Repossessed: 30 Days to Reclaim His Pack

The Sub-Archive

Selene found Kane still in the study an hour after the Castellans' car left the drive.

"There's a sub-archive," she said. "Below the vault. Older filings, blood-locked."

"I know it exists. I've never had reason to open it."

"You do now." She held up the filing. "If there's a third signature, it has to be recorded somewhere. Vault records don't go back before your father's tenure. The sub-archive might."

Kane was already moving.

"Blood-locked means what, exactly?"

"Alpha blood and Envoy's mark, both, at the same time." She followed him down the stairs. "Neither works alone. It's built so no single person can open it."

"Convenient, considering everything else that's happened in that vault."

"That's what I thought too."

The sub-archive door was iron, older than the manor itself, set with two matching locks — one shaped like a claw print, one shaped like the Elders' seal.

Kane pressed his palm to the claw mark. Selene pressed hers to the seal.

The door groaned open on hinges that hadn't moved in decades.

Inside: shelves stacked floor to ceiling, ledgers instead of folders, dust thick enough to taste.

"This could take all night," Kane said.

"We don't have all night. We have twenty-eight days, and I'd rather not waste one of them in here." Selene pulled the first ledger from the shelf marked with the year of the rejection. "Start at the back. Work forward."

They worked in silence for the better part of an hour, dust and old ink and the occasional cough.

Selene found it first.

"Kane."

He closed the distance fast enough to knock a stack of ledgers sideways.

She held the page up to the lamp.

A record, dated — not the night of the rejection. Four days before it. Before his father had even called him into that room.

Filing pre-registered under Elder authorization. Subject: Alpha Kane Dravos. Status: pending activation.

The color dropped out of Kane's face.

"That's not possible. My father hadn't even told me about the marriage arrangement four days before."

"Then someone knew you were going to reject her before you did." Selene's voice had gone quiet, careful, like the words might break something if she said them too loud. "This wasn't your father's plan, Kane. It was never your father's plan. He was told what to say."

"By who." It wasn't a question anymore. It was a demand aimed at the empty room, like the answer might be hiding on a shelf.

Selene checked the signature line at the bottom of the record.

Not a name. A title, and a stamp.

Office of Elder Cassian Roe.

She sat down hard on the nearest crate.

"He didn't just cover this up," she said. "He built it. Three years ago, before your father ever said a word to you, Roe already had this filing sitting ready to activate."

"Why."

"I don't know yet." She looked up at him. "But whatever it is, it's bigger than a rejected mate and a stolen territory."

Kane crouched in front of her, close enough that the mark on her collarbone gave its familiar warning flare.

"I need you to hear something," he said. "And I need you to actually believe it this time."

"Kane—"

"I never wanted you gone." His voice was rough, stripped of the calculation he'd carried in the Great Hall. "Not for one day of these three years. Whatever he did to make that night happen — it was never me choosing to let you go."

Selene's fingers stopped moving on the ledger, the page suddenly heavy under them.

"I still have twenty-eight days to prove that," she said.

"I don't care about the Elders right now."

"You have to. It's the only thing standing between you and losing everything."

"Not the only thing." His eyes didn't leave hers. "There's — you. Too."

Somewhere above them, a floorboard creaked. Then another. Footsteps, slow and deliberate, crossing the study directly overhead.

Neither of them moved.

The sub-archive door — the one that needed two people to open — swung shut on its own, and the lock clicked into place from the outside.