Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 1 - Chapitre 9

I stood still. That was my choice in those quick three seconds, just after she stepped out of the car and her gaze met mine across the street. I refused to move, refused to step back, refused to let her see any reaction. I wasn’t giving her the satisfaction she probably wanted.She looked just the same as she did three years ago. That annoyed me more than I care to admit. She actually seemed better—hair still dark and flawless, posture relaxed, that unapologetic kind of beauty you can’t ignore.She crossed the street like she had nowhere else to be. Marcus, beside me, had gone rigid. I didn’t have to look to know. His entire body reacted the instant he saw her. Whatever he learned two weeks ago, whatever made him drive eight hours to my door, it was linked to her.She stopped only a few feet from me and smiled. “Aria Sutton,” she said. “I’ve been hoping we’d meet properly.”“We have met,” I replied.She kept smiling. “Briefly. And under unfortunate circumstances.” She glanced at the f

The drive to Darkwood dragged on for four hours. Marcus took the wheel. I sat next to him with my bag shoved between my feet, phone in hand, window cracked open just enough for a bit of air. I needed to feel it—something to keep me from sinking. I hadn’t slept the night before, and my pre-dawn coffee was doing nothing except reminding me how tired I was.We barely spoke for the first two hours. That was fine by me. Marcus wasn’t the type to chatter for the sake of filling silence, and I needed the quiet. I wanted a stretch of time to be nothing before I had to start pretending to be anything else.So I stared out at the passing landscape. Neutral territory’s got a looseness to it; everything feels unclaimed, like the land itself finally got to exhale. But edge past it, closer to Darkwood, and things tighten up fast. Pack land is different. There’s this sense of structure that settles over everything—and the Alpha’s presence, heavy in the air, so obvious you feel it whether you want to

I spent the rest of the morning tucked away in the pack records room. It’s a small space off the main hallway—packed floor to ceiling with filing cabinets and old files, smelling like paper and that familiar dust from things nobody’s touched in ages. I’d been in here plenty of times before, back when I was Luna. Usually, it was all admin stuff—checking over finances, membership lists, the paperwork that keeps a pack running. But I never thought I’d sit in here looking for proof that someone had been plotting against me for four years. I started with the visitor logs. Every pack keeps these—it’s standard security, lists every wolf who comes onto the territory, where they came from, why they showed up, how long they stayed. Most Alphas treat them like a checkbox. I never did. I always knew the most dangerous threats don’t announce themselves. Selene’s first recorded visit to Darkwood? Three years and eight months ago. Not three years—three years and eight months. That’s eight months

I didn’t find anything else in the records that night. It wasn’t because there was nothing left to find. Somebody had beaten me to it.I realized it at half past nine. I opened the drawer where the correspondence files from four years ago should’ve been. Empty. Not even a scrap left behind, not a single file shoved out of place or misfiled. Just the neat hanging folders, labels in careful handwriting from whoever kept the records before me, but every sheet inside gone.I stood there, staring at the empty drawer for a long second. Then I checked the next drawer. Also empty. And the one below. Same. Three whole years’ worth of correspondence. Disappeared.I sat down in the records room chair, just looking at those empty drawers, thinking through the day. I’d been in the room since morning, but I’d stepped out twice—once to call Cassian in the hallway, once when I heard Selene’s voice and went to the door. Both times, I left the records room door unlocked.Somebody took three years’ reco