The Seed of Doubt

I woke up to a world that was too loud.

The sound of the ocean crashing against the cliffs below the castle usually sounded like a gentle hum. Today, it sounded like thunder. I could hear the seagulls screaming miles away. I could hear the water moving through the pipes in the walls.

I opened my eyes and squinted. The morning sunlight was streaming through the curtains and felt like some kind of spotlight searing into the retinas.

"Too bright," I sighed, and threw an arm over my face.

"Headache?" asked a voice.

I flinched. The voice was low, velvety, but in my ears, it rang as thunder.

Slowly, I lowered my arm. Dante stood at the foot of my bed, looking as handsome as ever in his usual suit. Yet he looked tired. There were shadows beneath those golden eyes of his: it seemed he'd not slept a wink. He had stayed with me through the night, my anchor.

"No headache," I whispered, testing my voice. "Just...everything is too much. The lights. The noise."

"That's sensory overload," Dr. Evans said, stepping out of the bathroom, where he had been washing his hands. "It is a side effect from the merge. Your human brain is doing its best to process input from your wolf's senses. It is kind of like trying to drink from a fire hose."

He handed me a pair of sunglasses. "Put these on. And try to focus on one thing at a time. If you try to hear everything, you’ll go mad."

I put the glasses on. The brightness of the world faded down to a tolerable background.

I sat up. My body felt strange, humming with some restless energy. I felt light and quick. I looked at the glass of water atop the nightstand and had the sudden impulse to knock it down and watch it fall.

Predatory instincts, I realized. My wolf wants to play.

"Fever is gone," Dante said, looking at me closely. "You look...stable."

"I feel strong," I said.

"Good," he said. The tone shifted back to business. "But we have a problem."

He went to the window, staring outside at the driveway.

"Vanessa is here."

My stomach dropped. "Why?"

"She claims that this is 'urgent Council business' regarding the border disputes," Dante said, a tightness forming in his jaw. "But she knows you are here. And she knows you collapsed. News travels fast in this pack."

He turned to me.

"Stay in the study today, Maya. Don't engage with her. Vanessa is a diplomat, and therefore: a professional liar. She will try to get inside your head."

"I can deal with her," I said, swinging my legs out of bed.

"No," said Dante. "You danced with her at a party. This is my ground. I will deal with the politics. You will work on... not glowing."

He left the room without kissing me. The wall went back up. The vulnerability of last night, the "You're the only thing that's real" behind him, locked away with his duty as a King.

I spent the morning sequestered in my glass-walled office, trying to work through audit reports. But it couldn't be done.

My new hearing had become a curse.

I could hear the maids gossiping in the linen closet down the hall. "Did you hear? The King slept in her room again." "She's a witch, I tell you. She put a spell on him."

I gritted my teeth and turned up my classical music on the speaker.

Around noon, the new scent struck me.

Sharp. Floral. Metallic. Roses and blood.

Vanessa.

She wasn't in the hall. She was downstairs in the main atrium. But the trace was so strong that it put the hairs on the back of my arms on end.

I tried to ignore it, I tried to stick to Dante's order: Stay in the study.

But then her voice came drifting up.

It was not loud. She was speaking from the main conference room two floors below. But somehow, either thanks to the ventilation ducts or to my supernatural hearing, her voice came up to me crystal clear.

"...worry about security, Dante," she said.

"My security is flawless, Vanessa," came the low rumble of Dante.

I stopped typing. I leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes, and concentrated on the sound.

"Is it?" Vanessa said silkily, coating her words with venom like a dagger. "You brought a stranger into your home. A girl with no background, no pack history, and a convenient case of 'amnesia' about her medical records."

"She ain't got amnesia as far as I know," Dante countered. "She was poisoned by Miller."

"Was she?" Vanessa chuckled softly. "Or was that just the story Miller told to keep her contained? Think about it, Dante. A 'weak' Omega who recovers in two weeks? Who has the intelligence to audit your books? Who survives a lethal dose of Wolfsbane?"

