WHO KNEW

CHAPTER 28

"Who else knows what I am?"

Roman didn't answer.

That was the answer.

"Roman."

"I'm thinking."

"No." I set the transparent sleeve containing the damaged manuscript on the table. "You're remembering something. I watched it cross your face when I asked that question. What do you know?"

He looked at the sleeve.

"Nothing about Moonborn. I swear that on my life."

"Then what was that look?"

"The missing pages. Someone removed them, and we don't know when or why." His jaw tightened. "When you asked who knew, I started thinking about how you came to Blackthorn."

I went still.

"What does that mean?"

"Your selection wasn't as straightforward as I believed."

The room seemed to grow colder.

"I signed a contract. You told me there was a selection process. Screening, compatibility, medical assessments."

"There was."

"But?"

He hesitated.

"Your name came through Edric Hale."

I stared at him.

"Who is Edric Hale?"

"He advised my father for thirty years. He handled sensitive family matters and helped manage several of the pack's private arrangements. When I needed a surrogate, he personally recommended you."

"Personally?"

"Yes."

"How many other candidates did he recommend?"

"None."

My hands went cold.

"None?"

"There were other candidates. Edric reviewed the available information and brought me your name. He explained why he believed you were the right match."

"And you accepted that?"

"I reviewed the compatibility information he provided. The medical findings were consistent with what I needed. I had no reason to believe he'd manipulated the process."

"Did you independently verify how he selected me?"

Roman looked away.

That was answer enough.

"Did you ask why he was so certain about me?"

"No."

"Did you ask whether he knew anything about my family?"

"No."

"Did he ever mention my bloodline?"

"Never. Not once."

I stood up.

I couldn't remain seated with all these questions pressing against my chest.

"So someone I've never met recommended me for a position that changed my entire life, and you never thought to ask why?"

"I trusted him."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the truth."

"Then it's a terrible answer."

He accepted that without arguing.

I turned away from him, trying to organize the anger rising inside me.

For weeks, I'd wondered why I'd been chosen. I'd questioned my compatibility results, my family history, and the strange attention surrounding me.

Now I was learning that the person who selected me might have known more than he had revealed.

"Did Edric call it luck?" I asked.

"No."

"Coincidence?"

"No."

"What did he call it?"

Roman's voice dropped.

"He said you were the right choice."

I turned back.

"Not a good choice?"

"No. The right choice."

The distinction settled between us.

"Did you question that wording?"

"At the time, I took it as confidence in his judgment. He'd advised my family for decades. He'd made recommendations before, and I trusted him."

"And now?"

"Now I wish I'd asked why he was so certain."

I studied him.

"Was there anyone else on the list?"

"He steered me away from the other candidates. He didn't openly forbid me from considering them. He simply kept returning to you whenever we discussed the selection."

"Did you notice that?"

"Yes."

"And you still didn't question it?"

"No."

His hands tightened, then slowly opened.

"I should have asked why you. I should have asked a dozen questions, and I asked none because I trusted him and wanted the process finished. I didn't investigate what made you different from the other candidates."

He met my eyes.

"That's on me, Mira. I won't pretend otherwise."

It was the first time he'd admitted a mistake without immediately trying to justify it.

I wanted that to make me feel better.

It didn't.

"Can you promise me that nothing else has been hidden from me?"

"No."

The answer came so quickly that I almost recoiled.

"No?"

"I won't promise what I can't prove. I don't know everything Edric knew, and I don't know whether he concealed anything from me. I can promise to tell you everything I discover, even if it makes me look worse."

I searched his face.

A liar might have told me exactly what I wanted to hear.

Roman was finally giving me something less comforting and more useful.

The truth about what he didn't know.

"Then start finding," I said.

He reached for the phone on the table.

"Get me Edric Hale. Now. Tell him I need him at Blackthorn today."

He put the call on speaker.

It rang.

Once.

Twice.

Then the line went dead.

Roman frowned and tried again.

No answer.

"Is he always difficult to reach?" I asked.

"No." His eyes remained on the phone. "He's retired, but he's always answered me."

"Try another number."

He did.

Nothing.

His expression changed.

"Send someone to his residence," he ordered. "Quietly. Confirm whether he's there, and report directly to me."

He ended the call.

Then he turned to me.

"I'd feel better if you stayed inside the main residence until we know what's happening."

I folded my arms.

"Would you?"

He opened his mouth, then stopped.

"Roman."

"I'm doing it again." He rubbed a hand over his face. "Let me start over. I don't know why Edric isn't answering. I don't know whether there's any danger. I'd feel better if you stayed inside while we investigate. I'm asking, not ordering."

"Asking."

"Asking."

I considered it.

"Fine. I'll stay for now. But whatever comes back, I hear it when you hear it."

"Agreed."

We waited.

Roman paced the room while I sat beside the table, staring at the damaged manuscript.

I kept returning to the same thought.

The right choice.

What had made me right?

My medical compatibility?

My family history?

Or something neither Roman nor I had known to look for?

The knock came before I could settle on an answer.

A guard entered with a folded report and handed it to Roman.

He read it once.

Then again.

His expression hardened.

"What happened?" I asked.

"They reached Edric's residence."

