Chapter Three: Vows and Voices
1950 Words
I spent the rest of the afternoon preparing.
I memorized the layout of the east garden — exits, sight lines, places someone could hide. I made sure my phone was fully charged. I told Iris where I was going, just in case, and made her promise not to follow me or tell Caden unless I didn't come back within an hour.
At 6:45pm, I left the main house.
The east garden was on the far side of the estate, past the training yards and the greenhouse, bordered by forest on two sides. It was beautiful in daylight — stone paths, flowering trees, benches tucked into private alcoves.
At dusk it was quieter. Shadowed. Empty.
I walked slowly, scanning for movement.
At exactly 7pm, I reached the center fountain.
And I waited.
Every second stretched too long.
Every shadow felt like it might move.
One minute. Two. Five.
Then I heard footsteps behind me.
I turned.
A woman stepped out of the shadows. Mid-thirties, plain clothes, the kind of face you'd forget immediately. She worked in the kitchens, I thought. Or maybe housekeeping. I'd seen her around but never learned her name.
She looked terrified.
"Elara Blackwood?" she said quietly.
"Yes."
"I worked for your husband. He asked me to keep records of certain people's movements. Guard rotations, visitor logs, things like that." She glanced around nervously. "He said if anything happened to him, I should find you."
"What did he need those records for?"
"He was tracking someone. Someone he thought was stealing from the pack." She pulled a folded envelope from her jacket. "He gave me this a week before he died. Said to keep it safe and only give it to you if—" She stopped.
"If he died," I finished.
She nodded and handed me the envelope.
I opened it.
Inside was a USB drive and a handwritten note in Kieran's messy scrawl.
Elara—
If you're reading this, something went very, very wrong.
The files on this drive are everything I've found so far. Financial records, communications, evidence of a conspiracy that goes back years. I don't know how deep it goes yet, but I know it's dangerous.
Don't trust the council. Don't trust Marcus. And I'm sorry to say this — be careful with Caden. He's loyal to the pack above everything. That loyalty makes him predictable. And predictable men can be manipulated.
I was going to tell you everything. I thought I had more time. I was going to get you out. I'm sorry I ran out of time.
Be safe. Be smart.
And if you find out what happened to me — make them pay.
—K
I stared at that note until the words blurred.
"Ma'am?" the woman said quietly. "There's something else."
I looked up.
"The night he died. I was on kitchen duty. I saw him leave for the hunt." She paused. "But about an hour before that, I saw him arguing with someone in the hallway outside the Alpha's office. It was loud. Violent."
"Who was he arguing with?"
She hesitated.
Like saying it out loud might get her killed.
Then she whispered—
"Alpha Caden."
My heart stopped.
Because the last person Kieran warned me to be careful of…
was the same man who wanted to marry me.
I gave Caden my answer at breakfast. Not because I wanted to.
Because time had run out—and the truth sitting in my pocket was starting to feel like a ticking bomb.
He was in the dining room with Iris and two council members whose names I could never remember. I walked in, poured myself coffee I didn't want, and said it before I could change my mind.
"I'll marry you."
The words felt wrong the second they left my mouth.
Like I’d just signed something I didn’t fully understand.
The room went quiet.
Caden looked up from whatever document he'd been reading. His expression didn't change, but something shifted behind his eyes. Relief, maybe. Or calculation.
"All right," he said.
"I have conditions."
One of the council members made a sound like he was about to object. Caden held up a hand and the man went silent.
"Go ahead," Caden said.
"I keep my work in the archives. That doesn't change. It's mine."
"Agreed."
No hesitation. No negotiation.
Like he’d already decided this was how things would go.
"And I want access to current pack records. Financials, council minutes, everything. If I'm going to be Luna, I should understand how this pack runs."
The council member who'd almost objected actually did this time. "That's highly irregular—"
"Agreed," Caden said, cutting him off.
The man stared. "Alpha, those records are confidential—"
"She'll sign an NDA if necessary. But she gets access." Caden's voice had that edge it got when he was done discussing something. He looked at me. "What else?"
"This marriage is political. You said that yourself. So it stays that way unless we both decide otherwise."
"Understood."
"I mean it. I'm not—" I stopped, aware of the audience. "I'm establishing boundaries."
"I'm not going to force anything on you, Elara." His voice was calm. Controlled.
But there was something underneath it—something that said if things went wrong… he could.
"You have my word."
I nodded once. "Then we have a deal."
"The ceremony will be this Friday. Three days." He said it like he was scheduling a business meeting. "Is that acceptable?"
Three days.
Three days to go through Kieran's files, figure out what he'd found, and decide if I was about to marry the man who might have killed him.
"Fine," I said.
I left before anyone could ask questions.
Back in my room, I locked the door, pulled out the USB drive, and plugged it into my laptop.
The files opened.
Twenty-three folders. Each one labeled with dates going back three years.
I started with the most recent.
