Chapter 8

Chapter Eight: The Name Behind the Attack

The unconscious intruder woke up strapped to a chair in the estate's basement an hour later, and refused to say a single word for the first twenty minutes of questioning.

Aurora stood behind the two-way glass with Noah, watching Kieran and Damon work the room with a patience that felt anything but reassuring.

"He's not talking," Noah said, arms crossed tightly over his chest.

"He will," Aurora said.

"You sound very sure of that."

"I've watched Kieran train for eleven years. I know what patience looks like right before it runs out."

As if summoned by her words, Kieran leaned down close to the man's ear and said something too quiet for the glass to carry. Whatever it was worked. The man's expression cracked, fear breaking through whatever bravado had held him together until now.

"He's a mercenary," Damon reported when he finally stepped out of the room twenty minutes later, wiping blood from his knuckles that wasn't his own. "Hired through three different intermediaries, so he doesn't know who's actually paying him. But he confirmed the target. It was never the stone."

"Then what was it?" Aurora asked.

Damon's eyes met hers, grim and steady. "You. The stone was a bonus if they could grab it. You were always the primary objective."

The words settled over her like ice water. "Why me? What do they even want with me?"

"He didn't know that either," Damon said. "But he gave us a name. The person who hired the intermediary chain."

"Who?" Noah demanded.

Damon hesitated just long enough that Aurora's stomach dropped before he even said it.

"Councilwoman Reyes."

The room went silent.

"The same councilwoman who was standing in our hall three days ago, giving Aurora thirty days to choose one of us," Noah said slowly, "is the same person paying mercenaries to kidnap my sister?"

"That's what he claims," Damon said. "Whether it's true is another matter. Mercenaries lie. Intermediaries lie. But it's the only lead we've got right now, and it fits."

"Fits what?" Aurora asked.

"The council has known something about your bloodline from the beginning," Damon said. "The sealed records. The way Reyes reacted when you pushed her for answers. If she's the one behind this, it means the council itself might be working against you, not just enforcing an old law you happened to break."

Luca appeared at the top of the basement stairs, breathless, laptop tucked under one arm. "You need to see this. Now."

They followed him up to the study, where he pulled up a series of documents on the screen, old and faded, clearly photographed rather than scanned.

"I finally cracked the archive fragment that mentioned the vessel and key," Luca said. "It's part of a larger prophecy record. About the royal bloodline. About what happens when the vessel is opened by the true heir."

"And?" Aurora pressed.

Luca's expression was tight. "It says the awakening will draw both allies and enemies from across the kingdom, because whoever controls the heir controls the ancient army sealed alongside the bloodline. An army capable of ending wars. Or starting them."

"So people don't just want me dead," Aurora said slowly. "They want me controlled."

"Some do," Luca said. "Others might genuinely want you dead, to prevent the army from ever waking at all. And based on what our mercenary friend downstairs said, it sounds like at least one council member falls into the second category."

Aurora sank into a chair, the weight of everything pressing down harder than it had in days. "So I'm not just fighting for the right to choose who I love anymore. I'm fighting an actual war I didn't know existed, against people I trusted to protect me."

"You're not fighting alone," Ryder said quietly from the doorway, arriving just in time to catch the last of the conversation. His leg was bandaged now, but his eyes were sharp, serious in a way that rarely showed on his face. "Whatever this is, whoever's behind it, we're not letting anything happen to you."

"That's exactly what worries me," Aurora said. "Five men already facing execution for loving me. Now add a council conspiracy and an ancient army into the mix. How is any of you supposed to survive this?"

Nobody answered right away.

Then Kieran, standing silently near the window the entire time, finally spoke, his voice low and absolutely certain.

"We survive it the same way we've survived everything else. Together. Whatever it costs."

Before anyone could respond, Luca's laptop chimed sharply with an incoming alert, an automated flag he'd set up days earlier for any mention of the sealed archive terms across pack networks.

He opened it, scanned the message, and went pale.

"What?" Damon asked immediately.

Luca turned the screen around slowly, revealing a single encrypted message that had just been broadcast to every pack council across the kingdom, timestamped less than five minutes ago.

*The royal bloodline has awakened. The Hale girl carries it. Bring her in, by whatever means necessary.*

Signed, unmistakably, by Councilwoman Reyes herself.