The Alpha Rejected Me, But I Carry His Heir

Chapter 12: The First Hunt

We bury Maera before dawn, beneath the shattered stained-glass rose window of the chapel, and only Kaelen, Rurik, and I know why she's died.

That's the first thing we decide, standing with the dirt freshly piled on her grave: the enemy assumes they've gotten away clean, still assumes we're fumbling in the dark with Seraphine as our prime suspect. So we let them assume that. We hold our grief still, ask no loud, foolish questions and below the surface, we hunt.

Kaelen has changed overnight. The grief still exists- I see it flicker through his eyes whenever he watches the twins, a sudden dark tide when he thinks he's unobserved- but it's been tempered into steel. He walks through his own pack, seeing it now with his own two eyes; watching the hundreds of bowing heads, which held a knife against his back for five years?

"Let's start with who had access," I tell him, sliding Maera's silver west gate seal across the dark wood of my study table. Rurik stands vigil; the twins are asleep in the next chamber. "Who ever poisoned you against me had to be someone close to you.

In your ear for weeks, months.

Trusted."

"Which brings us to approximately thirty wolves." Kaelen's jaw is clenched. "My council.

My Beta.

The heads of my warrior clans. Those who commanded authority under my father. Those who have the most to lose by a binding contract between Ravenscliff and Silvercrest, a contract secured by their Alpha's Luna and future Luna."

"The joining by blood is irrevocable." I say, testing the words as they leave my mouth. "A treaty may be broken.

Children- yours and mine- form an unbreakable bridge between packs.

Someone feared the building of that bridge. Someone who gains from our two tribes remaining rivals."

Kaelen goes unnaturally still.

"There is a name you refuse to say." I push, softly.

"Because the answer is unthinkable."

He runs a hand over his face, roughing his jaw. "Vryce.

The old war councilor to my father.

He has commanded for Ravenscliff for forty years- he literally raised me after Father died. He is the one who told me that my joining with you was, for all intent and purpose, a dangerous risk. That to bind our strength to a Low Ranking Luna would mark my leadership of Ravenscliff as one of weakness." He pauses, the admission a tangible thing between us.

"I truly believed he was advising me for my good.

I believed it was strength that I chose. Goddess- what if it was not wisdom that was administered to me, but a deadly poison?"

The disparate facts begin to connect, sliding into a cold, brutal formation. A man in whom I placed my absolute trust. Years of access to my Alpha's inner thoughts and weaknesses. An old hand who knew how Ravencscliff and Silvercrest had once opposed each other and stood to profit should that opposition continue.

"We do not accuse him."

I immediately state, holding up a hand before Kaelen can stand, murder burning in his eyes. "We have only a theory- and the word of a dead healer.

If Vryce did this and we act too soon, he disappears before he can be apprehended.

Or worse, before he takes action against the twins. We need absolute proof. And we need to discover if he is acting alone, or under direct orders."

"And how do we achieve this proof?"

I pick up the heavy, silver east gate seal from the table. "Whoever made a copy of Seraphine's mark for her framing... Someone had to create it.

A seal, whether carved or forged from something similar, requires specific tools, ample time and, certainly, absolute privacy.

If we can track the fabrication of that seal, we will track the hand that did it. You, Alpha, know this keep better than anyone alive. Where in Ravenscliff could a man such as Vryce safely and secretly hide work of such a nature?"

Kaelen is silent for a moment, then something hardens in his face- a resigned understanding.

"The records vault. Beneath the east tower. It is there where he keeps the pack archives, the one place in Ravenscliff in which access is denied to everyone except Vryce.

To literally everyone.

Except-."

His hand curls. "Me. All this time I thought he merely cared for historical accounts."

"Or the perfect staging ground for a crafter of illicit seals." I rise to my feet, straightening the folds of my dress. "Tonight, then.

When the entire keep has fallen into the arms of slumber.

You and I. And Rurik- our shadows against the stone. We get in. We uncover if the man who raised you has spent the last five years trying to murder the bloodline that will ultimately be his undoing."

Kaelen's eyes are locked on mine when he rises too, a man caught between a lifetime of devotion and a betrayal he is just beginning to see.

"Nova," he rasps, his voice low enough that I doubt even Rurik can hear, "If it's him- if it's Vryce who was poisoning me from within, against you- and against them-"

"Then we will face it.

Together."

I refuse to step away.

"That was the pact we swore, wasn't it?

Until death do us part."

He brings his hand up, stopping just before touching me, then he tucks a wayward strand of hair behind my ear. The sensation, though faint, ignites something within me that burns far hotter than shame. He pulls his hand back slowly, then echoes me, his voice hoarse, "Together."

And Goddess help me, looking at him now, the defenses I built on a squalid shanty floor five years ago have become something less substantial than the stone foundation on which they stood- they are becoming a structure that, stone by painstaking stone, may eventually fall.

I turn away to hide the sudden rush of emotion coloring my cheeks.

Rurik sees. Of course, he does.

He doesn't say anything, just one knowing eyebrow raised from his perch by the door. I glare sharply enough to communicate volumes.

Tonight, we hunt. Everything else- whatever this burgeoning something between us is- will have to wait until after the last whisper of midnight has been swallowed by the clatter of a forger's chisel.