LOGINMy father stood and moved toward the door, but instead of opening it to dismiss me, he paused with his hand on the handle.
"Walk with me," he said, and it wasn't quite a command but close enough.
I followed him out of the study, past Harrison who was pacing in the hallway with barely contained fury. My father didn't acknowledge him, just kept walking toward the rear entrance that led to the private gardens reserved for the Alpha's family.
The morning air was
(Julian POV)By the sixth hour, the scouts were running on nothing.I could see it in the way Daniel moved with the slightly over-deliberate quality of someone compensating for a body that had been awake too long. Brett had stopped speaking entirely, which in someone his age meant he was past the point of social energy and operating on bare function. The two others, a wolf named Greg and a quieter one everyone called Sam, had been sitting on a rock shelf for the last forty minutes doing what looked like resting their eyes but was probably closer to sleeping upright.None of them had asked to leave.That was the problem.Kai was still moving. He had not stopped moving since we arrived at the borderland before dawn, covering the same ground the scouts had already covered, reexamining things Daniel had already read and reported, standing at the border marker and looking northeast with the focused intensity of a man who b
(Lena POV)I lasted until mid-afternoon before the room became intolerable.It wasn't the room itself. The room was fine, better than fine by any standard I had lived by for most of my life.It was the quality of the stillness inside it.I put on the clean clothes someone had left, folded the ones I had arrived in, and opened the door.The corridor was empty in both directions. Stone floor, woven runner down the center in a deep rust color, wall sconces burning low in the afternoon light. Four doors on each side, all closed. A window at the far end looking out onto the same courtyard I could see from my room.I turned left, away from the window, and walked.The east wing opened after two corridors into a larger common space that functioned, as far as I could tell, as a general gathering area. Long tables, mismatched chairs, a sideboard along one wall with a water jug and a basket of fruit t
(Kai POV)I crouched at the threshold and looked at the interior without entering it, reading it the way my father had taught me to read spaces before I was old enough to understand why the skill mattered. Dirt floor, disturbed in a pattern consistent with someone sitting against the far wall for an extended period. A depression in the dust where weight had rested. Scuff marks near the entrance where feet had moved quickly, outward, in a hurry.She had been here.I stood up and looked at Scout, one of the three men I had sent ahead at first light, a lean, quiet wolf named Daniel who had been tracking for the pack since before I was old enough to run patrols. He was crouched a few meters from the outpost entrance, examining the ground with the focused patience of someone reading a language most people couldn't see."How long ago?" I asked."Eight hours, maybe ten," Daniel said. "Ground's dry enough that t
(Lena POV)Ryan was in the corridor when I came out of Walter's office.I stopped when I saw him.Kate, still a half step behind me, said nothing.Ryan pushed off the wall and looked at me with an expression that had been constructed to reveal nothing. "How was the meeting?""Fine," I said."Walter treat you well?""He was very hospitable.""Good." He fell into step beside me without being invited, which forced Kate into a slightly awkward repositioning behind us. "I want you to know that changes nothing on my end."I kept walking. "I wasn't under the impression that it did.""Walter is generous by nature," Ryan said. "He extends good faith as a default setting. It's one of his better qualities and occasionally one of his more exploitable ones.""Are you warning me not to exploit it, or warning yourself that I might?""Both," he said, without hesitation. "I've seen peop
(Lena POV)The guard who came for me in the morning was not Ryan. It was a woman in her mid-thirties. She told me her name was Kate, that breakfast was available if I wanted it before the meeting, and that the Alpha would see me at nine.She said it the way a hotel concierge might confirm a reservation.I said yes to breakfast because I had not eaten since the borderland outpost and my body had started making its feelings about that known in a persistent way. Kate took me to a small dining room off the main corridor, left food on the table, and waited near the door without hovering. The food was plain, eggs, bread, sliced fruit and coffee that smelled like actual coffee rather than the approximation of it they served in the Silvercrest communal hall.I ate everything on the plate.Kate watched me do it without comment, which I appreciated.At five to nine she led me through two corridors and a heavy door into a
(Kai POV)The holding room was in the east corridor of the compound's lower level, stone-walled and deliberately uncomfortable, the kind of space designed to make a person acutely aware of how much they would prefer to be somewhere else.Theo sat in the single chair with his arms folded and his expression set into something so deliberately neutral it communicated contempt more effectively than any insult would have. He had not spoken since we brought him in. Not one word. He looked at the wall opposite him with the focused serenity of someone who had decided that nothing in this room was worth his attention.I stood outside the barred door and looked at him and felt nothing useful."Theo," I said.He looked at the wall."I'm going to ask you one more time where she went after she left your house."He looked at the wall."Theo."The wall continued to hold his complete and undivided interest.
Morning came with brutal efficiency. Kai was seated on the chair when I woke."Did you sleep at all?" I asked, sitting up and pushing my hair back from myr face."Enough." he stood, stretching muscles that had gone stiff from hours of immobility. "I have news about your mother."I was on my feet in
I watched Kai's expression shift from resignation to something sharper, more alert."What?" His voice was rough, disbelieving."Theo offered me a way out," I repeated, taking a step closer. My heart was hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat. "He researched bon
She turned and walked away without another word, her shoulders rigid with the kind of anger that had nowhere to go but inward. I watched her disappear into the bedroom, heard the door close with a soft click that somehow sounded louder than a slam.I'd done it again. Used the
The woods called to me, offering the solitude I desperately needed. I walked past the training grounds, past the gardens, until the manicured grounds gave way to wild forest. Here, away from the compound's scrutiny, I could actually breathe.Julian's words kept circling in my







