Chapter 13; The Brother Who Knows Too Much

The balcony doors slammed open against the stone, letting in the biting Alpine wind and a swirl of freezing mist.

Aubert stepped through the threshold, shaking snow from the shoulders of his dark leather coat. In his right hand, he held a sleek, military-grade data slate, its screen glowing with the blue light of raw encrypted files.

“You look tense, brother,” Aubert said, his eyes sliding from Reymond’s clenched fists to where I stood beside the desk. “I suppose that happens when your dark little secrets get dragged into the light.”

Reymond didn’t move, but the temperature in the room dropped instantly. “You have five seconds to explain why you aren’t bleeding on my carpet, Aubert.”

Aubert ignored him, stepping right into my path and turning the screen toward me. Lines of encrypted raw code scrolled down the interface, stamped with the unmistakable royal crest of the Walker family alongside the Smith Syndicate’s master key.

“I have the rest of the relay log, Natalia,” Aubert said softly. “The part Reymond conveniently managed to misplace. It contains the raw voice transmission sent to your father’s tactical commander forty minutes before the fire.”

My throat tightened. “Give it to me.”

Aubert pulled the slate back just out of my reach, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his face. “Not for free. I brought this to save you from a fatal mistake.”

“Name your price,” I said, my voice cold.

“Leave him,” Aubert replied without hesitation. “Walk out of this chateau with me right now. Publicly repudiate the fake mate contract and accept the protection of my house. Do that, and the slate is yours.”

“She isn’t going anywhere with you,” Reymond growled, stepping between us, his broad back blocking Aubert completely.

Aubert didn’t flinch. He leaned around Reymond’s massive shoulder, keeping his eyes locked onto mine.

“I’m not asking you to love me, Natalia,” Aubert murmured, his voice dripping with smooth, venomous charm. “You don’t have to trust me. You only have to stop trusting him.”

“No,” I said, stepping around Reymond to stare Aubert dead in the eye. “I’m not trading one collar for another. Keep your slate.”

Aubert’s smile didn’t fade; it only sharpened. “Pity. But you’ll come around once the siege begins.”

An hour later, the chateau felt like a pressure cooker waiting to explode.

With Mauris’s vanguard lingering in the valley and my mother’s rogue forces surrounding the perimeter, Reymond had ordered every able-bodied fighter down to the underground armory to prep weapons and check security relays. Aubert had refused to leave, claiming his men were securing the lower tunnels as part of our loose, uneasy alliance.

I stood by the central weapons rack, pulling tactical vests from the iron hooks, when Aubert materialized beside me.

“Need help with that, Princess?” he asked, his voice entirely too close to my ear.

Before I could pull away, Aubert reached out, his fingers casually brushing against my collarbone as he adjusted the strap of the vest I was holding. It was an intentional, blatant display, a territorial move designed for a specific audience.

Across the cavernous armory, the sound of snapping iron echoed off the walls.

Reymond stood twenty feet away, a heavy steel crate of ammunition in his grip. The solid metal corner of the box was buckled inward, crushed flat under the sheer force of his hand. His silver eyes had turned completely into molten gold, his jaw locked so hard the tendons in his neck looked like steel cables.

He didn’t roar. He didn’t move. But the raw, suffocating aura of an Alpha pushed out across the room, making every guard in the armory freeze in terror.

Aubert just chuckled softly under his breath, taking a slow step back from me with an insolent tilt of his head. “Careful, brother. You’ll ruin the supplies.”

“Out,” Reymond rasped. The single word sounded like grindstones sliding together.

Aubert raised his hands in mock surrender, casting one last lingering glance at me before strolling casually toward the tunnel exit.

I waited until the heavy iron doors closed behind the guards before I turned on Reymond. “You need to pull it together.”

“Follow me,” Reymond said flatly, dropping the crushed crate onto the floor with a deafening crash.

He turned and walked straight out the rear exit of the armory, leading out into the moonlit forest terrace behind the chateau. Cold air hit my face, smelling of pine, ozone, and impending snow. High above, the moon was nearly full, casting long, stark shadows across the rocky mountain ledge.

I followed him until he stopped near the edge of the stone balustrade, overlooking the dark canopy of trees below.

“Are you jealous?” I asked, stopping a few paces behind him.

Reymond didn’t turn around immediately. His shoulders heaved with heavy, ragged breaths as he fought to rein in his wolf.

