Chapter 6: Intruder, Known!

Brenda's POV

I stood outside the packhouse gates, the potion vial cold against my hip, my heart slamming so hard I could feel it in my throat.

I was back. Back to the one place on this earth that wanted me dead. Back to the place where, if a single soul recognized my face beneath this borrowed one, I would not live to see the sun set.

This was my graveyard, and I had walked into it willingly.

I stared up at the iron gates, the ones I used to be dragged through, the ones I'd sworn I would never cross again. My pulse thundered in my ears. Jace would slaughter me the moment he knew. Chase would skin me alive first, slowly, and Sydney — Sydney would stand there and drink in every second of it, the way she always had.

"I can't do this." The words slipped out before I could stop them. I turned to leave, already imagining the long walk back into the trees—

Pain exploded in my wrist.

It felt like someone had pressed a bar of molten silver against my skin. I gasped, doubling over, my vision going white at the edges.

"Ma'am, are you all right?" A soldier's voice, sharp with suspicion, cut through the haze. My eyes were watering. I couldn't let him see.

The necklace.

I was running out of time — I knew it even as I forced my spine straight and my face into something resembling calm. "Yes. I'm here for—"

The breath caught in my chest. "I'm here for—" My voice shook so badly the words wouldn't come out whole.

The pain in my wrist tightened, cinching like a rope pulled taut, and I looked down in horror as a crescent moon bloomed dark against my skin. Was it the potion failing? Or the necklace, finally giving out after three days of borrowed magic it was never meant to hold?

It can't be now. Not here. Not in front of him.

I needed Laura. I needed her now, not in an hour, not after I'd made it inside — but the necklace couldn't wait, and neither could my cover. Two disasters, one body, and no time to choose between them.

"I'm here for the maidservant listing," I forced out, steadier this time. "I heard the traitor's gone, and the royals—"

"Shut up," the soldier snapped — the same one Ophilia had never been able to stand, the one who used to sneer at her from across the courtyard. I flinched and pressed my arm against my side, praying the sleeve hid the mark.

"Excuse me?" I managed, and that was when my legs began to shiver beneath me. I felt myself changing, felt the weight sliding off my frame right there in front of him, and my stomach dropped.

He didn't notice. He looked at me the same way he had a second ago — bored, dismissive, human.

"Follow me," he said, and turned, already losing interest.

I followed him through the gates on legs that didn't feel like mine anymore.

I was in.

Once we were past the outer wall, I caught my reflection in a darkened window and nearly stopped breathing. I wasn't fat anymore. Wasn't thick, wasn't the girl they'd all laughed at behind cupped hands. I looked like a stranger wearing my own eyes.

I needed Laura. I needed her now— but before I could turn, before I could even orient myself in the maze of the packhouse halls, I lost my footing on which direction was which, and then I saw him.

"Alpha, there's a wolf here asking to work as a maidservant."

"She's hired."

His voice rolled through the corridor like something with weight to it, thick and final, laced with an authority I'd never once heard in nine years of living under this roof. It slid down my spine like a blade dragged flat against skin — not cutting yet, but promising it could.

I looked up, and my stomach turned to ice.

Chase.

The wolf who had turned into something barely recognizable days ago, snarling and clawing for my throat. The wolf who wanted me dead as badly as his brother did. And here I stood, three feet from him, wearing a face he'd never seen and a body he'd never touched — and somehow that felt like no protection at all.

What terrified me most wasn't his size or the coiled tension in his shoulders. It was his eyes. The way they moved over me — slow, deliberate, cataloguing — like he was searching for something underneath my skin.

"What's your name?"

The question cracked like a whip. Suspicion threaded through every syllable.

Sweat prickled along my hairline. Nine years. Nine years I had lived with this wolf, cooked his meals, scrubbed his floors, learned the sound of his footsteps well enough to know his mood before he spoke a word.

He knew me, the old me, better than almost anyone in this pack. If there was a single crack in this disguise, he would be the one to find it.

"I'm Brenda." My voice wavered on the second syllable, and I hated myself for it.

But I was slender now. Beautiful, even, by the standards that used to be thrown at me like insults — never fat, not anymore, not the way they'd carved that word into me for years. The thought steadied something in my chest, gave me just enough backbone to lift my chin instead of dropping my gaze the way the old Ophilia always had.

Chase's eyes lingered on my face a moment longer than necessary. Then, without a word, he turned and stepped behind the curtain that separated the hall from his study.

I heard the sound before I understood it — leather sliding free of a hook.

The whip.

The same one. The same one he and Jace had stood over me with days ago, promising to use if I don't reject Jace

He came back into view slowly, the whip coiled loose in one hand, and fixed me with a stare so cold it felt like standing in open winter.

I didn't move. I didn't dare.

There was nothing in his expression but calculation — the look of a man testing a theory, waiting to see what would break first: my composure, or my silence.

"I won't mind using this on you, Ophilia."

The name hit me like a slap.

Every nerve in my body went rigid. My wrist throbbed beneath the crescent mark, the necklace's magic straining, and for one endless second I was certain — certain — that he could see straight through the potion, straight through the borrowed face, down to the girl he'd sworn to destroy.

Did he know?

I searched his face for the answer and found nothing but shadow.