Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5 

SERA POV

The room they gave me was not the room I used to mop.

I stepped inside, set my bag on the bench at the foot of the bed, and stood there for a moment. The fire was going. The bed was made. Someone had put flowers on the desk.

I hated the flowers. They felt like a message. We know who you used to be. Look how far you've come. Aren't you grateful?

I moved them to the hallway.

I wasn't grateful. I was here because I had to be, not because I wanted to be.

***

I unzipped my bag and started pulling things out. It took nine minutes. I'd packed light. Clothes, medical supplies, a burner phone and a photograph of my father.

My phone buzzed.

Antiviral shipment confirmed for 6am delivery to pack infirmary. First dose protocol attached. Also you forgot your good coat.

Dana. My second-in-command. She communicated primarily through bullet points and mild insults.

I typed back: I didn't forget it. I left it intentionally.

Three dots. Then: That's the same thing.

Then: Get some sleep. You've been running on ambition and spite for seventy-two hours.

I put the phone down.

She wasn't wrong. That was the irritating thing about Dana. She was almost never wrong, and she knew it, and she had the professional grace to never say so directly, which somehow made it worse.

I sat on the edge of the bed and listened.

Silvermoon at night wasn't quiet. I'd forgotten that. The city had sirens and traffic. Here, I could hear footsteps in the hallway below. Doors opening and closing. Someone was laughing outside.

I'd spent three years learning those sounds. Using them to track which rooms were empty, which guards changed at which hours.

Now I was on the other side of the door.

Strange how that felt.

I wondered if they'd recognized me. If any of them had looked at the name on the reservation, Delacroix, and thought of the girl who used to empty their trash cans and change their dirty sheets. 

Probably not. People see what they expect to see. And no one at Silvermoon had ever expected anything from me.

That was how I'd survived three years inside this pack. Not because I was clever. Because I was invisible. 

Kade had looked at me the same way. For three years, he'd walked past me in hallways, sat in rooms while I cleaned, never once asked my name. And then, on the night of the Mating Ball, his wolf had finally noticed me.

And he'd rejected me anyway.

I pressed my palms against my thighs and forced myself to breathe.

You're not here for him. You're here for the virus. You're here to tear down everything Thorne built and salt the earth where he stands.

I reached into my bag and took out the photograph.

I'd spent years studying this picture, looking for fear in his eyes. There was none. Just a man in a forest, laughing at something off-camera. Completely unaware that the men standing behind him were already planning his death.

I still didn't know if that made me proud or furious.

Proud that he faces what was coming without fear or furious that he never saw it coming.

I set the photograph on the nightstand. 

***

From somewhere below, a door closed. Then I heard footsteps. Moving through the passage beneath my room toward the north wing.

I knew the rhythm of them before I could stop myself from recognizing it.

Kade.

Neva lifted her head.

Don't, I told her.

She put her head back down but kept her ears up.

The footsteps faded.

A soft knock. 

I opened the door. A young wolf I didn't recognize stood there, holding a tray of tea.

"The Alpha thought you might want this."

"Did he?"

She hesitated. "He didn't tell you that. But I thought you should know."

I closed the door and looked at the tray. Chamomile. I set it on the floor and left the tea untouched.

The silence pressed in around me. I sat up and pulled my knees to my chest, staring at the door he hadn't knocked at.

He'd walked past. Just walked past.

What did you expect? Neva asked.

Nothing. I expected nothing.

Liar.

I didn't argue. She was right. Some small, stupid part of me had wanted him to stop. To knock. To say something, anything, that proved the bond had meant more to him than a mistake to be corrected.

But he hadn't. And I was glad.

I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

Two years.

Two years since I'd stood in his ballroom and felt the bond snap. Two years since I'd walked out with my spine straight and my face blank while three hundred wolves whispered behind me.

I'd told myself I didn't care. I'd told myself he'd done me a favor.

But lying here, in his pack, in a room he'd probably assigned me without a second thought, I could still feel it. The hole where the bond used to be. Smaller now, scarred over. But there.

You're here for the virus, I told myself. Not for him.

I sat up and pulled out the infirmary files.

Seventeen people. Two children in the advanced stage. A man named Fenwick whose daughter was nine. I'd read his file on the helicopter. Then read it again. Then set it face down on the seat beside me and looked out the window for a while.

The antiviral worked. I'd spent seven months making sure of that.

But working in a lab was different from working in a room full of sick wolves who didn't trust me. Who remembered me as the maid with no wolf. Who'd probably rather die than let me treat them.

Then let them die, Neva said.

No.

They didn't help us. They looked the other way. They called us Wolfless and laughed.

That's not who we are.

She went quiet again. Grudging.

My phone buzzed.

Marcus just flagged something. Thorne's people are moving. Not sure where yet. Keep your head down.

I stared at the message.

Edric Thorne. The Council member who'd killed my father. The man who'd spent the last two years trying to find me.

Noted, I typed back. Any details?

Not yet. Just... be careful.

I stared at the screen.

Three dots appeared. Then:

One more thing. Thorne has someone in Silvermoon. He probably knows where you are right now.

My blood went cold.

I sat up straighter and looked at the door, the window and at the walls.

Thorne had someone inside the pack. 

Who?