“Of him?” Reymond asked, his voice low and dangerous. He finally turned to face me. “No.”

“Then why are you angry?”

Reymond took three long strides, closing the distance between us so fast I didn’t even have time to gasp. He backed me up until my spine hit the cold stone pillar of the terrace, trapping me between his massive frame and the rock. He didn’t touch me, but his heat hit me like a physical wave, wrapping around my senses.

“Because you’re pretending you don’t know what you do to me,” he whispered, leaning down until his lips were bare millimeters from mine.

My breath hitched in my throat. I could feel the thrum of his pulse, taste the cold winter frost on his breath, feel the wild, terrifying pull of the blood seal humming under my skin. Every logical voice in my head told me to shove him away, but my hands hovered near his chest, trembling, wanting nothing more than to grab his shirt and pull him down.

His eyes flicked down to my mouth, his iron control fracturing right in front of me. He began to close the final fraction of an inch

I pressed my palm flat against his chest, stopping him. Reymond froze, his chest expanding against my hand.

“I’m still not sure you’re telling me the truth,” I whispered, my voice trembling despite my best efforts. “I can’t… I can’t do this while that transmission has your name on it.”

Reymond stared down at me for a long, agonizing second. Then, slowly, he took a step back, giving me space. The loss of his heat felt like a sudden, freezing slap.

“Look at the slate again,” Reymond said, his voice quiet, devoid of the earlier fury.

I frowned. “What?”

He pulled the slate Aubert had dropped on the study desk earlier out from his back pocket, he had snatched it off the table before we left the room. He handed it to me.

“Look at the timestamp on the raw voice transmission,” Reymond said. “Not the encryption signature. The master network log.”

I tapped the glass screen, pulling up the metadata line.

TIMESTAMP: 03:42:19 AM

“I saw this earlier,” I said, looking up at him. “It matches the relay time.”

“Now think about what your mother told you,” Reymond said, leaning back against the terrace railing, his arms crossed over his chest. “What time did she say the east wing breached?”

My mind raced backward through the chaos of the night. “She said… she said the silent alarms were killed at three-forty. The hounds broke the doors two minutes later.”

“And where was I at three-forty-two?” Reymond asked, his silver eyes locking onto mine with absolute, undeniable clarity.

I stopped breathing.

Seven years ago, when I was hiding in the snow near the tree line, I had watched three of Mauris’s elite enforcers drag a wounded, bloodied wolf out of the main courtyard and chain him to the iron gate.

Reymond.

“You were captured,” I whispered, the realization hitting me like a bucket of ice water. “You were already down. They had you pinned to the gate at three-fifteen.”

“At three-forty-two, I was unconscious, bleeding out from two silver crossbow bolts in my ribs,” Reymond said smoothly. “My physical encryption token was ripped off my vest when they stripped my armor.”

The truth unraveled in my mind with terrifying speed.

The encryption signature on the transmission was real. The private code did belong to Reymond. But he couldn’t have sent it. He was physically incapable of holding a transmitter at three-forty-two in the morning.

Someone had taken his token while he was bleeding on the snow. Someone had used his identity to open the inner gates, frame him for the massacre, and hand my mother to Mauris on a silver platter.

Aubert’s evidence wasn’t a lie. It was a setup.

“Someone framed you,” I breathed, looking up at him in shock. “Seven years ago… someone wanted both our families destroyed.”

“And whoever it was,” Reymond said coldly, “is sitting inside this chateau right now.”

Panic seized my chest. “My mother.”

I turned without another word and sprinted off the terrace, pushing through the iron doors and racing through the shadowed hallways toward the hidden royal chamber.

“Natalia, wait!” Reymond called out, his heavy boots pounding the stone behind me.

I rounded the final corner of the basement level, threw my shoulder against the tapestry hiding the secret entrance, and shoved the heavy wooden door open.

“Mom!” I called out. “Mom, we were wrong, it wasn’t”

The words died in my throat. The small royal chamber was dead silent.

The table was overturned. The heavy wooden chairs were splintered into kindling. Thick, fresh dark blood covered the center of the stone floor, pooling in the crevices between the flags.

My mother was gone. Her rogue guards were gone. I stumbled backward, my hands shaking uncontrollably as I looked at the far wall.

Written in dark, glistening crimson blood across the ancient stone were four words:

YOU WERE NEVER THE TARGET.

And right beneath it, freshly painted in jagged, dripping strokes:

HE WAS.