All Chapters of The Alpha's Enemy's Daughter : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The letter came at dawn.Alira was already awake when she heard the knock. Two sharp raps, then silence. She opened the door to find a young wolf standing there with a sealed envelope in his hand and the look of someone who had been told exactly where to deliver it and nothing else.He held it out without a word.She recognised the seal before she even took it. Dark red wax, pressed with the crest of Oakshade. Her father's mark.She took it. The wolf left.She closed the door and stood in the middle of her room for a moment, just holding it. Then she broke the seal and read.It was short. She had received three letters from her father in her entire life. Each one shorter than the last. He was not a man who believed words were for anything other than instruction. Sentiment, in Roric Vael's world, was a weakness you kept behind closed doors.You will send word of the eastern border patrol schedule. Times, rotations, numbers. Do this within the fortnight. You know what happens if you do

The morning felt wrong before she even left her room. She couldn't explain it. Just a heaviness sitting in her chest that had nothing to do with how little she had slept. She dressed anyway, pinned her hair up, and walked to the infirmary. She turned the corner and stopped.There were wolves gathered outside the door. Too many, too still, with the particular silence of people standing around something that couldn't be undone. They saw her, and the silence changed texture, became something with edges.She walked forward anyway.Wren was just inside. She came out when she saw Alira, and her eyes were red at the rims, which Alira had never seen before, not once."Wren," Alira said carefully. "What happened?"Wren looked at her for a moment that lasted too long."Cael," she said quietly. "He was found this morning." She stopped. "He's gone."Alira went very still. “How is that possible? He responded to my treatment yesterday.”It wasn't sparring. There were three of them, his words echoed

The meeting room felt smaller than it was with twelve wolves around a long table, and the kind of silence that only existed when everyone had something to say and was waiting for permission to say it. Lucien sat at the head, his face giving nothing away.Draven sat to his left and Soren to his right. Brix was at the far end, eyes darting from one wolf to the other.Elder Caius spoke first.He was the oldest adviser in Ashveil, grey-haired and sharp-eyed, with the confidence of someone who had outlived enough crises to believe he had seen everything worth seeing."The girl," he said simply. Like that was enough."What about her, Caius?" Luciena asked, eyes settling on the Elder.Caius looked at him. "Alira Vael," he said, with the faint emphasis of a man making a concession he didn't think was necessary. "She was the last person to speak with him before his death." He paused.“Your point is?” Lucien asked.Caius’s jaw clenched. "She is Roric Vael's blood. I should not have to connect

Alira did not bring a candle, not because she was hiding, but because she had stopped caring whether anyone saw her.Cael was dead, and the pack had already decided what they thought of her, and somewhere in this pack, someone was letting them think it, feeding the silence, shaping it, and making sure suspicion landed on the only person here with no history and no allies. Alira had spent days being careful and quiet, being the kind of woman who waited in her room and hoped that the truth would find her on its own.But she was done with that.The east corridor was a fifteen-minute walk from her room if she moved slowly. She moved slowly, but not from hesitation. She was paying attention now in a way she hadn't the first time she came here.Tonight, she was following a feeling, and the feeling was older and more reliable than any noise. It was the same instinct that had made her good at healing before anyone taught her the formal methods. The knowledge that something was wrong in a place

The supervision turned out to be Soren himself.Draven had offered. Brix had offered. Wren had pointed out, very reasonably, that she was already in the infirmary and therefore the most logical choice. Soren overruled all of them with the quiet authority of someone who had decided this was his responsibility and was not interested in sharing it.So there he was, arms crossed, leaning against the wall like he had been planted there, watching Alira work.She had been at the bench for an hour. The compound from the cup was small in quantity, and she was being careful, which meant being slow. She could tell it was irritating him. She did not speed up on his account."You are very calm," Soren said, after a long silence, "for someone in your position.""My position," Alira replied, without looking up, "is at a workbench, identifying a compound that will help find who killed two members of this pack. Calm seems appropriate.""Most people in your position would be trying harder to look innoc