Chapter 6

ROMAN

The box sat on my desk like it was daring me to open it.

Eleven years. That's how long it had been locked away in the study, shoved behind old files where I didn't have to look at it every single day. Gideon had brought it up without a word, setting it down on the desk, then leaving just as quietly. He understood more than he let on. He always did. That was part of the reason I kept him around, even when he said things I didn't want to hear.

I sat there for a long moment before I even touched it. The wood was darker than I remembered, scratched along one corner, and there was a thin layer of dust across the lid, which was evidence of exactly how long it had sat there untouched.

I ran my thumb over the small brass lock, then pulled the key from my pocket. My hand shook slightly, just enough that I noticed it, and noticing it annoyed me more than the shaking itself did.

I wasn't a man who shook. Not anymore. Not since I'd made myself into someone everyone called a monster.

"Get it together," I muttered to myself in the empty room before turning the key.

The lid creaked open, the hinges stiff from years of disuse. Inside was exactly what I remembered and had spent eleven years trying hard to forget.

A stack of letters tied together with a string that had gone soft and gray with age. A plain gold ring that used to be on my mother's finger before she died, before everything in my life turned into war and blood and a name people whispered like a curse behind closed doors. And underneath all of it, face down against the velvet lining, the photograph.

I picked it up slowly, as if it might crumble if I moved too fast, or like eleven years of not looking at it had somehow made it fragile in a way that made no logical sense at all.

My mother stood in the picture, younger than I could really remember her, her head tipped back as she laughed at something happening outside the frame. Beside her stood a woman I'd never been able to name. I'd stared at this photo more times than I could count over the years, back when I still let myself pull it out at all, and I'd never figured out who she was.

A friend, maybe. Or a cousin. Someone important enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with my mother and laugh like the whole world was still good and safe and simple.

Both women wore the same plain silver necklace. It was simple enough that you'd walk right past it in a shop without a second glance, without ever guessing what it might mean to somebody, someday.

It looked like the exact necklace currently around the throat of a stranger two floors below me, on a woman I'd carried up from the docks myself a few hours ago.

I set the picture down under the desk lamp and leaned in closely, studying the unnamed woman's face intensely. Something about it felt almost familiar in a way I couldn't quite pin down no matter how long I stared. But I wasn’t certain about anything.

"Who are you?" I said quietly to a picture that couldn't answer me even if it wanted to.

I flipped it over, hoping for once that I'd missed something all those years ago. No name. No date. Nothing scrawled on the back except a small water stain that had probably been there since before I was even born, since before any of this started.

I told myself this was nothing. It was just a coincidence linked to a shipment that had gone wrong, or a loose thread from a trade deal that Gideon would unravel by morning once he leaned on the right people down at the docks. That was all it was.

I was only interested because someone had paid extra money to guarantee this particular woman ended up on my pack, wearing a necklace that looked similar to my late mother’s, like she'd been placed there on purpose by somebody who knew exactly what they were doing.

But there was a difference between being curious about a puzzle and letting myself care about the person caught up in the middle of it. I'd spent years building walls strong enough that nothing ever got through them, not grief, guilt, or the Council's endless accusations. And I wasn't about to let those walls crack now just because a stranger showed up half starved, pregnant, and wearing a necklace I happened to recognize from a photo I hadn't looked at in over a decade.

I decided I'd say nothing to her yet until I had more than a hunch and an old picture with no name written anywhere on it. She didn't need a half formed theory from a man she'd known for less than a day.

I thought about the way she'd looked at the docks, barely able to lift her head. I thought about the doctor's report already sitting on my desk, confirming what I'd already suspected the moment I lifted her into my arms.

She was pregnant and alone, and she’d been sent here on purpose by someone who'd paid good money to make absolutely sure of it.

I turned the photograph over and over between my fingers for a little while, and just as I was about to slide it back beneath the letters where it had lived for a very long time, someone knocked urgently on the study door.

"Come in," I said, standing and moving around the desk toward the door.

The guard who pushed the door open was one of the younger ones, and he was out of breath like he'd run the entire way here without stopping even once.

"Alpha," he said, chest heaving. "It's the girl. She's awake."

"And?" I asked, though something in my gut already told me I wasn't going to like whatever came out of his mouth next.

He hesitated just long enough that I felt my eyes narrow. "She's screaming, sir. Screaming for someone to tell her where her baby is."