Chapter 33

Kael's POV

I didn't sleep that night either, and this time it wasn't the pull of the moon keeping me restless, but the memory of that blade cutting through the courtyard air.

It had come close enough to remind me exactly how fragile everything we'd built together still was, however steady it felt on quiet evenings in the garden.

I found Soren in the guard house before dawn. He was going over reports from the search parties that had combed the tree line through the night.

They hadn't found any real trace of the hooded man beyond a set of tracks that vanished into a stream half a mile from the castle walls.

"Whoever he is, he knew this land," Soren said, spreading a rough map across the table and marking the point where the tracks disappeared.

"That's not the kind of knowledge a stranger picks up overnight.

He either spent time here before, or someone gave him detailed instructions on how to get in and out without being caught."

"Mathis," I said. Even as I said it, something about the theory didn't sit entirely right. "Or someone Mathis brought in, before his removal."

"Maybe." Soren didn't sound convinced either. "Though it feels almost too obvious, doesn't it? Mathis got caught. If he'd arranged something like this in advance, wouldn't he have used it already, rather than sitting quietly in the east wing while we search for someone else entirely?"

The question stayed with me through the morning. It turned over and over as I moved through the day's obligations.

I checked on Bram, who was recovering well enough under Nyra's care to snap irritably at anyone who suggested he needed more rest.

I met briefly with the remaining Frostpine riders to reassure them the castle remained secure.

Finally, reluctantly, I made my way to the east wing where Mathis had been confined since the council session.

He looked older than I remembered him looking even a few weeks ago.

He sat near the small window of his chambers with none of the sharp, careful composure that had defined him for decades.

When he saw me enter, something flickered across his face that might have been surprise, or might simply have been resignation.

"Come to gloat," he said, though there was little real bite behind it.

"Come to ask you a question," I said, remaining near the doorway rather than stepping fully into the room. "Someone attacked one of the Frostpine riders in my courtyard yesterday. A hooded man, clearly familiar with the grounds, gone before we could catch him. I want to know if you had any hand in arranging it."

Something genuine crossed Mathis's expression then. Surprise sharpened into alarm. "No. I swear to you, Kael, whatever quarrel I have with the path you've chosen, I never intended violence.

Everything I did, I did through influence and information, not blades in courtyards."

I studied him carefully, searching for the lie I half expected to find. Instead I found something that looked uncomfortably like genuine fear. "You expect me to simply believe that."

"I expect you to consider that I have nothing left to gain from further deception," Mathis said. "I've already lost my position, my influence, whatever trust this court once placed in me. If I'd arranged something as reckless as an attack, I'd have used it before the council session, not after. Now it can no longer help me and only makes my situation considerably worse."

The logic held together better than I wanted it to. The certainty I'd walked in with began to waver. "If not you, then who? You corresponded with someone at that chapel.

Someone beyond Alpha Cross, who else was involved in your plans?"

Mathis hesitated, and for a long moment I thought he might refuse to answer at all. Then something in his expression shifted and weary resignation settled in fully.

"There was another," he admitted quietly. "I never learned his name.

He approached me months ago, before Elara ever arrived in Nightfall Hollow, claiming to represent interests among the northern packs who feared what a unified throne might eventually mean for their independence.

He offered information, resources, in exchange for my cooperation in slowing whatever change might be coming."

"Slowing it how?"

"Discrediting Elara's claim, as you already know. But he spoke of other measures too. Contingencies, he called them, in case discrediting her proved insufficient." Mathis's voice had gone quieter, almost ashamed.

"I didn't ask for specifics. I told myself it was better not to know precisely what those contingencies entailed.

Which I recognize now was its own kind of cowardice."

The admission settled cold and heavy in my chest. It confirmed that whoever had thrown that blade answered to someone with far more organized ambitions than a single frightened elder trying to protect his own influence.

Someone who'd been planning for months, layering contingency upon contingency, patient enough to wait for exactly the right moment to act.

"I need everything you remember," I said. "Every detail about this man, however small it seems.

If he's willing to attack his own allies to keep fear alive among the northern packs, he's not going to stop with one failed attempt."

Mathis nodded slowly. For the next hour I listened as he recounted every detail he could recall. The man's manner of speech, careful and cultured despite his hood staying raised throughout their conversations.

A signet ring caught briefly in torchlight during their final meeting, bearing a mark neither of us could immediately place.

And a phrase he'd used more than once that had stuck with Mathis for reasons he couldn't fully articulate.

"He called it the old cause," Mathis said. "As though it should mean something significant on its own, without further explanation.

I assumed it referred simply to preserving pack independence. Now I wonder if it meant something more specific."

I left the east wing with more questions than I'd arrived with. When I found Nyra in the library that evening and relayed everything Mathis had told me, her expression grew increasingly troubled with every detail.

"The old cause," she repeated slowly. "Kael, I think I've seen that phrase before, I think it's In the same archive where I found Wren's records."

She pulled the relevant text from the shelf and flipped through pages with mounting urgency. When she finally found the passage she was searching for, her face had gone pale in the firelight.

"Wren's Lycan lord wasn't only separated from her through political manipulation," she said quietly. "The records mention a group opposed to the bloodline's return entirely.

They called themselves keepers of the old cause. They believed the Moon Heir's power belonged sealed away rather than restored, regardless of what it cost the cursed Lycans who might have been saved by her.

" She looked up at me, dread settling heavy in her expression. "If that group still exists three centuries later, still calling themselves the same name, then this was never simply about northern pack politics, Kael.

It's about something far older, and far more determined to make sure Elara's story ends the same way Wren's did."