Once Betrayed, Twice Shy

I need a plan

CASPIAN

The entire drive back to the palace passes in a blur I couldn’t fully account for even if my life depended on it, the road nothing more than a dark ribbon unraveling too slowly beneath tires I keep willing to move faster, my foot pressed down harder against the accelerator with every mile that refuses to disappear quickly enough behind us.

Marcus grips the door handle beside me, knuckles white, and I catch him glancing at the speedometer more than once, his jaw tightening like he wants to say something about the recklessness of driving this fast on roads this dark and unfamiliar.

“Caspian—” he starts, and I don’t even have to look at him to know what he’s about to say.

Whatever he sees when he finally does look at my face is enough to kill the sentence before it fully forms, the rest of his caution dying in his throat, and he simply turns back toward the windshield instead, tension radiating off him in waves that match my own, both of us understanding without needing to say it aloud that speed is the only thing that matters right now, consequences be damned.

By the time the palace gates finally come into view, I’m already killing the engine before the car has fully stopped, throwing the door open and moving before Marcus or Soren can catch up, my boots hitting gravel hard enough to send small stones scattering in every direction.

The moment I clear the front courtyard, I see it—overturned furniture visible through shattered windows, splintered wood scattered across the entrance where a door has clearly been forced from its hinges, the unmistakable evidence of violence having swept through these halls while I sat miles away, arguing over shipment routes that were never real.

My chest tightens with a fear so absolute it nearly buckles my knees beneath me.

I was right. I had to be right, though some desperate, foolish part of me had prayed the entire drive back that I was wrong, that my instincts had simply overreacted, that I’d find her exactly where I left her, safe and irritated and demanding to know why I’d come charging back looking like I’d walked through hell to get here.

How could I have been so careless. So blind.

Every enemy I’ve made across centuries of ruling this territory with an iron grip would give anything to get their hands on the one thing capable of ending me for good, and I knew that, I’ve always known that, and yet I left her here regardless, unprotected, vulnerable, while I sat at a table negotiating over nothing at all.

She’s my one weakness, as far as anyone paying close enough attention could tell.

And for centuries, that vulnerability didn’t exist, because there was no one to exploit it—not until she walked into my territory and turned every carefully constructed piece of my existence upside down in the span of a single night.

I take the stairs two at a time, ignoring the pain still radiating along my ribs from the fight at the cabin, ignoring everything except the singular, desperate need to reach her room and prove to myself that this fear clawing through my chest is nothing more than baseless panic.

But when I reach the door, it’s already kicked in, hanging useless on one splintered hinge, and the room beyond it is empty.

Her scent still lingers in the air, faint but unmistakable, and it takes everything in me, every last scrap of discipline I’ve built across centuries of learning to control the wolf clawing beneath my skin, not to lose myself entirely right here in this doorway.

I press one hand against the frame, forcing air into lungs that suddenly refuse to expand properly, and tell myself, with a conviction I don’t fully believe, that this violent, desperate reaction has everything to do with needing her alive for the curse and absolutely nothing to do with the terror currently threatening to swallow me whole at the thought of losing her.

I don’t examine that lie too closely. I don’t have time to.

“Search every room,” I bark at the guards who’ve gathered nervously near the doorway, my voice raw with a fury that makes more than one of them flinch. “Every corridor, every closet, every inch of this palace and the grounds surrounding it. I want to know exactly how many attackers came through here and which direction they went.”

They scatter immediately, grateful for any excuse to escape my presence, and I stand alone in the wreckage of her room, forcing my mind to work through the panic clawing at the edges of my composure.

Word of her existence has undoubtedly spread by now—there’s no containing something like that, not after months of her presence here, not after the mark I placed on her in front of the entire pack.

I’ve made enemies across centuries of ruling this territory, more than I could easily count, and every single one of them would leap at the chance to get their hands on the one person capable of finally ending me.

I need her back. Fast.

Before whoever took her decides she’s more valuable dead than alive.

Soren finds me there several minutes later, breathless from running, his expression grim in a way that makes my stomach drop even further than I thought possible.

“Alpha,” he says, “one of the patrol guards heard something at a bar near the border. Rumors about an up-and-comer, someone who’s been bragging for weeks about plans to take over your territory.”

“A name,” I demand. “Give me a name.”

“Nothing concrete yet,” Soren admits. “Just rumors. Whispers. No one’s willing to say more than that.”

Fury and helplessness twist together in my chest, an unbearable combination I haven’t felt in longer than I can remember, and for a moment I can’t do anything except stand there, breathing hard, fighting the overwhelming urge to tear something apart with my bare hands simply to release some fraction of the pressure building beneath my skin.

“Leave me,” I say finally, my voice low and rough. “All of you. I need to think.”

Soren hesitates, clearly wanting to argue, but something in my expression must convince him otherwise, because he simply nods and retreats, closing what remains of the broken door behind him as best he can.

Alone now, surrounded by the wreckage of a room that still smells like her, I press both hands against the wall and force myself to breathe, forcing the panic back down far enough to let something resembling strategy take its place.

I need a plan.