Repossessed: 30 Days to Reclaim His Pack

What He Buried

Kane's hand hadn't stopped bleeding.

He wrapped it himself, alone, in the study that used to be his father's.

The cut wasn't the problem. The problem was thirty days, standing in his own hallway, unpacking a bag like she owned the place.

He found her there at dawn.

Selene had claimed the east guest room. Standard for a visiting Envoy, she said, when he asked why that one.

"Nothing about this is standard." He leaned in the doorway. "You know that."

"I know the law is clear." She didn't look up from the case she was unpacking. "That's all I need to know."

He watched her set out evidence forms in a neat row. Efficient. Cold.

Nothing like the woman who used to leave her boots in the middle of his floor.

"I need access to pack records," she said. "Correspondence, filings, anything from three years ago."

"Most of it's my father's."

"Your father's dead. You're Alpha." She finally looked at him. "That makes it yours to hand over."

Kane's jaw went hard.

"Some of it's sealed."

"Sealed doesn't mean protected from a Reckoning." She held his stare, unblinking. "It means I need a key."

He knew exactly which key she meant.

His father's private vault. Two floors down, behind a door that hadn't opened since the funeral.

"Give me the day," Kane said. "I'll have it pulled together by tonight."

"You have until noon." She went back to her forms. "The clock doesn't wait because it's inconvenient for you."

He left before he said something he couldn't take back.

The vault door groaned on its hinges for the first time in three years.

Dust. His father's handwriting on box after box.

Kane found the folder by memory — third shelf, back corner, the one his father had made him swear never to open.

He'd already broken that promise once. Three years ago, in this exact room, his father dying in the bed one floor up, telling him the marriage to Ivy's family was the only thing standing between the pack and a war neither side could win.

Reject her, his father had said. File the cause. I'll sign it before I go.

Kane had believed him.

The folder was empty.

He checked twice. Turned it upside down. Shook it like the pages would fall out of thin air.

Nothing.

The one piece of proof that his father had signed off, that proved Kane hadn't rejected Selene out of nothing — was gone.

His hand found the edge of the shelf and gripped hard enough to leave marks in the wood.

Someone had been in this vault.

He found Selene in the study exactly where he'd left her, and he didn't knock either.

"The filing's gone." His voice came out rougher than he meant it to. "The one that proves my father authorized the rejection. It's not there."

Selene set down her pen.

"Gone how?"

"Gone. Empty folder. Someone cleared it out." He crossed the room and planted both hands on her desk. "You think I'm lying."

"I think you have thirty days and no evidence." She kept her voice level, but her eyes had sharpened. "That's not the same thing as lying. Yet."

"Someone did this on purpose."

"Then someone had access to a vault that's supposed to only open for you." She stood, and for the first time since she'd walked into the Great Hall, something other than procedure crossed her face. "Who else has a key, Kane?"

He didn't answer fast enough.

Ivy.

Ivy had a key. Had always had a key, since the day his father gave her family the run of the house to broker the arrangement in the first place.

Selene watched the answer land on his face without him saying a word.

She was quiet a beat too long.

"That's what I thought."

The mark on her collarbone flared again — he saw her flinch, saw her press a hand flat against it like she could hold the burn in.

"That's happening more," Kane said. "Since last night."

"It's not your concern."

"It's exactly my concern." He stepped closer, close enough to see her breath catch. "It only does that around me. You know that as well as I do."

She didn't step back.

"The filing," she said, instead of answering. "Without it, I can't prove your cause. Which means in twenty-nine days, this pack is mine by default — whether either of us wants that or not."

"Then we find who took it."

"We?" The word came out sharper than she meant it to. "I'm the Envoy sent to judge you. There is no we."

It landed harder than she'd meant it to. She didn't take it back.

A knock cut through the room before he could answer.

Ivy stood in the doorway, composed, unreadable, a folded document already in her hand.

"I heard you were looking for something," Ivy said, and set it on the desk between them. "You should have asked me first."

Kane looked down.

It was the missing filing — except the signature at the bottom wasn't his father's.

It was his own.