THE KING'S UNWANTED MATE

DIANA ARRIVES

Chapter Nine

She heard them before she saw them.

Voices in the entrance hall. The particular energy of an arrival — footsteps, greetings, the controlled bustle of staff responding to guests of rank.

Selene was at the top of the stairs.

She looked down.

Caden came through the doors first.

He looked different from the last time she had seen him. Not the commanding Alpha of the announcement — something tighter, more careful. The look of a man carrying something he didn't know how to put down.

His eyes found her immediately.

She held his gaze for one second. Then she looked away.

Diana came through the doors behind him.

And stopped.

Selene watched it happen — the moment Diana's eyes moved up the stairs and found her standing there. The fractional pause. The recalibration behind Diana's perfectly composed face.

She had expected to find Selene broken.

She had not expected this.

Selene was wearing a deep blue dress that Sera had left outside her door that morning with a note that said simply: *for today.* Her hair was down. Draven's mark was visible at her neck. She was standing at the top of the stairs of the Alpha King's palace like she had always been there.

Like she belonged.

Diana recovered in less than a second.

But Selene had seen it.

"Selene." Diana's smile arrived perfectly on cue. Warm. Familiar. The smile of a woman who had practised it so long it had become automatic. "You look wonderful."

"Thank you," Selene said. She came down the stairs at a pace that was neither rushed nor slow. "Diana. Caden." She looked at them both. "Welcome."

"Welcome," Caden repeated. Something in his voice.

"Is that strange?" she said.

"A little," he said honestly.

"Good," she said. "It should be."

She felt Draven before she saw him — the shift in the room's attention, the way the staff straightened, the particular quality of silence that preceded him.

He appeared at her shoulder.

"Alpha Caden," he said. "Diana." His voice gave nothing. "I trust the journey was comfortable."

"Very," Diana said. Her eyes moved to Draven. Something flickered in them — assessment, calculation, the look of someone measuring a target. "Your palace is extraordinary, Alpha King."

"Yes," Draven said simply. "It is."

Selene pressed her lips together to keep from smiling.

---

The rooms assigned to Caden and Diana were on the second floor.

Far from the fourth floor. Far from Draven's rooms. Far from everything that mattered.

Selene had suggested this to Draven at breakfast.

He had looked at her. "You want them far away."

"I want Diana far away," she said. "And I want every corridor between her and us to have surveillance."

He had looked at her for a moment. "You've been thinking tactically."

"You said you'd teach me."

"I said tomorrow."

"It is tomorrow."

He had almost smiled. And the surveillance had been arranged.

Now Selene stood in the corridor outside the assigned rooms and watched Diana's face as she took in the distance from the main hall. The slight tightening around her eyes. The calculation.

"It's a beautiful wing," Diana said.

"The east wing," Selene said. "Very comfortable." She paused. "Excellent views."

Diana looked at her.

"Of what?" she said.

"The border," Selene said pleasantly. "You can see all the way to the east gate from the upper windows."

A beat.

Diana smiled. "How lovely."

"Isn't it," Selene said.

She left them to settle in.

---

She found Draven in the corridor outside the east wing surveillance room.

"She knows I know something," Selene said.

"Yes," he said. "I watched the entrance hall feed." He looked at her. "You handled it well."

"Don't sound surprised."

"I'm not surprised," he said. "I'm—" He paused. "Impressed."

She looked at him. "Was that hard for you to say?"

"Moderately," he said.

"Good." She leaned against the wall. "She's going to make a move. Tonight or tomorrow. She'll want to find out how much I know and she'll want to report back before whatever the Circle is planning moves forward."

"Agreed."

"So we let her think she's succeeding," Selene said. "We give her something to report. Something that sends the Circle in the wrong direction."

Draven looked at her steadily.

"You want to run a counter operation," he said.

"I want to use the time we have," she said. "While she thinks she's watching me I'll be watching her." She held his gaze. "Can you get me access to the surveillance feeds?"

"You don't need my permission for that," he said.

"I know," she said. "But I'm asking anyway." She paused. "Because apparently that matters."

Something moved in his face. The thing that happened when she said something he hadn't expected. The recalibration.

"Yes," he said quietly. "It does matter." He held her gaze a moment longer. "I'll have Cain set it up."

"Thank you."

She pushed off the wall to leave.

"Selene."

She stopped. "Yes?"

"Caden," he said. "He's asked to speak with you. Alone."

She turned. "When?"

"This afternoon. He was specific about alone."

She looked at him. "And you're telling me rather than refusing him."

"It's your conversation to have," he said. "Not mine to refuse."

She looked at him for a moment. This man who had every reason — territory, status, instinct — to keep her away from her ex-mate. Who was choosing to give her the choice anyway.

"I'll talk to him," she said.

"I know," he said. "I'll be close."

"Tactical?" she said.

His eyes met hers. "Entirely," he said.

---

Caden was waiting in the small sitting room on the second floor.

He stood when she came in.

She sat down.

He sat back down.

For a moment neither of them said anything.

