The Alpha Rejected Me, But I Carry His Heir

Chapter 13: The Vault

The keep sleeps and the three of us ghosts moving through it.

Kaelen leads, knowing each stone and each creaking stair and each patrol route for each of these paths since he arranged them. Rurik covers our backs-an impossible stillness from a man built like that. And I fall between them, Maera's seal tucked in my sleeve, the old Alpha's silver dagger against my thigh, my heart a slow, steady drum of purpose.

The East Tower is the oldest of Ravenscliff. Its stair winds endlessly down into a cold not born of winter and the world, and into a door barred with iron. Locked.

"Vryce has the only key," Kaelen's voice is a low hum in the dark.

"The only key Vryce knows of." I sink to my knees, drawing theslim tools from my boot. Another silver Lining to my stay with Silvercrest, taught to me by a locksmith who, long before finding the Goddess, had been a thief of remarkable skill.

"The mate who is turned away without honor learns many things in the world, Alpha.

Hold the light."

The lock is an older, proud thing, but within the space of a minute it falls.

The chamber that we enter contains exactly what one would expect. Packed scrolls containing every lineage history for the pack, dusty ledgers, records of mating-the scent of aging paper and dust fills the room. And for a sickened moment my stomach plummets. What if it's an old man's hobby, this room of archiving, and we have broken in utterly without cause?

But Rurik stops at the far end. His back is to me.

"Nova." His voice is rough.

Behind a tall shelf of ledgers, half concealed, lies a workspace. In it-beneath the cloth his fingers are just removing-is the work of a forger. Wax.

Undecorated, blank seal-discs.

Fine picks for engraving letters and symbols. And a series of partially completed copied marks. One is unmistakably of the Eastern house-of Seraphine's house.

Proof. Cold, hard, irrefutable.

"He makes them here," Kaelen's breath catches. "In my keep. Under my nose. For all this time."

I move cautiously toward the workspace, keeping my hands off where I can, and search it. A forger's room does not usually contain only his equipment. A man who creates untruths for a living trusts only what he is personally paid to trust-nothing more.

Under the workspace in a hidden drawer lies a narrow ledger, its text simply coded with a cipher childish in its simplicity. It contains many dates and the payments associated with each of them. And along with the payments, instructions are written in a thin, precise script.

I read it, and a chill I had not thought to find runs through me, colder than this chamber of sealed secrets.

"Kaelen." I somehow speak my own name, my voice strange in my own ears. "This doesn't start with five years ago."

"What?"

"The payment."

My fingers follow a long row of dates. "These go back further than that.

Before you turned me away-months before, that matches the times so nicely.

But earlier still, into your father's time as Alpha. Vryce has been collecting money to do this since before you were Alpha. Someone paid him then, Kaelen. This was orchestrated before you even took your position."

Kaelen's blood recedes from his skin in a sudden visible loss. "Who paid him?"

I flip to the last entry, newest of the all, dated only days ago-after my convoy arrived. After the twins were found. There are three lines of text and my breath leaves my body:

The heir is here. The brats live. Mark present on each.

Await Patron's instructions, but ready removal of the young regardless.

The line fails the turn of season.

The Patron.

Not Vryce. Vryce is the tool only. There is a Patron above him, the one who has thrown wealth between Silvercrest and Ravenscliff for two generations.

The one who feared both lineages for too long to tolerate them finally joining.

The one who, with only days left before the season turns, have ordered the worst I could ever fear:

ready removal of the young.

"They're killing them." The words are flat as I can make them; if they're not then I will scream, and screaming will only bring a trap on us. "My babies. It's an order here-Kaelen-to kill Aria and Rowan."

A sound Kaelen makes is far below the level of man. His Alpha is stirring within the wolf, a destructive power capable of bringing this tower down about our ears with nothing but rage. I clutch his arm.

"No."

I force his head toward mine. "If you rage and break it, pull the fool by the throat tonight-they'll send another hand. But they don't have a hand we can see behind this Vryce; he's the only thread we have back to the people who truly want my children gone. We can't break it until we know where it leads."

He fights me, every muscle coiled against my grip. He releases it slowly-he is still so much Alpha-it may well be learning that protectiveness is the cold strength a true Alpha wields. "What, then," he growls, "do we do?"

"We leave it. As it is," I slide the ledger back into its carefully made compartment, committing every stroke of its code to memory. "Vryce believes his secret is safely hidden another day.

And we get my babies from here and out of Ravenscliff before that last instruction reaches their house.

And we discover who the Patron is before the season ends." I meet his eyes.

"We do that, Alpha."

We leave. The click of the lock behind us is innocuous. The keep slumbers, blissfully unaware that its Alpha now holds the truth deep in his soul of the rot hidden within.

This was orchestrated before I was even Alpha.

Whoever the Patron is, it is a patient soul. Powerful enough to weave machinations through generations, long enough that they have waited since before my children were born to finally achieve their goals.

As we ascend, however, I cannot free myself of one thought from that little ledger, and it circle's me like a wolf, tireless in the dark.