Chapter 5

ROMAN

I never usually walked the line myself. Gideon handled the sorting, counting, and all of it. Faces blurred together after a while, and most of them were just numbers on a debt sheet by the time they reached me.

But the last shipment came in short, and I wanted to see for myself what these traders thought they could get away with this time. That's the only reason I told myself I was out there in the cold at midnight, watching chained prisoners get unloaded one by one.

Gideon fell into step beside me. "You never come out for this."

"The numbers were off last time. I want eyes on the count this time."

"Sure," he said in a tone that meant he didn't believe me and wasn't going to bother saying so twice.

I was three names down the list when one of the guards called out "Hale, Aurora Hale," and something in my chest tightened before I even saw her face.

She was near the back, wrapped in a blanket that wasn't doing much against the cold, her head down like she didn't have the strength to lift it. I didn't recognize her. I was sure of that. But somehow, something about her felt a bit familiar.

"Roman." Gideon's voice sounded careful. "You've gone still."

I ignored him and walked to stand in front of her instead.

That's when I saw something half hidden under the collar of her shirt. A small and plain old silver pendant. It looked like the kind of thing you'd walk past a hundred times without a second look.

Except I'd seen that exact necklace before. Once, in a photograph in my mother's things, tucked inside a box I hadn't opened in eleven years.

"Where did you get this?" I asked her, my voice sharper than I actually wanted it to be.

She barely lifted her head. Her eyes were glassy and unfocused. "My mother," she whispered, and then her eyes rolled back and she went limp against the chains.

"Get the doctor," I said, already lifting her. "Now."

Gideon didn't argue, though I could feel him watching me the whole time, filing away every second of this for later.

My men exchanged looks behind my back like I'd lost my mind. Maybe I had. I'd never once, in all my years of running this pack, personally carried anyone myself.

She stirred a little on the walk up, mumbling something I couldn't catch, shaking hard enough that I could feel it through my own arms. Up close, I noticed something the traders had clearly missed entirely.

She was pregnant.

It was barely showing, and quite easy to miss if you weren't looking. But I'd seen that particular kind of exhaustion on enough faces over the years to know exactly what I was looking at.

"She's not going in the holding cells," I told Gideon.

"The traders logged her the same as—"

"I don't care what they logged."

By the time we got to the palace, the doctor was already waiting. I stood in the doorway while she worked, saying nothing, because I genuinely didn't have the first idea what I would even say to a woman I'd known for a total of about eleven minutes.

"Roman." It was Gideon again, but his voice was quieter this time. "There was a mistake from the traders. I asked around while you were carrying her up."

"And?"

"Her name wasn't on the original list. Someone added it late, even paid extra to guarantee she made this particular shipment. Not just any shipment north, but ours."

I felt a cold feeling settle in my stomach. "Who paid?"

"Nobody's talking. But whoever it was knew exactly where this shipment was headed. They wanted her here, Roman. With us. With you, maybe."

I looked back through the open door at her, asleep now, the pendant still visible at her collar where the doctor had slightly unbuttoned her shirt to check her pulse.

That pendant wasn't just any old jewelry. I was sure of it now, standing there with my heart beating in a way it hadn't done in over a decade.

"Get my mother's box from the study," I said. "Bring it to me tonight."

Gideon frowned. "That box hasn't been touched since—"

"I know how long it's been touched, Gideon. Just get it."

He left without another word, and I stood there for a long moment, staring at a sleeping stranger who was somehow, impossibly, wearing a piece of jewelry I'd only ever seen once before in my life.

In a photo of my mother, taken the year before she died. A photo of her standing next to a woman I'd never been able to identify, both of them wearing the same silver pendant, smiling like they didn't know what was coming for them.

Someone had sent this woman to me on purpose.

And judging by what she was wearing around her neck, I was starting to think I knew exactly why.