Marked By My Enemy Alpha

Episode12

Annalise

Hunter sat there for what felt like an eternity, just taking in my words. The box containing the necklace remained between us on the desk, almost like a silent witness to our conversation.

“Can you say that again?” he finally asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

“I don’t believe my father killed your parents,” I repeated, steadying myself. “Elias and Rosalind feel the same way. They found a necklace at the scene. Silver, with a mark that no one recognized. It wasn’t from Crest haven, and it wasn’t yours. It belonged to someone else.” I held his gaze firmly. “There were no scent trails from the pack house that night, and no witnesses confirmed seeing my father’s warriors. Everyone just assumed it was us because the timing was convenient and Corwin needed a scapegoat for his son’s death.”

Hunter’s face remained impassive, but I could see a shift behind his eyes…a careful, controlled stillness that I was starting to recognize as his way of bracing himself against something that could break him apart.

“Thirteen years,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Thirteen years, and you’re telling me I built everything on a story an old man needed to cling to.”

“I’m sharing what Elias and Rosalind believe,” I clarified softly. “I don’t have solid proof, and neither do they. Just a gut feeling that never quite added up, along with a necklace that’s never been explained.”

He reached for the box, opening it slowly, and lifted the necklace with a tenderness that caught me off guard, turning it over in his hands as if it were something both precious and painful.

“I searched for this mark for years,” he said, his voice heavy with memories. “After the funeral, I convinced myself it was just a trinket, nothing of importance. Eventually, I stopped looking. It was easier that way.”

“Easier to hate a name you already knew,” I replied, “than to pursue a truth that might not even be there.”

His eyes met mine, sharp and surprised, as if I had touched on something he hadn’t expected me to grasp.

“Yes,” he admitted quietly.

We fell into silence for a moment, the weight of thirteen years hanging heavily in the air. My parents lost their lives in a war fueled by uncertainty.

His parents? They were taken by someone who might still be out there, watching the chaos they orchestrated unfold just as they intended.

“There’s more,” I said, feeling the weight of the truth. He deserved to hear it all, even the part that sent shivers down my spine. “The missing omega. The one everyone avoids talking about.”

I could see a shift in his demeanor, a new layer of caution settling in.

“What about her?” he asked.

“I think she might have had some insight,” I replied. “About that night. Maybe that’s why she vanished.”

“Her name was Wren,” Hunter said softly, and it felt like that revelation took something from him. “She worked in the kitchens. We used to chat sometimes, before Camille made it clear she didn’t approve.

She mentioned a few things, bits and pieces, about a stranger she spotted near the pack house the week before my parents died. Someone who didn’t belong to either territory.” His jaw clenched. “I never followed up on it. I was too lost in my own sorrow to pay attention.”

“And then she disappeared.”

“She was sent away,” he replied, repeating what he’d said before, but this time his conviction wavered. “That’s what I was told.”

“Told by whom?”

His silence lingered a moment too long.

“By Camille,” he finally admitted.

The name dropped between us like a heavy stone.

“You never verified it yourself,” I said carefully. “You just took her word for it.”

“I had no reason to doubt her.”

“Now you have plenty of reasons.”

He didn’t argue. Instead, he stared at the necklace in his hand, flipping it over again, his face unreadable in the dim light of the study.

“I need to find her,” he said at last. “Wren. If she’s still alive, if she knows anything about that night—”

“You mentioned the east cellar,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. “The floorboard you told me not to ask about—”

Hunter’s head shot up, his expression a mix of surprise and urgency.

“What did you just say?”

I hesitated, suddenly feeling the weight of the note and the strand of hair like a secret I wasn’t quite ready to share. But there was no turning back now.

“I found a door in the east cellar,” I confessed. “It was locked, but it looks like it been opened recently. And there’s a note…left for me, telling me to check there. It says she isn’t gone.” I took a deep breath, my throat tight. “I think whoever’s been sending those notes knows exactly where Wren is.”

Before I could even finish my thought, Hunter was on his feet, the necklace forgotten on the desk, his focus sharpening into something intense and dangerous.

“Show me,” he demanded. “Right now.”

I stood up to follow him, my heart racing, but just as we reached the door, it swung open without a sound. Camille appeared in the doorway, her eyes darting between us, and my stomach dropped at the look on her face.

“Am I interrupting something?” she asked, her tone sweet but her gaze quickly landing on the open box and the necklace shimmering in the lamplight. The calm she had walked in with evaporated in an instant.

“You still have that,” she said, her voice suddenly tight, all traces of sweetness gone. “I thought you got rid of that ages ago.”

The room fell into a heavy silence.

Hunter’s eyes narrowed. “Why would you think I’d gotten rid of it, Camille? I never told you what it was.”

Camille’s face drained of color, revealing the first real crack in her usually composed demeanor, and for a brief moment, none of us moved at all.