PAST COMES KNOCKING

Alaric's POV

I rubbed my chest as if it could erase the sound of Tyra’s scream that was still echoing in them. 

I could still feel the sensation that had slammed into me in the middle of dinner, between one bite and the next. It had been like someone had driven a blade straight through my sternum. 

I had never felt anything like it in my life, and I hoped to the Goddess I would never feel it again.

The sound of forks clattering onto a plate made me look up, and I saw Osric had gone white at exactly the same moment. 

Neither of us had said a word. We had simply looked at each other, and then we were running.

I didn't even remember crossing the lawn or clearing the boundary wall. 

All I remembered was the pull, that terrible, burning thread wrapped around my heart and yanking me through the trees toward her, and the way my wolf had torn halfway out of my skin before I even knew I had let him loose. 

And when I had seen her caught in that silver net with the masked man holding a blade over her, Goddess…

For years, I had told myself that keeping my distance would keep her safe. Had swallowed every word, turned my back every time she walked into a room, because I believed I was protecting her.

Tonight, it had nearly gotten her killed.

My arm throbbed where the cursed blade had sliced it, and the wound was healing far slower than it should have been. 

I welcomed the pain. It gave my brain something to focus on, and it kept my wolf from going feral.

I waited till my father and stepmother were in before closing the study door behind them. 

I turned to Anya before she even reached the chair she was headed for. 

"Is there something you want to tell us?" I asked, my voice low and sharp.

She stopped and slowly folded her hands in front of her like a woman bracing for a blow.

"About what?" she replied quietly.

"Don't do that," I snapped, making her flinch. "Don't stand there and pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. Those men came directly for Tyra.”

“Alaric, we can’t be sure—”

“No,” I cut in. “They didn't stumble on her by accident, and they weren't some rival pack looking for a fight. They were trained, they were prepared, and they were very, very dangerous. They had a silver trap laid in our own woods, and they knew exactly where she would walk."

The door opened behind, and Osric slipped inside. 

He closed it quietly and leaned against it with his arms folded, his face grim. 

Through the bond, I could feel his wolf was still as restless as mine.

"How is she?" I asked him without turning around.

"She's shaken," he replied quietly, "but she's in her room."

I nodded once and turned back to Anya. 

"And when Osric pulled the mask off one of them," I went on, "the man died in his arms before he could say a single word. It was a binding curse. Do you know how much power it takes to put a curse like that on a man, Anya? Do you know what kind of people would bother?"

Her lips parted, but nothing came out.

"Alaric," my father said in a warning tone, stepping closer. "Watch how you speak to her."

"With respect, Father,” I said, my voice tight. “I'm done watching how I speak.” 

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the folded cream paper. It was creased now and smeared with a thumbprint of my own blood, but the words were still perfectly legible. 

"Someone left this at the gate for Tyra yesterday afternoon," I hissed, setting it on the desk in front of them. "Read it."

Anya picked it up with trembling fingers. Her eyes moved across it, and every drop of color drained from her face.

“You should have stayed away. Remember what happened to your father.” My father read out loud. “The same eyes are still watching.”

He looked up at me. “What the hell is this?”

"It smells of iron and ash," I said quietly. "I smelled the exact same thing in the woods the night Tyra collapsed.”

“And that was the same thing I smelled all over the men who tried to kill her tonight," Osric added, his voice strained. 

My jaw tightened. "And when I checked the dead one's body, his sleeve had ridden up, and there was a symbol tattooed on the inside of his arm."

"What symbol?" my father asked sharply.

"The one Tyra used to draw when she first came to live with us," I replied, not taking my eyes off Anya. "She drew it over and over, on her schoolbooks, on her bedroom walls, and on the backs of her hands in ink.”

Osric’s head snapped towards me. “She used to?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “Remember the moon with the crack running down the middle? That one.”

Anya let out a small, broken whimper and pressed her hand hard over her mouth to stifle it. 

The note slipped from her fingers and drifted onto the desk. 

Her eyes went wide and glassy with a horror so raw that, for a moment, I forgot I was angry with her.

My father immediately moved to her side and caught her elbow as her knees could give way. 

His  expression shifted from confusion to dread as he searched her face. 

"An," he said gently, his voice low. "Sweetheart, what is it? What does that symbol mean?"

She swallowed hard, her throat working before any sound came out.

"I… it's," she stammered, then stopped, her whole body shaking. 

She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, they were teary. "It's the symbol that was on the men who attacked the ice cream shop," she whispered. "The day her father was killed."

The study went completely silent.

I heard Osric's sharp intake of breath behind me. I heard my father's heartbeat stumble. 

My pulse roared in my ears as twenty years of half-forgotten whispers suddenly made sense.

Tyra had been five years old when she watched her father die. 

She had been fifteen when she walked into this house, silent and haunted, drawing cracked moons on every surface she could find while the adults told each other it was just grief.

And all this time, the people who had carved that mark into her nightmares had been out there, watching her and waiting patiently for her to come home.