Zane's POVThe scout's message was five words.Garrett is at the gate.Not the eastern gate where he'd disappeared from eleven days ago. The main gate. The front entrance, facing the pack square, where visitors presented themselves formally and guards processed arrivals in full view of anyone standing in the courtyard.He'd walked up to the front door.I stood in Darian's secondary chamber holding the message parchment and felt the specific cold clarity of a situation revealing its own shape. Men who ran because they were afraid didn't come back to the front gate. Men who ran because they'd been given instructions and completed them did.Garrett hadn't fled. He'd been sent somewhere and now he'd returned, which meant whatever he'd gone to do was finished, and whoever had sent him either wanted him back inside our walls or had discarded him in a way that pointed him back here.Neither option was comfortable."Bring him in," I told the scout. "Hold him in the eastern receiving room. Nob
Last Updated : 2026-07-02 Read more