FAZER LOGINShe was still asleep when I left.
I stood at the door for a moment longer than was strictly necessary, watching the stillness of her under the covers, the slow rhythm of her breathing. She'd gone to bed early and barely spoken, and I'd told myself it was grief doing what grief does, pulling a person inward, making the world too loud to engage with. I believed that. I wanted to believe it.
I closed the door quietly behind me and walked into the corridor.
Juli
(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.
(Lena POV)I sat with what he'd said for a long moment.Varden sent the challenge yesterday morning. I walked out of Silvercrest yesterday evening. The challenge was about me, built around me, calculated to use the instability my existence created as a pressure point against Darius and Kai, and I had known nothing about it while it was happening. I had been sitting at Kai's desk reading a visitor restriction document and deciding to leave, completely unaware that an entire territorial chess move had been made with my name on it twelve hours earlier."I didn't know," I said.Ryan looked at me."About the challenge," I clarified. "I didn't know you'd sent it. I didn't know anything about it until you just told me."He was quiet."I know how that sounds," I said."Do you?" His voice was pleasant, which somehow made it more unsettling than if he had been sharp. "Walk me through how it sounds from your
I kept my face completely even.That was the first thing, the most important thing, because the girl was already watching me. Any reaction I gave her right now would be catalogued and interpreted before I had finished making it.So I held my face still and turned to Cole."Step out for a second," I said quietly.Cole nodded and moved into the corridor. Tyler followed without being asked. I pulled the door almost closed behind me, leaving enough of a gap that I could see Lena through it, still standing in the center of the room, her weight slightly off her right knee, her palms scraped raw, looking at the near-closed door with an expression that was working very hard to stay composed.I turned to Cole. "Walk me through it.""Borderland patrol, standard sweep," Cole said, keeping his voice low. "Found her in the old stone outpost, forty meters inside our boundary. She ran when she heard us, fell, we caught up. No weapons on her.
They walked fast.I kept up because the alternative was being dragged, and I had enough dignity left to prefer walking under my own power. My knee ached with every step, a dull persistent throb that sharpened whenever the ground dipped unexpectedly, but I kept my face neutral and my breathing even and I did not ask again where we were going.Cole walked ahead. Tyler walked behind me. Neither of them spoke.The forest thickened around us, the trees older and taller the further in we went, their roots surfacing above the ground in long gnarled ridges that I had to step over carefully in the dark. The path, if it could be called that, was clearly familiar to both of them. They moved without hesitation, without flashlights, navigating by some combination of memory and wolf sense that I didn't share.Five minutes passed. Then ten. Then what felt like twenty.The silence started to press on me.I didn't know what pack they were from.
I was on my feet before I was fully awake.My body made the decision before my brain caught up, some deep instinct pulling me upright and pushing me toward the gap in the outpost wall, away from the sound. The document was in my pocket. My shoes were still on because I had been too tired and too untrusting of this place to take them off.Small mercies.I ran.The scrubland grabbed at my ankles immediately, the thick grass catching my feet with every stride, and I stumbled twice in the first thirty meters without fully going down. The treeline was dark in every direction and I couldn't tell which way was deeper into the borderland and which way doubled back toward the Lowlands, so I just picked forward and committed to it.Behind me, footsteps. Two sets. Unhurried, which was somehow worse than if they had been frantic. Unhurried meant they weren't worried about losing me.My lungs started burning faster than they should have. Tw
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
I woke to sunlight streaming through the windows and the acrid taste of betrayal coating my tongue.The room was empty. Kai had left at some point during the night, probably to avoid the confrontation he must have known was coming. My body still ached from whatever Sienna had
I finished the whiskey in one smooth motion, the burn doing nothing to settle the restlessness coiling in my chest. Setting the glass down, I crossed the room toward Lena, my hands finding her waist before I could second-guess the impulse. She stiffened slightly under my touch, a te
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







