felt it this clearly was years ago. The morning of the coronation ceremony. I stood outside Caesar's door and told him something was wrong. I told him we should postpone but he looked at me with that expression he reserved for moments he considered me weak and told me to go downstairs and prepare to stand at his side.

He was dead by evening. I had never forgiven myself for not pushing harder. I had also never fully trusted my own instincts again after that day, because what was the point of knowing if knowing changed nothing.

So this morning, when Nicole handed me the wrong tie and her fingers moved too quickly and her eyes did not quite meet mine. My wolf flagged her scent. Something underneath it was wrong, or different, or both. I looked at her for a moment longer than necessary.

Then I told myself it was nothing. She was an omega without a wolf. Alone in a pack that despised her. What could she possibly do.

I went to my meeting.

***********

The discussions with North Maple went smoothly. The beta reported back mid-morning that the western border scouts had found nothing threatening, just a small cluster of wolves who turned and ran the moment our elite squad arrived. Probably scouts from a rogue faction probing for weakness. Nothing that warranted my direct involvement but the unease did not lift.

I sat across a conference table from men I had known for years and felt my wolf pacing beneath my skin in a way I could not quiet. Storm had always been restless. Caesar told me it was a flaw, that a wolf who could not be still was a wolf who could not be trusted to lead. I had spent years forcing Storm into stillness. Into obedience. He was not calm now.

She smells wrong, he kept telling me. She has smelled wrong for days and you keep ignoring me.

I am not ignoring you, I told him. I am choosing what requires my attention. Then you are going to regret it.

I ended the meeting early. I could not have explained why to anyone in that room. I said I had pack business to attend to and I left.

I was halfway back to the mansion when my mother's mental link hit me.

She is gone. The girl is nowhere. She hasn't come upstairs. Something is wrong. Something is wrong with me. Find her. Tate, something is wrong.

My wolf howled before I had consciously processed the words.

I ran. The mansion was in controlled chaos when I arrived. Servants standing in doorways. Jonathan was already in the entrance hall with the expression of a man bracing for impact.

I called her name and my own voice surprised me. There was nothing of command in it. Storm had been telling me for days that something was wrong, and I had chosen, deliberately, not to listen because listening would have required me to admit that I was watching her more carefully than I had any intention of admitting.

That when she handed me the wrong tie that morning I had stood still for two seconds longer than necessary, not out of irritation but because something in the way she moved had changed, and I had noticed but had dismissed it immediately.

I called her name as my own voice surprised me. I had not raised it for Nicole in a way that was not contempt or command in three years. This was neither. I called it again.

The silence that came back was deafening.

I asked every person I encountered, where she was. When did anyone last see her? What time. Where. Nobody had a clear answer. Nobody had been watching closely enough because nobody considered her worth watching.

She was the omega, she was the locksmith's daughter. She was the pack's penance and the pack's shame and she had spent three years making herself so small that everyone had learned to look straight through her. Including me.

I told myself the fury rising in my chest was at her. For the disruption, for the audacity.

She tried to escape several times in the past two years, and each time my warriors caught her. Each time she was brought back, I would lock her in a dark basement for 24 hours. This was the best way my father taught me to make wolves obey; I don't know how many times I was put in solitary confinement as a child. At first, you'll howl, then you'll cry and beg for forgiveness, then you'll be terrified, as if the whole world has abandoned you. In the pitch-black confinement room, you lose track of time, you don't know what's happening outside. Fear engulfs you, and finally you surrender. That's how I learned absolute obedience, and I hoped Nicole would learn it too. I thought she had already learned it, but today I realized she's still as cunning as ever.

I led the search myself. Storm was not calm about any of it, which I told myself was the bond. It was always the bond. It had nothing to do with the fact that I had memorised the sound of her footsteps in the east corridor, or that I knew exactly which window she stood at when she thought no one was watching. Those were security observations, nothing more.

I split the elite squad across all four borders and covered the inner pack territory myself with the senior warriors. We searched through the afternoon and into the evening. Every building but we found nothing.

By nightfall I was standing in the empty room she had occupied for three years. She was gone. She had planned it, she had stood in front of me this morning with the wrong tie in her hands and something hidden behind her eyes and I had looked directly at her and decided she was not worth the second thought.

Storm lay down in the corner of my mind and pressed his face to the ground and made a sound I had never heard from him before.

Three days passed. Then Jonathan came to me with the report.

A patrol squad covering the northern forest perimeter had found something. A female body burned beyond identification.

But the size was similar to Nichole, and the proximity to our pack border was not an accident.

I did not react the way Jonathan expected me to. I remember the way he was watching me, carefully, from the side, the way my men always watched me when they were uncertain whether the thing I was about to do would be controlled or catastrophic. I simply said: take me there.

Storm had been uneasy the entire journey, restless in a way I could not fully suppress. I told myself it was the bond reacting.

