Rejected By Alpha, Craved By The Lycan King

The Witness

Draven's POV

The maid's name was Tamsin, and it took my guards two days to find her after she vanished from the pack the same night. I nearly tore Selara's throat out with my own claws. I found her hiding with relatives three territories away, too frightened to look me in the eye when my men dragged her back before me.

"I do not want any trouble, my lord," she said, twisting her hands together in her lap. "I only repeated what I saw. I did not think it would matter."

"It matters more than you know," I said, keeping my voice level though my patience had worn thin weeks ago. "Tell me again, exactly as you told the other maid. Leave nothing out this time."

She swallowed hard and began, and this time, I made her stop after every sentence, pressing for details until the story stood whole and undeniable.

She had seen Selara near the omega quarters the week Ivara was accused, carrying a small glass vial identical to the one found under Ivara's mattress. She had seen Selara speaking quietly with a stranger near the pack's eastern border, a man wearing no crest she recognized, his face hooded even in daylight.

"Why did you say nothing sooner," I demanded.

"Because Lady Selara made it clear what happens to maids who talk too much," Tamsin said, her voice shaking. "There was a girl before me, my lord. She asked too many questions about Lady Selara's past and disappeared within the month. No one ever spoke of her again."

The room felt colder suddenly, and I thought of every small warning sign I had ignored over the past weeks, every flicker of guilt I convinced myself meant nothing. I had built an entire life on trusting Selara's word over my own wife's, and the cost of that trust was becoming clearer with every new piece of the truth.

"This stranger," I said. "Describe him again."

"Tall, my lord. Pale, like he did not spend much time in sunlight. He wore a mark on his wrist, a symbol I did not recognize. Lady Selara seemed to know him well.

They spoke like old friends, not strangers."

I dismissed her with orders to remain under guard until I decided what to do with what she had told me, and I sat alone in my study long after she left, staring at the same paperweight shaped like a wolf that had once sat on my desk the morning I signed my own wife's fate away.

A soft knock came at the door, and I did not need to look up to know who it was. Only one person in this pack still walked with that particular confidence, even now, even with suspicion closing in around her from every direction.

"You look troubled," Selara said, letting herself in without waiting for permission.

"I have been speaking with witnesses," I said, watching her face carefully for any c***k in her composure. "One of them describes a man meeting with you the week Ivara was accused. Tall. Pale. A mark on his wrist."

Something flickered behind her eyes, gone almost as fast as it appeared, but I had spent five years learning every expression she wore before she disappeared the first time, and I recognized fear when I saw it now.

"I do not know what you are talking about," she said.

"Do not lie to me again, Selara. I have already lied to myself enough for both of us." My voice came out rougher than I intended, years of grief and guilt finally breaking through the surface I had kept so carefully controlled. "Tell me who he is."

"Draven, please, you are letting some maid's gossip poison you against the woman who loves you."

"The woman who loves me does not plant poison and blame it on an innocent wife," I said, rising from my desk, my wolf pushing hard against my control.

"The woman who loves me does not meet in secret with strangers bearing marks she refuses to explain."

Selara's composure finally cracked, and for one honest moment, I saw something raw and calculating behind her carefully built grief. "You have no idea what you are involving yourself in," she hissed. "Leave this alone, Draven. For your own sake and for hers."

"For Ivara's sake?" I stepped closer, my voice low and dangerous. "You care what happens to her now?"

"I care what happens to all of us if certain people learn what she truly is before we are ready." The words slipped out before she could stop them, and her face went pale the instant she realized her mistake.

"What she truly is." I repeated the words slowly, feeling the shape of a truth I had not yet fully grasped begin to take form. "What is she, Selara?"

She said nothing, backing toward the door with her eyes wide, and I realized in that moment I would get nothing more from her tonight, not through anger, not through threats.

"This is not finished," I said as she fled the room.

I stood alone in my study for a long while after she left, turning her words over and over, certain now of one thing above all else. Whatever secret Selara had been protecting since the day she walked back into my life, it was tied directly to Ivara, and it was far larger than a simple lover's jealousy.

I called for my strongest tracker before the sun rose the next morning.

"Find where Kael Ravenmourne has taken my wife," I told him. "I do not care what borders we cross to get there."

He bowed and left without question, and I sat alone in the quiet of my study long after his footsteps faded down the corridor. I thought of the anniversary night, of Ivara's face in the mirror when I finally looked at her the way a husband should, and the memory sat like a wound that refused to close no matter how many weeks passed.

I had told myself for years that duty excused my silence, that a marriage built on debt did not require warmth, only order and respect. I understood now how much of a lie that had always been, how easily I had hidden behind duty rather than admit I was too proud to love a woman my father chose for me instead of one I chose myself.

Selara's warning echoed in my mind. Certain people learn what she truly is before we are ready. I did not yet understand the full shape of that danger, but I understood enough to know it had nothing to do with love, and everything to do with something far older and colder than either of us had realized we were caught inside.

By midday, my advisor returned with grim news of his own. Two more maids had vanished from the pack overnight, both of them women who had once served in the omega quarters alongside Ivara during her exile there. Neither had left word of where they were going, and neither had taken their belongings with them.

"Someone is silencing anyone who might have seen too much," I said quietly.

"It would seem so, my lord."

I thought of Ivara, wherever she was now, carrying a child and a secret neither of us fully understood, surrounded by people who might already be counting the ways to remove her before that secret could grow any larger. Whatever protection Kael Ravenmourne offered her, I hoped it was stronger than anything my own pride had ever managed to give.