Chapter 5: Watch Her

The room had no windows.

That was intentional. Rooms with windows had directions, and directions left traces, and the man who used this room had spent a very long time making sure he left nothing that could be followed back to him.

He sat at the head of the table and listened.

There were three of them across from him. Men he had chosen specifically because they were good at being invisible, at standing in places without being remembered, at watching without being seen. They had been watching for ten days and they brought their report the way he had trained them to, without embellishment, without opinion, only fact.

The girl had gone to the creek with the wolf and another woman. The wolf had stayed two nights before leaving for the Blackwater funeral. He had sent his cousin, the one called Jake, to bring the girls back to campus. The cousin had visited several times since. The other woman, the girl's friend, had not left her side.

"And the wolf?" he asked.

"He returned to campus today." the first man said. "They spoke outside the library. Briefly."

He was quiet for a moment, turning this over. "How close are they?"

The three men exchanged a look. The second one spoke. "Close enough that he drove to the creek himself. Close enough that the cousin checks on her every other day on his behalf." A pause. "We believe they are involved. Romantically."

The room held the silence for a moment.

He had not anticipated this. He had known about the girl for some time, had been watching the Elenora bloodline the way one watched a door they knew would eventually open. He had not anticipated the door opening onto Lucian specifically. Of all the Alphas in the kingdom, of all the directions this could have gone, it had landed here.

He pressed two fingers to his mouth and thought.

It complicated things. Jake's constant presence at the girl's side had made the past ten days difficult. He did not want witnesses and he did not want complications, and Jake was both. The wolf's involvement made the girl more visible, more surrounded, harder to reach without creating noise he wasn't ready to make yet.

But it also told him something useful. The girl didn't know what she was carrying yet. If she did, she would not be sitting in a dormitory with an unopened book on her floor. She would be running.

"The book." he said. "Has she opened it?"

"Not as of this morning." the third man said.

Good. He needed more time and the unopened book was buying it for him.

"Pull back." he said. "Don't touch her. Don't go near her. Don't let her feel watched." He looked at each of them in turn. "Just follow her. I want to know where she goes, who she speaks to, and the moment that changes."

"And if the wolf gets in the way?"

He considered this. Lucian was not someone you moved around carelessly. He was young but he was not soft, and he carried the kind of instincts that came from bloodlines that had been sharpened over generations. Getting in his way without preparation would be a mistake.

"It won't come to that yet." he said. "She doesn't know enough to run and he doesn't know enough to protect her from the right things." He stood, which was the signal that the meeting was over. "Watch her. Nothing more."

The three men left quietly without making any unnecessary sound and without looking back.

He stood alone in the windowless room and let out a humorless laugh.

“I will get you, little Elenora.”