There was a pause. The rustle of papers.

"You implying something?" Dante asked. His voice was now icier.

"If anything, I'm not implying anything," Vanessa purred. "I'm just going by the facts. You know the Red Tooth Pack has been trying to infiltrate your systems for years. They use sleeper agents. Enhanced soldiers. Women trained to seduce Alphas and steal their secrets."

My heart was pounding; I thought she was good, terrifyingly good.

"Maya is not a spy," Dante insisted. But I heard the hesitation. A tiny, microscopic hesitance.

"And how would you know?" Vanessa pressed. "Have you seen her shift? Do you know what her wolf looks like? Or is she keeping it hidden... because if you did see it, you'd know it doesn't belong to Silver River at all?"

With a thud, she slammed the file on the table.

"My father has access to the old registry archives," Vanessa continued. "There is no record of birth for anyone by the name of 'Maya' in the Silver River Pack twenty-two years ago. She is non-existent, Dante. She's a ghost."

"Get out," Dante growled.

"I'm leaving," she said lightly. "But you are a smart man, Dante. You value logic. Ask yourself: Is it logical that a fifty-million-dollar 'debt slave' just happens to be perfect for you? Or is that a trap?"

The clicking of her heels on marble melded into silence.

I sat in my office, frozen.

She had planted the seed. And she had planted it in the most fertile ground possible: Dante's paranoia. Dante, the one that trusted no one. The one that thought that people were only after his kingdom.

I looked at the access card on my desk: a symbol of my access to his encrypted servers.

Just yesterday, that card had been a symbol of trust. Today, it was looking like evidence.

The door opened to my office.

Still, I didn't turn around. I could smell him. But not today, the smell was laced with anxiety and suspicion.

Dante stood at the door, not coming in, but leaning against the doorpost to gaze at me.

"Must I ask how the audit is going?" His voice was dampened by neutrality. For sure, artfully so.

"I am making process," I slowly turned to face him. I kept my calm, although a storm raged in my insides. "Did your meeting usher in success?"

Dante's eyes were searching mine, looking for any flicker of guilt, any sign of the spy Vanessa had described.

"It was informative," he said.

He came over to my desk and picked up a batch of papers I had wrapped up—payroll reports.

"You have access to archives," Dante remarked nonchalantly. "Personnel files."

"Yes," I nodded. "You gave me the key."

"I did." He tapped the papers on the palm of his hand. "I will need back the key for a few hours, the IT department wants to run a.. system update."

Totally a lie, and I knew it. He knew that I knew.

He wanted to withdraw my access and lock me out while he made sure I hadn't stolen anything.

This hurt more than anything: that he tossed me aside for an ex-girlfriend's whisper after what happened last night—after he'd held me while I burned, after he'd told me I was "real."

I pulled the card from my pocket.

I placed it on his table and slid it toward him.

"Here," I said softly, "Wouldn't want to make a system vulnerable."

Dante looked at the card and then at me, seeing the hurt in my eyes. For a moment, he seemed to wish he could apologize. It was almost as if he wished to reach out and pull me into his arms.

But King first, man second.

He took the card.

"It's just protocol, Maya," he stiffly replied.

"Sure," I said, and turned my face back toward the computer. "Just business."

He lingered a moment longer, then turned and left.

I waited for the click of the door closing before I exhaled shakily.

Vanessa had won this round. She had turned my greatest strength—my intelligence, my swift recovery—against me.

But she erred.

She said no birth record existed for me in Silver River.

If that were true... then who am I?

I was no spy; I knew that. But if I were not born in Silver River, then it meant Miller had lied about much more than the poison.

My eyes were still stuck on the black screen of the computer, black because I had no need for the key card.

A new puzzle arose in my mind: Not to save Dante money but to save myself.

I had to figure out who I really was before Vanessa did. Because if she figured it out first... Well, I had a feeling that being called a "spy" might look like child's play compared to what she would do to me next.