Financial_Records_March
Spreadsheets. Hundreds of transactions, highlighted and annotated in Kieran's handwriting. The same quarterly transfers I'd found — fifteen thousand dollars to External Consulting Services — but Kieran had tracked them further.
He'd found where the money actually went.
Not to a consulting firm. To a series of shell companies. And from there, to personal accounts belonging to—
I stopped.
My brain refused to process what I was seeing.
Because if it was real—
everything I thought I understood about this pack was a lie.
Marcus Hale.
Elder Rowan Vex.
Council Member Thorne.
Not just names.
Power. Authority. Untouchable people.
And every single one of them was stealing from the pack. For years.
I kept reading.
Kieran had documented everything. Dates, amounts, account numbers. He'd even found communications — encrypted emails between Marcus and Rowan discussing "distributions" and "quotas" and "keeping the Alpha in the dark."
My hands were shaking.
This was it. This was what Kieran had been investigating. What he'd died for.
I opened the next folder.
Communications_Encrypted
Email threads. Messages between Marcus and someone whose email was just a string of numbers and letters. No name.
Marcus: The situation with K is becoming a problem. He's asking too many questions.
Unknown: Handle it. Quietly.
Marcus: And if he doesn't stop?
Unknown: Then we eliminate the problem. Permanently.
The date on that email was two weeks before Kieran died.
I didn’t move.
Didn’t breathe.
Because I had just watched the moment my husband was sentenced to death.
I kept scrolling.
More messages. More threats. And then, dated three days before the hunt:
Unknown: It's done. The window is this weekend. Make it look accidental.
Marcus: Understood.
I sat very still.
They'd planned it.
Kieran's death wasn't an accident.
It was murder.
And Marcus had known it was going to happen.
A tear hit the keyboard before I even realized I was crying.
Not just grief this time.
Rage.
I wiped my face, took a breath, and kept going.
There had to be more. Kieran wouldn't have stopped at just Marcus and Rowan. He would have kept digging until he found the person giving the orders.
I opened the last folder.
ALPHA_QUESTION_MARKS
Inside was a single document. A text file with just a few lines.
Caden knew about the financial irregularities. I told him six months ago. He said he'd handle it.
Nothing's changed.
Either he's protecting them, or he's part of it. Or worse— he was waiting for the right moment to use it.
Need to confirm before I make a move.
I stared at that document for a long time.
Caden knew.
The words didn’t just sit there.
They sank in—slow, heavy, suffocating.
Six months ago, Kieran had told him about the embezzlement. And Caden had done nothing.
Which meant either he was complicit, or he was protecting the people responsible.
Either way, I was about to marry him in three days.
Someone knocked on my door.
I nearly jumped out of my skin.
I closed the laptop, shoved it under my pillow, and went to the door.
Iris stood in the hallway holding a garment bag and looking deeply annoyed.
"Wedding dress," she said. "Apparently we're doing this in seventy-two hours so there's no time for custom anything. This is from the last Luna ceremony, altered to fit you. Try it on."
I let her in.
She hung the bag on my closet door, then turned and looked at me carefully. "You've been crying."
"I'm fine."
"You're a terrible liar." She sat on the edge of my bed. "What happened?"
I wanted to tell her. I wanted to show her the files, the emails, the evidence that someone in this pack had killed her brother.
But Kieran's note had said be careful with Caden. And Iris was Caden's sister. Her loyalty was split.
So I said, "I'm just overwhelmed. The wedding, everything with Kieran—"
"Stop."
Sharp. Immediate.
Not a request.
I looked at her.
"I'm not stupid, Elara. You're investigating something. You've been locked in the archives for two days, you're jumping every time someone knocks, and you look like you just found out the world is ending." She stood up. "So either tell me what's going on, or tell me you don't trust me. "But don’t lie to my face."
Her voice dropped.
"Not about something this serious."
I stared at her.
Then I made a decision that could either save me— or get me killed.
I pulled the laptop out and showed her everything.
Iris went through the files in silence.
Her face got paler with every folder she opened.
When she reached the communications between Marcus and the unknown sender, she stopped.
"They killed him," she whispered.
"Yes."
"Marcus knew. Rowan knew." She looked up at me. "And Caden—"
"Kieran told him six months ago. About the embezzlement. Caden said he'd handle it." I kept my voice level. "He didn't."
Iris sat very still for a moment.
Then she said, very quietly, "Caden wouldn't protect them if he knew they killed Kieran."
"Are you sure?"
She opened her mouth. Closed it. "I want to be sure."
"So do I. But I can't marry him without knowing."
"Then we need to confront him."
"Not yet. We don't know who the unknown sender is. Marcus and Rowan are taking orders from someone. If we move too early—"
"They'll cover their tracks. Or worse." Iris looked at the screen again. "Okay. So what do we do?"
"We keep digging. Quietly. We find out who's giving the orders. And then—" I stopped.
"Then what?"
"Then we decide who we can trust."
Because right now…
I wasn’t sure that list included Caden.
- Writer
