THE CRIMSON HEIRESS

Chapter 5. Wrong Target

Charlie

Kain was leaning against the wall at the end of the corridor when I came out.

Arms crossed. That expression on his face meant he already knew something and was deciding how to say it. He’d had that expression since we were sixteen, and it had never once meant good news.

I walked past him.

“Charlie.”

“Not now.”

“You pulled Logan of the Black Moon Pack off a woman in her own room.”

I kept walking.

“That’s Alpha Marc’s son,” Kain said, falling into step beside me. “That’s a political problem before it’s anything else.”

“Logan made it a problem when he put his hand on her throat.”

“She’s not marked yet. Technically under pack law, she’s still…”

I stopped walking. Kain stopped too.

I turned and looked at him. Said nothing. Just looked.

The way my father taught me when words were too much and presence was enough.

Kain held it for three seconds.

Then he looked away first.

He always looked away first.

“Nobody goes near that corridor tonight,” I said.

“Understood.”

“Or any night.”

Silence.

“She’s yours,” he said.

Not a question.

“Get someone outside her door. Someone she won’t find intimidating.” I paused. “She’s had enough fear for one night.”

“And Logan?”

“He leaves Crimson Pack territory before sunrise.” I kept walking. “Make sure he understands that’s not a request.”

Kain nodded once. The kind of nod that meant it was already handled.

He never needed to be told twice.

He never needed reasons either.

Fourteen years of that. I’d stopped being grateful somewhere around year four and started expecting it.

He fell back as I kept walking.

Then his voice came again from behind me.

“Charlie.”

I stopped. Didn’t turn.

“She was shaking,” he said quietly. “When I passed the corridor earlier. Before you went in.”

I said nothing.

“And when you came out, she wasn’t.”

I started walking again.

That night, l didn’t sleep.

I sat by the window and looked out at the Crimson Pack grounds, thinking about nothing useful for a long time.

Then I thought about her.

The way she looked when I turned around after pulling Logan off her.

Hand on her own throat. Eyes still trying to focus.

Legs steadier than they had any right to be.

She was still standing.

That was the part I kept coming back to.

Not the fear. Fear was reasonable. Fear was what happened when a man you loved for two years put his hand on your throat at midnight in a locked room.

It was what lived underneath the fear.

Something that refused to go all the way down.

Something that looked out through her eyes even then and refused to be extinguished.

I had met Alpha daughters before. Trained ones.

The kind who performed strength so often it started looking real.

Liana wasn’t performing anything.

She was just there. Still there. Completely and furiously there.

After everything done to her in twenty-four hours, she hadn’t gone anywhere inside herself. She stayed.

My wolf stirred.

I shut the thought down before it formed.

He’d been loud enough since the corridor.

He didn’t need more from me tonight.

Kain came back at four in the morning.

One knock.

Then the door opened, because Kain didn’t wait for permission any more than he adjusted his pace for mine.

“Logan is gone,” he said. “He left twenty minutes ago with two of his father’s wolves. With no conversation. No message.”

“Good.”

“Alpha Dan wants a meeting in the morning. Before we leave for Midnight River.”

I looked at him.

“About what?”

“He didn’t say.” Kain paused. “But he looked like a man who realized something had changed and hadn’t decided yet whether to be afraid of it.”

“What else,” I said.

Because there was always something else with Kain at four in the morning.

He crossed the room and sat in the chair across from mine. Leaned forward. Elbows on his knees.

The posture he used when something needed to be said carefully.

“I’ve been asking questions,” he said. “Quietly. About Logan. About how this started.”

I waited.

“The bet was real,” Kain said. “Him and three others. Two years ago.”

“I know about the bet.”

“You don’t know who funded it. Do you?”

I looked at him.

Kain held my gaze.

“It wasn’t a dare between friends,” he said. “Someone put money behind it. Someone who wanted Logan inside her life specifically. Someone who needed eyes inside the Crimson Alpha’s household and couldn’t get them any other way.”

The room went quiet.

“How much?” I asked.

Kain told me. I sat with that for a moment.

That wasn’t dare money. It was operational money. The kind that came with a handler, a specific outcome, and regular reporting.

“Who?”

“Still working on it.” Kain’s jaw tightened. “But whoever it is has been inside the Crimson Pack’s business for two years through Logan. They know Alpha Dan’s movements. His alliances. His weaknesses.”

He paused.

“They know about Liana.”

Something cold moved through my chest.

“They know about the contract.”

“They knew before it was signed.”

I stood up. Crossed to the window.

Outside, the Crimson Pack grounds were dark and still.

Three doors down the corridor behind me, a girl who had survived today by sheer refusal was finally sleeping.

She didn’t know any of this.

She thought the worst thing that had happened to her was a man who dated her on a dare.

She didn’t know the dare was the least of it.

She didn’t know she’d spent two years being watched by someone who needed something from her. A man that had nothing to do with Logan, but had everything to do with what she carried in her bloodline.

Something she probably didn’t even know she had.

“Find the name,” I instructed.

“I will.”

“Kain.” My voice dropped. “Until you do, nobody finds out she’s my mate. Nobody outside this room.”

Kain went still.

“Charlie, if someone already has eyes inside this pack…”

“Then knowing she matters to me makes her a target.”

I turned around.

“She’s already in enough danger from things she doesn’t understand yet. I’m not adding myself to that list.”

He looked at me for a long moment.

“And when she finds out you knew and said nothing?”

“She’ll be angry,” I said. “I can survive her anger. I can’t survive her being used against me before she understands what she’s walking into.”

Kain nodded slowly.

He stood and moved toward the door.

Stopped with his hand on the frame.

“For what it’s worth,” he said quietly, “the way you moved when you heard her. Through that door.”

He paused.

“I’ve never seen you move like that for anything.”

I said nothing.

He left.

I stood at the window and looked out at the dark.

Thought about a girl who had spent two years trusting the wrong person and was going to wake up tomorrow having to decide whether to trust someone new.

She was going to say no. I already knew that.

She was going to hold me at arm’s length the way she held everyone, and I was going to let her.

Because she had earned that distance. Because I was not Logan.

I was not going to take what wasn’t freely given.

But I was also not going to let whatever was moving in the dark get anywhere near her while she figured it out.

My phone lit up on the table. Unknown number. I picked it up.

One message. We know you felt the bond. Walk away from her, Charlie. While you still can.

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Then I typed back two words.

Try me.