All Chapters of Married To My Enemy's Pack : Chapter 101 - Chapter 108

I sat on the edge of my bed with the sealed envelope in my lap for a long time. The lamp hummed faintly. The wax crescent caught the light each time I turned the paper over, small and dark and deliberate."You could just burn it," I said aloud to the empty room. "And nobody would ever know," but that was the problem. A thing like this does not disappear when you refuse to read it. It only waited.I broke the seal. Inside was a single folded sheet, and the handwriting was the same slanted, elegant handwriting I had come to dread."Little moon, I hope the soup was warm. You have been brave, and bravery deserves a reward, so here is a kindness. Do not trust everyone who seems kind to you. And do not trust everyone who is cruel to you, either. Trust only the one who stays when it costs him something. You will know him when you see him."There was no name, and no threat. I read it three times, and each time it frightened me more, because it sounded like advice from someone who wanted me to

Ryder kept his palm over the lamp's dead wick for a full minute before he spoke. Nothing moved in the corridor. The only sound was my own breathing, too loud in the little room."Whoever lit it left," he said at last. "Through the window, or past us before we climbed. Either way, we're alone.""The window was latched from inside.""Then they left before it was latched, and shut the door afterwards." He relit the lamp with a match from his pocket. "A careful person, or a person who knew a second way out."I went back to the desk. The wet ink was drying at the end of the pen. I touched the ledger's edge and drew my hand away. "Do we take it?" I asked."If we take it, someone will know that we took it." Ryder paused. "And if we leave it, someone will know that we left it. It's like we're being asked a question, and we can't refuse to answer.""Then we choose what the answer looks like," I said."Meaning?" Ryder asked."I'll copy the page," I said, pulling a small notebook from my sleeve,

Cassius stayed on his knees in front of the open drawer for a long time, the loop of gray ribbon hanging from his fingers. I did not speak. Some silences belong to the person inside them."My father is dead," he said at last. "And that is a plain fact, because I stood at his grave.""I know.""Then the panel was opened by a man who learned of it some other way." He rose slowly and set the ribbon on the blotter. "Think, Helena, who could have watched me hide it?""Nobody, if you were alone," I said quietly."But I was never entirely alone. A house this size has eyes in the walls." He pressed two fingers to his forehead. "The day I closed that room, a man helped me carry my father's papers down. Two were the staff, and the family physician. And Logan, who had come to pay his respects."He said the name without weight, the way a man lists a name among others, and I kept my face still. The old woman's voice was in my head: do not flinch."The Elder was there," I said carefully."Yes, he w

Cassius arrived at the training room before either of us, standing near the wall of pads with his hands clasped behind his back like a man waiting outside a courtroom. Damian came in a minute later, dressed in his usual dark shirt, and stopped when he saw his father there."You asked for this meeting," Damian said. "I'd like to know why it needs a locked door.""Lock it," Cassius said quietly.Ryder turned the bolt. I stood beside the bench with the oilcloth bundle in my hands, my mouth dry. This was the moment I had promised, and now that it was here, every careful sentence I had practiced felt too small."Sit," Cassius told his son. "Please."Damian did not sit. Instead, he folded his arms. "Say it.""Helena came to me three days ago with questions about my father," Cassius began. "I answered what I could. And since then, we have found things that I should have found eighteen years ago, and I would prefer you to hear them from me rather than hearing them from a stranger.""What thin