Chapter 6_They Saw Me

Neris's POV

"Say that again."

Evren's voice cuts through the clearing like a blade dragged across stone. He hasn't moved from the tree line, but every line of his body says he wants to.

I don't answer. My knees are still in the dirt. My hands are still shaking.

"I said." He steps forward. "Say it again. Tell me what I just watched wasn't a full shift. Tell me a servant girl didn't just level that thing with her bare hands."

"I don't know what you saw."

"Liar."

"Evren." Cassian's voice, low, doesn't rise, doesn't need to. "Stand down."

"You're joking."

"I said stand down." Cassian steps into the clearing, and where Evren burns, Cassian is ice: controlled, assessing, his eyes moving over the scorched crater, the broken stone, me. "Get up."

"I can't."

"You can. Get up."

I get up. My legs barely hold me, but something in his tone makes it clear this isn't a request I get to refuse. Behind him, Lucien hasn't spoken, hasn't moved either. He's just watching me with an expression I can't read, and that's worse than anything Evren's said.

"Explain," Cassian says.

"There's nothing to explain."

"There's exactly one thing to explain. Ten minutes ago you were unregistered. Now there's a dead monster in front of you and no wolf in sight. Where did it go, Neris?"

He knows my name. Of course he knows my name. He's known it since the day I dropped his boots in the mud and apologized instead of running.

"I don't have a wolf."

"You're lying to my face."

"I'm not."

"You're standing in a crater that wasn't here an hour ago." His voice sharpens, the first real crack in his control. "The ground is glassed. Claws don't do that. A shift violent enough to burn the dirt beneath it does. So either you tell me what happened, or I draw my own conclusions, and mine will be worse than the truth."

"Let her go," Lucien says.

Everyone turns.

It's the first thing he's said, and his voice is quiet in a way that lands louder than Evren's shouting. Cassian doesn't look pleased.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me." Lucien steps closer, and for the first time he looks at me instead of past me. "She's shaking. She can barely stand. Whatever happened here cost her something. Interrogating her in a field isn't going to get you answers any faster."

"She's dangerous," Evren snaps.

"She's terrified," Lucien says. "Those aren't the same thing."

"They're exactly the same thing when the terrified thing can level something that size with its hands."

"Enough." Cassian's voice again, sharp now, done arguing with his own pack. He turns back to me, and his eyes carry a calculation that makes my stomach drop. "You have one chance to tell me the truth before I take this to the Council."

The Council.

If they hear the word wolf attached to my name, I'm not a servant with a secret anymore. I'm a violation. An unregistered shift is execution-level in some Houses. I've heard the stories. I've delivered food to girls waiting for their hearing and watched them not come back.

"Please." I hate how small it sounds. "Please don't."

"Give me a reason not to."

"I don't have one. I have nothing. I have a wolf I didn't ask for and don't understand, and if you report it, I'm dead before sunrise. That's the whole truth. That's everything I have."

Silence.

Evren's jaw works like he wants to argue and can't find the angle. Lucien's gone very still. Cassian just watches me, unreadable, for three long seconds that feel like an execution in themselves.

"You expect us to sit on this." His tone flattens. "An unregistered wolf. A dead monster. And we just forget it happened."

"I'm not asking you to forget. I'm asking you not to kill me over something I never chose."

"That's not how the law works."

"Then the law is wrong."

The words are out before I can stop them, and for a moment I think I've just handed them the last nail they need. Evren laughs, short and disbelieving.

"She's got teeth after all."

"Shut up, Evren."

"I'm serious. Servant girl just told the future Alpha King the law is wrong. To his face. In the dirt. That's either the bravest thing I've ever heard or the stupidest."

"Both," Lucien says, and for the first time there's something almost like amusement in his voice. "Cassian. A minute."

Cassian doesn't look away from me, but he tilts his head, giving Lucien the floor.

"If we report her, she's dead by morning and we lose whatever she is before anyone even understands it. If we don't, we have leverage, information, and time to figure out what just happened here. Dead girls don't answer questions."

"That's not a reason. That's a use case."

"It's both." Lucien finally looks at me instead of through me. "You want to live. We want answers. That's a trade, not a mercy."

"So you report me later, once you've used me."

"Maybe." He doesn't flinch from the honesty of it. "Or maybe you're more useful walking around than reported. Either way, that decision doesn't get made in a field at midnight."

Evren shoves off the tree he's been leaning against and closes the distance until I have to tip my head back to hold his eyes. "You should be terrified right now."

"I am."

"Good. Stay that way. It'll keep you honest." He looks past me to the crater, to the glassed dirt, and something shifts behind his expression, contempt giving way to calculation. "Whatever you are, you killed something twice your size in under a minute. That's not nothing."

"Evren."

"I'm not saying spare her because it's kind, Cassian. I'm saying spare her because I want to see her do that again."

"That's not a small ask," Cassian says, but he's already turning it over. I can see the exact moment strategy replaces suspicion in his eyes. "Fine. For now. She stays quiet, we stay quiet, and she answers to us the second we ask a question. Understood?"

"Understood."

"I mean it, Neris. The second you lie to us again, this arrangement is over. So are you."

"I understand."

"Good." He steps back, already dismissing me, already moving on to whatever calculation comes next. "Get back to the dormitory before the patrol does their sweep. If anyone asks."

"I saw nothing. I know."

"Smart girl."

I turn to go, legs still unsteady, heart still hammering. I've made it three steps toward the tree line when Lucien's voice stops me cold.

"Neris."

I look back.

"Your room. Second drawer, under the false bottom. Move it before someone else finds it first."

The blood drains out of my face.

"How do you know about that?"

"Because I already looked." His expression doesn't change, doesn't soften, doesn't apologize. "Whoever your parents were, someone wanted that photograph destroyed badly enough to burn everything else in that house. Ask yourself why it's the one thing that survived."

He walks away before I can answer, leaving me at the edge of the clearing with a dead monster behind me and a truth I didn't know I was hiding, waiting in my own room.