"And?"

"It's empty."

I rose.

"Empty how?"

"The house has been cleared. The closets are bare, and the personal papers that should have been there are gone."

"Was there evidence of a struggle?"

"No blood. No signs of forced entry. Nothing that suggests a violent confrontation."

"Then perhaps he moved," I said. "People retire. They relocate."

"That's possible."

"But you don't believe it."

"I don't know what to believe yet."

He lowered the report.

"I contacted him less than an hour ago. We had barely decided to question him, and now I discover he's not at home."

"When did he leave?"

"The guards couldn't establish that. The house may have been empty for days. Possibly longer."

"So he didn't necessarily leave because you called."

"No."

"Or because he knew we were going to question him."

"Correct."

Roman's careful answers surprised me.

A few weeks ago, he might have turned his suspicion into a command and expected everyone to follow it.

Now he was forcing himself to separate what we knew from what we feared.

I stepped closer.

"Who knew you were going to contact him?"

"No one until we made that decision here."

He stopped.

Then his expression shifted.

"I informed my men shortly afterward."

Neither of us spoke.

The possibility was obvious, but neither of us could prove anything.

"Roman," I said quietly. "Tell me what you're thinking."

He looked at the report.

"I think the timing is suspicious."

"That's all?"

"I think the man who personally recommended you for my surrogate arrangement is now unreachable, and his residence has been cleared."

"And?"

His gaze lifted to mine.

"And we've just confirmed that your blood matches a pattern missing from the historical record for centuries."

My stomach tightened.

"You think those things are connected."

"I think they might be. But I won't tell you they are until we have evidence."

I looked toward the manuscript.

"Then why did Edric choose me?"

"I don't know."

"Was it the compatibility results?"

"That was the explanation he gave me."

"Do you believe him?"

Roman's jaw tightened.

"I believed him before. Now I need to find out whether I should have."

I looked down at my hands.

For weeks, I'd been frightened that the truth about my identity would change the way people saw me.

I'd never seriously considered that someone might have known that truth before I did.

"Do you think my arrival here was arranged?"

Roman didn't answer immediately.

"I think it's possible someone influenced the selection process. Edric's recommendation was unusually direct, and now his disappearance raises questions."

"Questions about what?"

"Whether he was acting on his own judgment or following someone else's instructions."

The room seemed to tilt.

"Someone sent him?"

"I don't know. Edric has spent his life serving my family. He isn't a man who usually makes significant decisions without considering the people he represents."

"Who does he represent now?"

"I don't know that either."

I took a breath.

"And us? Was our relationship part of it? Did someone arrange for me to become your surrogate because they wanted us together?"

Roman's expression changed.

For the first time since we'd started this conversation, he seemed genuinely afraid of the question.

"I can't answer that."

"Do you think it happened?"

"I think someone may have arranged the circumstances that brought you here. But I don't know whether they anticipated what would happen between us."

"That's convenient."

"I know."

"You can believe your feelings are real, but you can't prove that the person who selected me wasn't manipulating both of us."

"You're right."

The admission hurt more than an argument would have.

Roman stepped closer but didn't touch me.

"I know what I felt before we discovered any of this. I know what I feel now. But I can't tell you that someone didn't manipulate the circumstances that brought us together."

I swallowed.

"Then how am I supposed to trust what happened between us?"

"I don't expect you to settle that question today."

His voice was quiet.

"I'll show you what I mean through what I do next. If I find evidence that someone manipulated the selection process, I'll tell you. If I discover that Edric concealed something from me, I won't hide it to protect myself."

I studied his face.

"And if the truth changes everything?"

"Then we face the truth."

He paused.

"I can't promise you that nothing will change, Mira. I can promise that I won't ask you to ignore the evidence just because I want to believe something different."

For a moment, I couldn't speak.

I wasn't ready to forgive him for failing to ask questions that should have mattered.

But I believed he was finally beginning to understand why those questions mattered to me.

"Then find out why he chose me," I said.

"I will."

"Not just why he recommended me. Find out who gave him the information, who reviewed my records, and who knew about my family."

"I'll investigate all of it."

"And I want the findings."

"You'll have them."

"Not after you've decided what they mean. When you get them."

He nodded.

"Together, then."

I looked at him.

"Together. But that doesn't mean you decide what I can handle."

"I understand."

"Do you?"

"Not perfectly." His mouth tightened. "But I'm trying to."

That answer, at least, felt honest.

I turned toward the window.

Somewhere beyond Blackthorn's walls, Edric Hale was either living a quiet retirement, hiding from questions, or caught in something neither of us understood.

We didn't know which.

But I couldn't shake the feeling that his absence was the beginning of a much larger problem.

"Roman?"

"Yes?"

"Who could have known I was Moonborn before Sable ran that test?"

He opened his mouth.

Then stopped.

For the first time, he had no reassuring explanation, no trusted adviser to consult, and no authority he could use to make the uncertainty disappear.

The silence stretched between us.

Somewhere beyond those walls, someone might have known my name, my blood, and my place in a story I had never agreed to enter.

And if Edric Hale had been the person who brought me here, I needed to know whether he'd chosen me himself or whether someone had chosen me long before he ever spoke my name.