Chapter 8

Veyra’s POV

Kael Veyr summoned me before noon again.

His message was brief, delivered by a guard who stood outside my door as though I might attempt to escape through the window.

The Alpha King requests your presence. The examination results are ready.

Requests. How generous of him.

I folded the note and slipped it into my pocket. After Seren’s threat and my mother’s latest attempt to remind me of my family obligations, I had little patience left for powerful people who believed they were entitled to my attention.

Unfortunately, Kael had something I needed. Information. And if I wanted to understand why an infected wolf had recognized something in me, I would have to endure another conversation with a man who looked at unanswered questions as personal insults. When I entered the examination room, Kael stood beside a table covered in reports. The healer who had examined the wolf was packing his instruments, his expression troubled.

Kael dismissed him with a nod.

Then he turned to me.

“You came.”

“Your guard made it sound as though refusing wasn’t an option.”

His expression remained unreadable. “Would you have preferred I send an invitation?”

“I would have preferred you ask instead of summon.”

“Fine.” He gestured toward the chair opposite him. “Will you sit?”

I remained standing.

“Will this be a conversation, or are you planning to interrogate me again?”

His jaw tightened slightly.

“You seem determined to make everything difficult.”

“Only when someone makes the mistake of assuming I will obey.”

For a moment, neither of us spoke. His gaze moved over my face as though he were searching for the woman he had expected to meet and finding someone else entirely. Perhaps that was exactly what troubled him. I had no intention of helping him understand me.

“Very well,” he said. “The examination revealed something unusual. The infected wolf’s condition changed when you approached it. Its remaining wolf signature was almost nonexistent, yet it reacted to your presence.”

“I remember.”

“Then explain why.”

“If I knew, I would tell you.”

“Would you?”

The question landed harder than it should have.

I thought of Seren’s message waiting on my table. I know about the baby, Veyra. And this time, I won’t let you keep it.

I thought of my mother forwarding her suspicions to the very person who had threatened my child.

People rarely need the whole truth to hurt you. Sometimes a single piece was enough.

“I don’t owe you every private detail of my life simply because you’re the Alpha King,” I said. “Whatever happened to that wolf doesn’t give you ownership of me.”

Kael’s eyes hardened.

“I have no interest in owning you.”

“Then stop speaking as though I belong to your investigation.”

“You walked into my territory carrying warnings about a crisis you refuse to explain. Now an infected creature behaves abnormally around you, and you expect me to ignore the connection?”

“No. I expect you to investigate it without deciding that I am responsible for explaining everything you don’t understand.”

He leaned forward, placing both hands on the table.

“My responsibility is to the northern packs. If you know something that could affect their survival, withholding it is not a private matter.”

There it was. The ruler beneath the man. Kael might be curious about me. Whatever existed between us might pull at him as insistently as it pulled at me. But when his territory was threatened, he would pursue answers whether I liked it or not.

I needed to remember that.

An ally could still become dangerous when our interests stopped aligning.

“The northern packs will face food shortages,” I said.

His expression changed.

Not much, but enough.

“Explain.”

“Supplies will stop arriving where they’re needed. Some storehouses will have enough food while neighboring territories struggle to feed their people. The communication networks will begin failing, and messages will be delayed or lost. By the time some packs realize how serious the situation has become, they will already be in trouble.”

Kael watched me without interrupting.

I forced myself to continue.

“The attacks will become more dangerous, too. You cannot assume that an infected wolf is harmless because it appears weak or confused. And you cannot assume that a territory is safe simply because the infection hasn’t reached it yet.”

His fingers curled against the edge of the table.

“You speak as though these things have already happened.”

My heartbeat stumbled.

For one terrible second, the examination room disappeared. I was back in the shelter, listening to hungry people argue over what little remained. I remembered the smell of blood, the desperation in Draven’s voice, and Seren’s face as she watched my life become a solution to their suffering.

I had already seen what happened when people waited too long to prepare.

I had already paid for their disbelief with my life.

But Kael couldn’t know that.

“I have reasons to be concerned,” I replied.

“That isn’t an explanation.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting.”

His eyes narrowed. “How do you know about the communication failures? The supply disruptions? The attacks?”

I looked away briefly, trying to steady my breathing. Because I had watched the world fall apart. Because I remembered every warning that had been ignored and every person who had paid for it.

Because I could still hear the people who had begged for help when there was nothing left to give them.

“I cannot explain it in a way you would accept,” I said.

“You don’t know what I would accept.”

“No. But I know what happens when people discover something they cannot control.”

His expression grew colder.

“Is that what you think I’m trying to do? Control you?”

“I think you’re a ruler who has discovered something unusual and wants to understand whether it can be useful to him.”

“And if it could save lives?”

The question silenced me. I hated that he had found the one argument I couldn’t dismiss easily.

I wanted the northern packs to survive. I wanted fewer people to suffer what I had suffered. If Kael could prepare his territory before the worst came, then my warnings might save thousands.

But I could not protect strangers by handing a powerful man every secret I possessed and trusting him to use them wisely.

Not again.

“I’ve given you warnings that could help your people,” I said. “Prepare your stores. Review your communication systems. Take every early infection seriously. You don’t need to know everything about me to act on those instructions.”

“And I don’t need to accept your claims without evidence.”

“Then don’t. Investigate them.”

“You make that sound simple.”

“It isn’t.”

My voice cracked on the last word. I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t take it back. Kael noticed. His gaze lingered on my face, and for a moment, the tension between us shifted into something more difficult to name.

The strange pull I had felt since meeting him stirred beneath my skin. It made me painfully aware of how close he stood, of the quiet intensity in his eyes.

I resented it. I couldn’t afford to let an unexplained connection make decisions for me. I had trusted the wrong people once because I believed love meant safety.

I would not repeat that mistake because my wolf—or whatever remained of the bond between us—recognized something in him.

Kael straightened.

“You may be underestimating the danger,” he said. “Whatever you believe you know, you haven’t seen what an uncontrolled infection can do to an entire pack.”

My fingers curled. He thought I was frightened because I didn’t understand. He thought I was withholding information because I wanted leverage. He had no idea that I had already watched people I loved become monsters while insisting they were only trying to survive.

“Powerful men often underestimate people they cannot control,” I replied.

His expression went still. For several seconds, he said nothing. Then he reached for a report lying beneath the others and placed it in front of me.

“I received another report this morning.”

My attention dropped to the paper.

“Another infected wolf?”

“Yes. It behaved abnormally, and the witnesses described a reaction that doesn’t match the incidents we’ve documented so far.”

A chill crept down my spine.

“Where?”

Kael turned the report toward me. I recognized the territory immediately. It was connected to my family. My mouth went dry. He watched my face as I read the location a second time.

“You know it,” he said.

I forced myself to look up. “I know where it is.”

“And you understand why that concerns me.”

I said nothing.

Seren had already discovered my pregnancy. Someone had made inquiries about my medical visit. My mother now believed I was hiding something serious.

And an infected wolf had behaved strangely near a territory connected to the Nightingales.

The pieces were too close together to dismiss, but I didn’t know how they fit.

Kael stepped around the table, his voice lowering.

“Veyra, I need you to answer one question honestly.”

I met his gaze, my pulse hammering.

“Is your family involved in something you haven’t told me about?”

I wanted to say no. I wanted to protect the little that remained of my family’s secrets, if only because I didn’t yet understand what they were hiding.

But when I looked at the report again, one thought rose above all the others.

What if my family wasn’t simply discovering the coming catastrophe? What if they had already found something they intended to use?