Alle Kapitel von THE ALPHA WHO SCENTED MY SECRET: Kapitel 1 – Kapitel 8

Wren's POVDinner is supposed to be simple. Serve, refill, disappear into the wall like the furniture. I've had years of practice at disappearing, and for the first hour it works exactly the way it's supposed to.Then Alpha Vane sets his glass down and asks a question that isn't on the script anyone gave me."Who poured this?"Callum blinks, caught mid-sentence about timber allocations. "Excuse me?""The wine." Rhydian doesn't look away from his glass. "Who poured it?"I'm three feet behind him with the bottle still in my hand, and every adult at that table turns to look at me at once, which is exactly the opposite of what five years of training has prepared me for."I did," I say, because lying would be stupid and slower."Come here."It's not rude, the way he says it. It's just certain, the way you'd say it to someone whose answer you already expect. I look at Callum first, out of habit more than permission, and he gives the smallest nod, the kind that means behave, don't embarrass

Wren's POVCallum doesn't yell. He never yells. That's almost the worst part, because I've learned that quiet is when he's most dangerous, and tonight he's quieter than I've heard him in years."Pack your things," he says, once the Nightfall delegation has gone to their guest quarters for the night and it's just the two of us in the study, the fire burned down to embers behind him. "You leave at dawn.""I heard.""Do you understand what you just cost me?"I don't answer right away, because I genuinely don't know what the right answer is, the one that won't make this worse. "I didn't do anything," I finally say. "I poured wine.""You didn't do anything." He laughs, short and humorless, and pours himself a drink he doesn't need. "Five years, Wren. Five years of me managing this, keeping you contained, keeping the elders from asking questions they don't need answers to, and one dinner with the wrong Alpha and it's all just handed away like it never mattered.""Managing me," I repeat. "Is

Rhydian's POVI'm still fielding questions about her when Corwin finds me, which tells you everything about how the last few hours have gone."So she's just going to live here," Adrian says, from the far end of the council table, arms folded, that particular tone in his voice that always sounds like a question and never is. My cousin has a gift for making everything sound like an accusation wrapped in polite curiosity. "A stranger, straight out of a rival pack, given quarters in this house, on the strength of what, exactly? A hunch?""On the strength of a contract clause I'm well within my rights to negotiate," I say, not looking up from the paperwork in front of me. "Same as the water access, same as the timber terms. It's done, Adrian. There's nothing here for the council to weigh in on.""There's plenty for the council to weigh in on when the Alpha brings home an unknown quantity from a pack we've spent three generations not trusting." He leans back, and I can feel Sable's brother,

Wren's POVI don't sleep much that first night either, though it's a different kind of sleeplessness than the one I had back in Ashgrove. Back there, sleep stayed away because I was scared of what the next day would take from me. Here, it stays away because my head is too full of Corwin's voice saying to make you forget, over and over, a sentence with no clean edges I can find to stop turning it over.The room they've given me doesn't help. It's bigger than anything I've slept in for five years, a real bed instead of a cot, a window that looks out over the valley instead of a wall, and none of it feels like mine yet. I keep waiting for someone to walk in and tell me there's been a mistake, that I'm meant to be down the hall in whatever room they keep for staff, not here, not somewhere with a view and a lock on the inside instead of the outside.I test the lock twice before I let myself believe it, running my thumb over the little brass latch like it might disappear if I look away. It