My men stood back at a distance when we arrived, wary of me, fearing I might succumb to a mental breakdown and descend into rage over my mate's death.

Then I saw the body and Storm broke open from the inside out. He had never seen Nicole's wolf. She had been in hibernation since the day her father killed Caesar and Storm had nothing to recognize, no scent, no visual memory, nothing to draw on. It did not matter. The mate bond does not require any of that. It simply recognizes. And Storm was howling in a register I had never heard from him before.

I stood over what remained, I sensed nothing amiss, and confirmed that the corpse was not Nicole.

"She could have staged this." My voice came out controlled. "Her father was cunning. She is cunning, so we keep searching."

Jonathan's brow arched. "Alpha, the scent."

I know what he is telling me, but I could not look away from what was on the ground.

*******

I sent search parties out for three weeks. Every border, every allied territory within range, every rogue network our intelligence had a partial line into. I told anyone who asked that an omega faking her death was a security liability. That I needed confirmation, not assumption. Nobody believed me even though I barely believed myself.

However, a month passed without any results. An omega without a wolf, if she had fallen into the forest or been caught by rogues, would probably be dead by now.

The council raised it formally at the six week mark. I was already in a poor mood when I walked into that room and the mood did not improve. Elder Crane led it. "The search parties are entering their seventh week, Alpha. The northern territory has been covered three times. We are pulling warriors from border rotations to sustain this, all for an omega."

"I am aware of what she ranked," I said.

"Then you understand the optics." Crane folded his hands on the table. "Resources committed at this scale signal to the pack that the matter carries weight it should not carry and it raises questions about your "

"Careful," I said quietly.

He was careful, he waited and then continued. "About the pack's priorities, there is also the matter of closure. For the pack, for your ability to move forward on the Luna question, which cannot remain open indefinitely."

I looked at him for a long moment. Around the table, five other faces arranged into careful neutrality. Jonathan stood behind my left shoulder and said nothing.

"Another two weeks," I said.

"Alpha"

"Two weeks." I kept my voice even. "Then we close it."

Crane accepted this. The next conversation came at eight weeks. This time Elder Voss joined in, and two others who had stayed quiet before found their voices.

They discussed the border patrol argument again, the Luna succession argument. A new one about morale — warriors growing restless at the repetition of fruitless searches, questioning leadership priorities.

I sat through it. When the last voice finished I said nothing for long enough that the room got uncomfortable. "Close it," I finally said. "End the searches."

It was a grey morning. Jonathan and two senior warriors at my back. No gathering, no ceremony, no pack assembled. She had been the lowest ranking member of this pack since the day she arrived and she would be marked accordingly in death as she had been in life.

The headstone read: Nicole, just her name and below it a single date, the date we found her body. No title or rank.

The council began their campaign again a few days after her burial, elder Crane led it, "The pack requires stability, Alpha. The succession line cannot remain open indefinitely."

"I am aware of what the succession line requires."

"Then you understand the urgency. A Luna "

"There is no Luna discussion." I kept my voice cold. "Not today, and definitely not this meeting."

Crane exchanged a look with Elder Voss that I was meant to notice. "Alpha, the allied packs are watching. A pack without a confirmed heir reads as"

"Reads as what." It came out quieter than I intended, which was always the more dangerous register, and every man in that room had been around me long enough to know it. "Choose your next word carefully."

"We are not having this conversation," I said. "Not yet. That is my answer and it is the only answer you are getting today, close the meeting."

They closed it, and they came back two weeks later with a new language. Morale and pack cohesion. The symbolic weight of an empty Luna's seat during a period of grief and transition. Jonathan was with them this time, which I noted. Jonathan, who usually had the sense to stay out of things that were none of his business.

"It would help the pack to see you move forward," Jonathan said, carefully. "It doesn't have to mean anything more than that."

"It means exactly what it is," I said. "A replacement."

"No one is suggesting "

"Aren't they." I looked at him. "She has been in the ground for just three weeks. Three weeks, Jonathan."

"The mate bond," Elder Voss started. "Legally, with the bond severed by death, you are ."

"I know what I am." The words came out with anger that Voss stopped mid-sentence. "I am also the Alpha of this pack and I am telling you — all of you — that this does not happen on your schedule. It happens when I say and I have not said."

The room went quiet, I stood and the meeting ended, whether they were finished or not.

Sophia had apparently received the memo of the council wanting a new Luna, she began appearing at functions she had no formal reason to attend — pack dinners, the morning briefings she had never once shown interest in, the corridor outside my study at hours that required a reason she never supplied.

She positioned herself at the rooms where I was likely to be, dressed and composed in the manner of a woman who had already decided the outcome and was simply waiting for the paperwork to catch up. She said nothing directly but the suggestion of her presence was the statement.

I found it enraging in a way I could not entirely explain.

