His mate wore a mask

CHAPTER3

Remy

I write Dreston 's economics outline in two hours and twenty minutes.

It is good work .... better than his last one, cleaner argument structure, the kind of thing that will make Professor Keane believe Dreston Cole has finally started applying himself. I format it the way his professor likes headers bold, citations consistent, conclusion that loops back to the thesis with just enough elegance to feel effortless.

Then I put Dreston 's name on it and save it to the shared drive.

I do not sleep. I want to .... there is a specific ache behind my eyes that belongs to exhaustion .... but every time I close them I see the front row of Silver Veil Club and the particular quality of stillness that surrounded a man I should not have gotten close enough to touch.

I should not have gotten close enough to touch.

At five-thirty, when the sky outside my window goes from black to the color of a bruise, I give up on sleep entirely. I shower quickly .... cold water, no time .... and dress in what I always dress in loose grey trousers, a white t-shirt, the olive green hoodie that is large enough to make my shape ambiguous. I cut my hair myself every three weeks with the scissors I keep in my desk drawer. It is still short enough now, just a little grown out at the back, nothing that would read as feminine to anyone not looking carefully.

No one ever looks carefully.

That is the design.

The mansion's kitchen is empty at six AM. This is the hour I like best. Before the Cole family wakes, before my father starts his rounds, before Sasha descends with her performance of morning cheerfulness that she puts on specifically for Dreston 's benefit. I make two cups of tea .... one for me, one in a thermos for my mother .... and eat standing at the counter because sitting feels like staying.

My mother's room is in the west wing, lower floor, near the laundry. This is where omegas sleep in a beta's household. My father visits occasionally, when he needs something, and he always leaves before sunrise as if the length of his stay might be mistaken for care.

I knock twice before entering.

She is already awake. She is always already awake .... her sleep is light and watchful, the sleep of a woman who learned a long time ago that she cannot afford to be caught off guard.

"Ramona," she says when she sees me.

She is the only one who calls me that. It is the only gift she has been able to give me that my father cannot take away .... the use of my real name, in private, with the door closed.

I sit on the edge of her bed and hand her the thermos. She takes it with both hands the way she takes everything I bring her, like it might disappear. Her name is Delia. She was beautiful when she was young .... I know this from the one photograph I found in a box in the storage room, a girl with dark eyes and long hair and a smile that looked like it was used to being laughed with rather than at. She is still beautiful. But it is the kind of beauty that has learned to hold very still.

"You did not sleep," she says. Not a question.

"I'm fine."

"You have circles."

"I have good concealer."

She almost smiles. "Where did you go last night?"

I look at the thermos in her hands. "Sasha needed something from the city. I handled it."

My mother is quiet for a moment. She has a particular quality of silence .... not blank, not passive. It is the silence of someone who knows exactly what is happening and has chosen her battles with surgical precision.

"She will keep asking,"

"I know."

"You cannot keep saying yes."

"I know that too."

She reaches over and touches my jaw .... brief, careful, the way you touch something fragile. "Three more months," she says. "Your graduation."

"Three months," I agree. "Then we leave."

She pulls her hand back. Wraps both palms around the thermos. "Your father is having a meeting today. High guests from the Lycan Court."

I go very still.

"Alpha Derrick has been preparing for two days," she continues, either not noticing my stillness or choosing to address it indirectly, which is her way. "The Lycan King's son is coming. Prince Zane, they call him. He is touring the allied packs."

Prince Zane.

The man in the front row of Silver Veil Club had the stillness of a predator and shoulders that filled a dark jacket and eyes the color of a storm system deciding where to land.

The manager had said Guests from the Lycan Court. VIP section. Do not acknowledge them.

I stand up very quickly.

"I have to go," I say. "I'll come back tonight."

"Ramona.... "

"I'm fine, Mama. I just remembered something."

The east wing corridor is empty when I get back to it, and I am almost to the staircase when I hear them.

Dreston 's voice first. Then another .... lower, unhurried, that belongs to someone who speaks rarely but expects to be listened to when they do.

I stop at the corner.

".... arrived last night," Dreston is saying. "Dad said you weren't expected until today."

"We came early." The other voice. "I wanted to see the city first."

"Ashford City? What's there to.... "

"Things I was looking for."

A pause.

"Find them?" Dreston asks.

Another pause, longer.

"Not yet."

I press my back against the wall. The voices are close .... they are coming down the corridor toward the staircase, which means they are coming toward me. I look left. The linen closet door is three steps away, slightly ajar.

I have three seconds.

I take them.

I pull the door shut behind me and stand in the dark between shelves of folded towels and the scent of cedar and lavender, and I breathe as shallowly as I can, and I listen to two sets of footsteps pass directly outside.

They stop.

Right outside the door.

My heart becomes a fist.

"You went out last night," Dreston says. "Kade told me you dragged them all to some club."

"Silver Veil." The other voice. Easy. Unbothered. "I had a reason."

"Find what you were looking for there?"

A beat of silence.

Then "Almost."

The footsteps start again. They move past the closet, down the corridor, away.

I count to thirty before I open the door.

I lean against the wall and press my palm flat to my sternum.

My wolf is absolutely silent.

Not calmed. Not suppressed.

Listening.

She is listening the way you listen when the sound you have been waiting for is still in the room, just moved to another corner.

No, I tell her, quiet and firm and terrified.

He is in this house.

He is in this house and I have three months until graduation and my mother needs me steady and I cannot .... I will not .... be undone by a pair of storm-grey eyes and one word spoken in a lit-up dark.