What I want is you

CHAPTER 4: CHOICES

The summons came just after nightfall.

A guard found me in the small chamber Mira had given me inside the palace walls. He didn't say much. Just that Lord Richard wanted to see me.

“Are you sure he sent for me?” I asked, looking very surprised.

“I am sure, my lady,” the guard replied.

“Oh, I’m no lady, and I’m sure my lord is mourning.’

‘Please follow me,” he ordered.

I followed him through corridors I didn't recognize.

Everything felt heavier now. The banners. The silence. Even the air.

Everywhere was quiet.

People in the palace were still in shock.

Richard was alone when I entered.

He stood by a tall window, still dressed in black, the iron pendant heavy against his chest. He didn't turn right away.

"You sent for me," I said.

"I did."

"Why?"

He finally turned. His eyes looked tired in a way I hadn't seen the night before. Tired in a way that went past grief.

"Sit," he said.

I didn't move. "Richard. " I called him. "Why did you send for me? Your father just died. You were just crowned. I don't understand why I'm here."

He studied me for a long moment.

"Because I need someone I can trust," he said. "And right now, that list is very short."

Something in his voice made my chest tighten.

"We just met. I don’t understand. Trust for what?"

He crossed the room slowly, stopping a few feet away. Close enough that I could see the exhaustion etched into his face. Close enough to see something else, too.

Fear.

Alphas weren't supposed to look afraid.

"My father didn't just collapse," he said quietly.

I went still. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I don't believe it. Not the way they're telling it." His jaw tightened. "A healthy man. Strong heart. No illness. And he drops dead hours after a ball, with no warning at all?"

My mouth went dry. "You think—"

"I think someone poisoned him."

The words landed heavily in the quiet room.

I should have looked shocked. I tried to look shocked.

But my face must have betrayed something, because Richard's eyes narrowed on me immediately.

"You already knew," he said.

I hesitated, "Mira told me."

His expression shifted, surprise, then something darker.

"Mira told you," he repeated slowly. "Before she told me?"

"She didn't tell me outright. She warned me. Told me to leave the city tonight." I swallowed. "She said something about choosing a mate. She didn't say poison. Not exactly. But she implied enough that I put it together."

Richard turned away from me, running a hand through his hair.

"Of course she did," he muttered.

"Richard. She's your sister. Why would she keep something like that from you?"

He let out a breath that wasn't quite a laugh.

"Because my sister protects people in strange ways," he said. "She warns them sideways instead of telling them straight. She's done it since we were children." He looked back at me. "She probably thought warning you was safer than accusing anyone out loud. Walls have ears in this palace. Especially now."

I wrapped my arms around myself. The room felt colder suddenly.

"Do you know who?" I asked. "Who might have done it?"

"No." His voice was flat. "That's the problem. Half this palace benefited from my father's death in one way or another. Nobles who wanted more say in the pack law. Families who wanted their daughters closer to the throne." His eyes flicked to me, then away. "People who didn't want him choosing who I was allowed to love."

My heart stumbled over that last word.

"You think it's connected to me," I said slowly.

"I think it's connected to something," Richard said. "And you were in the room the night it happened. My father looked at you like he already knew something the rest of us didn't."

I remembered it too. That lingering look. That cold, knowing suspicion.

"He didn't believe your excuse," I said quietly. "About me being dizzy."

"No. He didn't."

"Do you think that's why—"

"I don't know." Richard's voice cracked slightly, just once, before he caught it again. "I don't know if it's connected. I don't know if it's a coincidence. I don't know anything right now except that my father is dead, and I'm supposed to lead a pack of people who might have killed him, and I have no idea who to trust."

Silence settled between us.

I watched him, this man who had pulled me onto a dance floor less than a day ago, laughing, alive with mischief, and now, he is standing in front of me carrying the weight of an entire kingdom and a murder he couldn't prove.

"Why me?" I asked again, softer this time. "Out of everyone in this palace. Why did you send for me tonight?"

Richard was quiet for a long moment.

"Because you're the only person in this building who has no reason to want my father dead," he said. "You didn't know him. You weren't fighting for a title. You weren't angling for a marriage alliance." His eyes met mine, steady now. "You're the only person here I know for certain isn't lying to me."

He misjudged me. I had a plan. I had a goal. Though it was not to poison Alpha Zee.

"You don't know that," I said. "You barely know me."

"I know enough."

"Richard—"

"My father looked at you like he had seen something," he said, cutting me off. "I need to know what that was. Not because I think you did anything, but because I think you might have seen something. Heard something. Noticed something the rest of us missed, because nobody in that room was paying attention to you the way they were paying attention to him."

I thought back to the balcony. The room. Mira bursting in. Lord Zee's face in the doorway.

"I don't know anything," I admitted. "I was just as blind as everyone else that night."

"Then we start from nothing," Richard said. "Together."

The word hung between us, heavier than it should have been.

"That's dangerous," I said. "For me. If people already suspect I mean something to you—"

"They already do."

"Then pulling me into a murder investigation isn't going to make that safer."

"No," Richard agreed. "It won't."

"So why do it?"

He stepped closer. Close enough that I had to tilt my head to keep looking at him.

"Because I'd rather have you close and in danger with me," he said quietly, "than safe and far away from me."

I opened my mouth to argue. Nothing came out.

Behind us, the door opened without a knock.

Mira stood in the frame, her face pale, her cloak still dusted with the cold night air. Her eyes moved between the two of us, and whatever she saw made her expression harden.

"You told her," she said to Richard.

"She already knew," Richard said. "You told her first."

"I warned her," Mira snapped. "There's a difference."

"Not much of one."

Mira stepped fully into the room, closing the door behind her. When she spoke again, her voice had dropped low.

"I just came from the healer's chambers," she said.

Richard straightened immediately. "And?"

Mira's eyes flicked to me, hesitant, then back to her brother.

"Say it," Richard said. "She's already involved. Say it."

Mira exhaled slowly.

"The healer found something in father's blood," she said. "A plant. Rare. Slow-acting. Something that resembles a weak heart if nobody's looking for it." Her jaw tightened. "He didn't just die, Richard. Someone made very sure it would look like he did."

The room went silent.

I felt the floor tilt slightly beneath me, the same way it had the moment Lord Zee's suspicious eyes had lingered on my face the night before.

"Do they know what plant?" Richard asked, his voice dangerously calm.

"Yes," Mira said.

"Then tell me."

Mira's gaze slid toward me again, quick and unreadable, before she answered.

"It only grows in one place," she said. "The southern gardens. The ones that belong to exactly one noble family in this entire palace."

Richard's expression went cold in a way I hadn't seen from him before, not grief, not fear, but something sharper. Something dangerous.

"Whose gardens?" he said. It wasn't a question anymore.

Mira didn't answer right away.

And in the silence that stretched between the three of us, I understood, with terrible clarity, that whatever name she was about to say was going to change everything.