The Blood Beneath Blackridge

Mara Bell’s POV

I call my mother’s number eleven times.

Eleven times, straight to voicemail, her old recorded voice telling me to leave a message like nothing’s wrong, like some stranger didn’t just answer her phone and tell me she’s been lying to me my whole life.

By the twelfth call, my hands are shaking too hard to hold the phone steady. I went to meet Rhett. I didn’t think about it, I didn’t even debate it, I just go, because right now he’s the only person who knows enough of the truth to actually help me.

He did not ask questions when he sees my face. He just grabs his jacket and says, “Come with me.”

He takes me to a part of the athletic building I didn’t even know existed,  a security office tucked behind the equipment rooms, screens covering every wall, all of it under Veylor family control since apparently his family funds half this university’s protection systems.

“Pull up anything connected to Mara Bell,” Rhett tells the tech running the room, and the guy’s fingers move fast across the keyboard.

What comes up makes my stomach drop straight through the floor.

Footage. Weeks of it. My dorm hallway. My classroom building. The outdoor rink where I thought nobody ever saw me at six in the morning. Even an angle from outside the library the night Rhett cornered me about the photograph.

Someone has been watching every part of my life since I stepped foot on this campus.

“This isn’t external,” the tech says quietly, scrolling through access logs. “Whoever set this up did it from inside the university network. This is Blackridge infrastructure.”

Rhett’s jaw goes tight. “Someone here has been tracking her.”

“Someone here killed your father,” I say. “I don’t think those are two different people.”

~~~

We went somewhere Rhett says almost nobody remembers exists,  an old section beneath the hockey arena, sealed off since before either of us were born. The arena, he explains as we walk down a narrow stairwell that smells like rust and time, was built directly over what used to be an old pack facility. Nobody talks about it. Nobody’s supposed to know it’s still down here.

The second we step into the lower hallway, my whole body goes cold. I know this hallway.

The broken light fixture still hangs from the ceiling, dead and rusted, exactly the way I remember it flickering the night everything happened. My legs almost give out under me.

“Mara?”

“This is it,” I whisper. “This is where it happened.”

Standing here, something in my mind finally cracks open, seven years of buried memory rushing back at once. I remember running down this same hallway as a kid, small and terrified, Marcus Veylor’s hand gripping my shoulder as he shoved something into my palm.

Never let them take this.

A key. The exact key sitting in my mother’s box this whole time. I pull it out of my pocket with hands that won’t stop shaking, and Rhett stares at it like he’s seeing a ghost.

“That’s my father’s handwriting on the tag,” he says. “I’d know it anywhere.”

There’s an old door at the end of the hallway, thick metal, locked with something that looks decades out of date. The key slides in perfectly, like it was made exactly for this moment.

The door groans open. Inside is a small room covered wall to wall in photographs. Hockey players. Alpha families. Blackridge students going back years. And me. Photos of me as a little girl, photos from high school, photos I don’t even remember being taken.

“Someone’s been tracking your family for years,” Rhett says, and his voice sounds hollow.

Then I see it. A photograph tucked at the very back, older than the rest. My father, standing beside Marcus Veylor, both of them smiling like the picture was taken on some ordinary day. Behind them, half in shadow, is a man wearing a silver ring.

I know that face.

“That’s Director Callum Voss,” I whisper. “He runs Alpha relations for the entire university.”

I’ve seen him at council meetings. I’ve seen him shake hands with professors and donors, respected by everyone who’s ever met him. Before I can say another word, the door behind us slams shut with a metal crash that echoes through the whole room.

Then the lights die.

“Rhett…”

“Stay behind me.” His voice has changed, dropped low and rough, and I can feel the shift happening in him even in the dark, something bigger and more dangerous taking over.

A growl rolls out from somewhere in the darkness ahead of us. It’s wrong. Not fully human, not fully wolf, something twisted between the two that makes every instinct in my body scream to run.

Then a voice cuts through the dark, calm and almost amused, like it’s been waiting years to say this.

“You finally remembered, little wolf.”