A Ghost in the Guest Wing

The woman doesn't move from the window. She just watches me, real still, and somehow that's more unsettling than if she'd come at me swinging.

"I don't know what you've heard," I say, "but I'm not a ghost."

"No?" She tilts her head, looking me over the way you'd look at a stray dog that wandered into a dinner party. "Half the pack downstairs thinks Selene Voss crawled straight up out of hell to cause trouble for our Alpha. The other half thinks you're something worse."

"And what do you think?"

"I think," she says, walking across the room slowly, "I haven't decided yet."

Up close she's pretty in a way that feels planned out. Reddish-brown hair pinned back, not one strand loose. Violet-gray eyes that don't miss a thing.

"I'm Nadia," she says. "Cassian's advisor. Looks like we'll be spending a lot of time together while he figures out what to do with you."

"Lucky me," I say, and something flickers in her eyes. Amusement, maybe. Or she doesn't like that I didn't flinch.

"You've got nerve," she says, "for someone with no name, no pack, and no proof of anything you've said."

"I have a name. It's Selene."

"Mm." She looks at me again, walking a slow circle around me the way that guard did on the road, like she's taking notes in her head. "You don't move like somebody who grew up wandering Grimwood's back roads."

My stomach tightens. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing yet." She smiles, thin. "Just something I noticed. I notice a lot. It's how I keep this pack running smoothly."

There's a knock at the door and a young maid comes in with a tray. Bread, broth, a cup of water. She sets it down without looking at me and hurries out fast, like she's scared of catching something off me.

"They're all scared of you," Nadia says, watching the door shut. "Words travel quickly in a house like this."

"I haven't done anything."

"Doesn't matter. You showed up out of a grave two days before the anniversary of a death this whole pack still hasn't gotten over. Fear doesn't need facts. It just needs something to attach itself to." She looks right at me. "Right now, that's you."

I sit down slowly at the small table by the tray, my legs finally giving out from being tired, and pick at the bread more to keep my hands busy than because I'm hungry.

"You said Cassian's your Alpha," I say, careful. "You've known him a while?"

"Long enough." Something guarded slides across her face. "Why?"

"No reason. Just trying to understand where I've landed."

"You've landed in the middle of a pack that's spent four years pretending it healed from something it never actually healed from," she says. "Walk careful. People here don't forgive easily, and they don't forget."

"What happened four years ago?" I ask, even though I already know. Even though hearing it from her mouth is like pressing on a bruise just to feel how bad it still hurts.

Something careful settles over her face. "The Alpha's brother was murdered. The woman who did it was executed. It's not a story anybody in this house likes talking about."

"I'm sorry," I say, and I mean it more than she'll ever know.

"Don't be. Ancient history." She waves her hand like she's brushing dust off a shelf, but her eyes don't match that careless tone at all. They're tight. Watchful. "What matters now is you. And whether you're actually harmless, or whether you're going to be a problem."

"I don't want to be a problem for anybody."

"That's what everybody says right before they turn into exactly that." She heads for the door, stops with her hand on the frame. "Word of advice, Selene. Whatever you're hiding, and you are hiding something, I can smell it even if I can't name it yet, bury it deeper. Cassian's sharper than he looks. And this pack's got a habit of digging up things people would rather leave buried."

That word lands like a slap. Buried. Like she already knows exactly where I woke up two days ago.

"Is that a threat?" I ask.

"It's a kindness," she says, with the same thin smile. "Last one you're getting from me."

She slips out and shuts the door soft behind her, and I sit there in the quiet with my heart pounding and no appetite left at all.

I make myself eat a little anyway, because whatever's coming, I'll need the strength for it. Then I curl up on top of the blankets, still wearing Torin's cloak, too tired and too on edge to actually undress and sleep properly in a house full of people who'd probably be glad to see me thrown back in the ground.

I don't know how long I'm out. Not long. I wake up to voices outside my door, low, urgent.

"—can't just let her wander the halls unsupervised, Cassian, not with everything—"

"I know what I'm doing, Damon."

"Do you? Because from where I'm standing, you locked a complete stranger in the room right next to Mara's old chambers, and you haven't slept a full night since she got here."

Then it goes quiet. Quiet enough that I hold my breath just to hear through it.

"There's something about her," Cassian says, finally, voice low, almost too quiet to catch. "Something I can't explain. My wolf won't settle around her."

"That's exactly what worries me," Damon says.

I lie there dead still in the dark, my heart going so hard I'm sure they could hear it through the door if they tried. And somewhere deep under my ribs, faint and shaking, I feel Nyx wake up for the first time since the grave. Reaching. Straining toward the sound of his voice on the other side of that wall.