*********

The study was quiet at half past ten. The border reports were filed, the week's briefings signed off, but the pack correspondence still sat unfinished on the desk in front of me. A handful of letters, that accumulated quietly and demanded attention at inconvenient hours. I worked through them slowly, which was unlike me.

She came into my head the way she had been doing lately, without warning and permission.

The morning I found her in the kitchen with her hair down, looking out at the garden. She didn't know I was there. The moment she heard my foot step she put the composure back and the person I had glimpsed disappeared. I had told myself for years that what I felt in her proximity was the bond and nothing more.

That the pull was biology and the contempt was the truth. It was a clean explanation and I had believed it because the alternative that I had spent years being drawn to someone I had made it my business to destroy was not something I was prepared to admit.

I had stood in her doorway more than once, past midnight, when Storm was restless and I found myself in the east corridor without deciding to be there. I kept trying to convince myself it was a security check.

The first time I went to her I told myself it was the bond, and that was not entirely a lie. The pull had been worse that night than usual, and I had gone to her room and not been gentle about it. I had not tried to be. She was the daughter of the man who killed my father, and whatever I felt because of the bond was a weakness, and I was not going to treat it as anything else. I had been rough, I had left before dawn, I told myself it meant nothing, and came back and told myself the same thing again.

She is dead, I thought. In the ground. The daughter of the man who put a bullet in my father on the day that was supposed to begin everything. She does not deserve this much of my thinking.

I was still sitting when I heard heels in the corridor. Only one person would dare walk on heels in my corridor as the study door opened without a knock.

Sophia came in without knocking, she had always done that, and I had never corrected it, and now it felt like a miscalculation I had been accumulating interest on for years.

"You've been avoiding the council's proposal," she said.

"I have been running a pack," I said, and did not bother to look up from the file in front of me.

She settled into the chair across the desk with the ease of someone who considered it hers by reasonable proximity. "They're not wrong, Tate. The pack needs."

"Don't," I said.

“I'm not the council, you can talk to me."

I looked up then, because I wanted her to see my face clearly when I said it. "You are not the council," I agreed. "Which means you have even less standing to raise this with me than they do. Don't come in here and tell me what the pack needs."

Something moved across her expression"I only meant."

"I know what you meant." I returned to the file. "Close the door on your way out."

*******

The mansion was loud when I returned. I heard it before I reached the entrance hall, the scrape of furniture, the thud of things dropped, voices moving quickly between rooms.

I pushed open the door. Three maids were in the east corridor with their arms full. One carried the stack of books from the glass case I had kept locked. Another had a folded pile of clothes, a third was dragging something I did not immediately recognize toward the rear exit.

"What," I said, "is this."

The maid nearest to me stopped while the other two turned. "Luna Tracy gave the order, Alpha," the nearest one said, carefully. "To clear the room and Miss Sophia confirmed — that it was time. That keeping it as it was, was"

"Put it back."

"Alpha"

"Every item." My voice had dropped "Every single item goes back exactly where it was. If you cannot remember where it was, you will stand in that corridor until you do. Do you understand me?"

They nodded their heads as they moved quickly, I watched them go and then stood in the entrance hall alone for a moment, breathing.

I found Sophia was in the drawing room. We had already had words tonight and here she was again, which told me everything I needed to know about her judgment. She looked up when I entered with an expression carefully arranged into innocent concern. "Tate"

"You gave the order."

"Your mother asked me to help coordinate"

"You gave the order." I kept my voice low because raising it would have meant something I was not prepared to give her. "In my house, with my staff. To remove belongings from a room in my house. Without asking me. After everything I said to you tonight in that study, you went and confirmed it anyway."

Something shifted in her expression. "It's been weeks, everyone agreed it was time to."

"Everyone." I turned the word over. "I am the Alpha of this pack. When you say everyone agreed, I want to understand clearly who you mean. Because I did not agree and this is my house."

"I was trying to help you move forward"

"Don't. Don't tell me what you were trying to do. I know exactly what you were trying to do."

She held my gaze for a moment and then looked away.

My mother was in her room, which I had expected. "It needed to be done," she said. "You weren't going to do it yourself, so someone had to. You can't keep that room as some kind of."

"Do not touch her things again." I held my mother's gaze until she looked away, the way Sophia had. "I won't say it twice."

I left before she could respond.

My room was dark because I hadn't turned the lights on. I sat on the edge of the bed in the dark and didn't move.

I was still angry, I had yelled at three maids. I had gone back and forth with Sophia twice in one night and had walked out on my mother.

All of it, over a room. Over a stack of books and a folded pile of clothes belonging to a woman who had been in the ground for weeks.

I pressed my hand flat against my chest where I felt the ache and asked myself honestly why, why did it matter who touched that room, why had I come through that door and lost my composure completely over something that should not have moved me at all.

She was nothing, I had told myself that from the beginning. The daughter of the man who killed my father. An obligation the bond had forced on me.

Why, Storm said quietly from somewhere deep, do you keep asking a question you already know the answer to.