"You look—" he started.

"Don't," she said.

He closed his mouth.

"Whatever you're about to say about how I look or how I seem or how different I am," she said, "don't. I'm not here for that conversation." She held his gaze. "You called me last night. The line was cut before you could finish. Tell me the rest."

He exhaled. "The files," he said. "Diana has files on you going back eight years. Before we met. Before I'd ever heard your name." He leaned forward. "Selene, she tracked you. There are records of her monitoring reports — monthly, for eight years. Your behaviour, your power levels, your relationships." His voice tightened. "She was watching you the entire time we were together."

Selene sat with this. "She reported to the Umbra Circle."

His face changed. "You know about them."

"Yes."

"How long?"

"Long enough," she said. "What else was in the files?"

"A directive," he said. "Recent. Within the last month." He looked at her steadily. "Selene, the directive said that if your power emerged beyond the suppression threshold they were to move to the secondary protocol."

"Which is?"

He was quiet for a moment.

"Caden."

"Eliminate the anchor," he said quietly. "That's how they phrased it." He looked at her. "I didn't understand what it meant until I found a separate document explaining the Soul Blessed vulnerability." His jaw tightened. "They're going to try to kill Draven."

"I know," she said.

"You know."

"Yes."

He stared at her. "And you're — you're calm about this."

"I'm not calm," she said. "I'm functional. There's a difference." She looked at her hands. "How long has Diana been in contact with them? Since before Silverstone?"

"Since she was sixteen," he said. "She was recruited young. Her whole bloodline—" He stopped. "Her bloodline is Circle. Generations of it. I didn't know. I swear to you I didn't know what she was when I—"

"When you chose her over me," Selene said.

The words landed flat.

Not angry. Not cruel. Just accurate.

Caden looked at her. "I know there's nothing I can say."

"There isn't," she agreed.

"I was blackmailed," he said. "Diana had information about my pack — financial irregularities from my father's time, things that would have destroyed Silverstone's standing. She told me if I rejected you she would keep it quiet." He looked at his hands. "I told myself I was protecting my pack." He paused. "I was a coward."

Selene looked at him.

Three years.

She searched for the anger she expected to feel. The grief. Something hot and complicated that matched the weight of what he was saying.

She found — nothing.

Not numbness. Something cleaner than numbness. The specific absence of feeling that came when something had simply stopped mattering.

"I forgive you," she said.

He looked up.

"Not because what you did was okay," she said. "Because I'm not carrying it anymore." She stood. "The information about Diana — write it down. All of it. Give it to Cain tonight."

"Cain terrifies me," he said.

"I know," she said. "Do it anyway."

She moved to the door.

"Selene." His voice was different now. Quiet. "Are you happy here?"

She stopped.

She thought about the library and the garden and the kitchen at two in the morning. She thought about a hand around her wrist that neither of them moved away from. She thought about *I have a lot of actual reasons. I'm choosing tactical.*

"I think," she said carefully, "that I'm becoming something I didn't know I was allowed to be."

She opened the door.

Draven was in the corridor.

He was looking at his phone. Giving her the privacy of the pretence that he hadn't been standing six feet from the door the entire time.

She looked at him.

He looked at her.

"Done?" he said.

"Done," she said.

They walked back toward the main hall together.

"He's going to give Cain the information," she said.

"Good."

"He was blackmailed," she said. "Diana had leverage on his pack."

"I know," Draven said. "Cain found the financial records this morning."

She stopped walking. "You already knew."

"I suspected," he said. "Now it's confirmed."

"And you let me have that conversation anyway. Without telling me."

"It wasn't mine to tell," he said. "It was his." He looked at her. "You deserved to hear it from him."

She stared at him.

"Stop doing that," she said.

"Doing what?"

"Being—" She gestured at him. "That."

"I don't know what that means."

"Yes you do," she said. "Stop being surprisingly decent. It's very inconvenient."

Something crossed his face. Real. Warm. The closest thing to a genuine smile she had seen from him in daylight.

"I'll try to be less decent," he said.

"Thank you," she said.

They kept walking.

That night, Selene sat in the surveillance room with Cain and watched the feeds from the east wing.

At eleven forty-seven Diana left her room.

She didn't go toward the main hall.

She went toward the east corridor.

Toward the border-facing windows.

She stood at the window for four minutes. Her lips moved. Not speaking to anyone in the room. Speaking to someone outside it.

Selene leaned forward.

"Can we get audio?" she said.

"Working on it," Cain said.

Static. Fragments. Then — a voice. Diana's voice, low and precise.

"The power has emerged," Diana said. "Yes. Faster than expected." A pause. "The King is the anchor. He's protecting her." Another pause. Her expression hardened. "I understand. I'll handle it."

She hung up.

She turned from the window.

And looked directly at the camera.

Selene went cold.

She knew. Diana knew exactly where the camera was. She looked at it for three full seconds — directly, deliberately — and then she smiled.

And mouthed two words.

Selene read them clearly.

*Too late.*