The Alpha's Assassin Bride

CHAPTER 3 — A MESSAGE FOR THE QUEEN

"Show me," Wren said.

Torin didn't let go of her hand as they moved through the corridors, like some part of him needed the contact to believe she was still there.

"You don't have to see this," he said.

"Yes, I do."

"Wren—"

"If it's addressed to me, it's mine to see." She glanced at him sideways. "You'd do the same."

His jaw tightened, but he didn't argue. Instead he matched her pace, close enough that his shoulder brushed hers with every stride, close enough that she could feel the tension radiating off him like heat.

"You're angry," she said.

"I'm frightened," he corrected. "I'm choosing to look angry about it instead."

That admission startled her more than she expected. She'd spent her whole life around men who mistook fear for weakness and buried it under bravado without ever naming it. Torin just said it plainly, like there was nothing shameful in it at all.

"That's an unusual thing for a king to admit."

"I'm not admitting it to a kingdom. I'm admitting it to you." His fingers tightened around hers. "There's a difference."

The eastern gate was cordoned off, three guards standing well back from a shape laid out on the stone like a warning. Wren crouched beside it before anyone could stop her.

Kade.

Not dead — breathing, shallow and ragged, a gash across his ribs gone dark with dried blood.

"He's alive," Wren said, hands already checking the wound with the brisk efficiency of guild training rather than panic.

"You know him," said a voice behind her.

Elder Corvin stepped out of the gatehouse shadow, silver-haired, sharp-eyed. "Your face says so, even if your mouth won't."

Wren didn't look up from Kade. "Get him to the healer."

Torin was crouched at her side a heartbeat later, close enough that his shoulder brushed hers, steady, present, not asking her to explain herself in front of an audience. It was such a small thing. It undid her a little anyway.

"This isn't guild discipline," Torin said, checking the wound. "This is a punishment."

"It's a message," Corvin said. "Written on him instead of paper."

"Then read it," Wren said. "You already have."

Corvin's eyes weighed her for a long moment, the way a man weighs something he isn't sure he wants to know the truth of. "Nine days becomes three. The next one we send won't be alive when he arrives."

The words landed like a blow, and Wren felt Torin's hand find the small of her back, grounding, before she'd even realized she'd swayed.

"Get him to the healer," Torin told the guards. "Now. And someone finds out how a man bleeds this badly two miles from my own gate without a single sentry noticing until dawn."

"That's not incompetence," Wren said quietly, once the guards had gone. "That's a message too. She wanted him found exactly when he was found. Not sooner."

Corvin's gaze sharpened on her. "You keep saying she."

"I'll explain when I understand it myself," Wren said, and for once, that seemed to be enough for him.

They found Kade awake but weak in the healer's wing, a sharp-eyed young woman finishing a dressing on his ribs.

"You're the healer," Wren said.

"Elsbet. And you're hovering, which won't help him." She tied off the bandage. "He'll live. Whoever did this wanted him to. Professional work. Not rage."

"Sable's work," Wren said quietly.

Kade's eyes opened at the name. "Wren."

"Don't talk."

"Have to." His voice was wrecked. "Three days was never the real deadline. There's someone else. Already inside these walls. Longer than you."

Wren's hand found Torin's without thinking, gripping tight. He laced his fingers through hers immediately, an anchor she hadn't asked for and couldn't imagine standing there without.

"Someone Torin trusts," Kade said, barely audible. "Someone close enough that no one's ever—"

His eyes closed. Elsbet pushed between them, checking his pulse.

"He's out. Shock, blood loss." She looked between Wren and Torin's joined hands, something flickering across her face — surprise, maybe, the first stirrings of a healer's instinct. "He needs rest, not an audience. Both of you, out, unless you want to explain to me why a guild operative knows the queen by name."

"Later," Torin said. "I promise you an explanation. Just not tonight."

Elsbet studied them both a moment longer, then nodded once, filing the question away rather than dropping it.

Outside in the corridor, Torin didn't let go of her hand.

"Someone I trust," he said. "That's half the palace."

"I know."

"Rurik. Corvin. My own household." His voice was tight, but his thumb kept moving against her knuckles, an unconscious comfort he seemed to need as much as she did. "That's not a warning. That's a riddle I can't solve."

"We'll solve it together." Wren turned to face him fully.

For a second, Torin simply stared at her.

"Together?" he repeated, like the word didn't quite fit the shape of the life he'd been living.

She nodded.

His fingers tightened around hers. It was such a small gesture, but Wren felt the weight of it settle somewhere she hadn't known was empty. She'd spent fifteen years being taught that needing someone was weakness.

She was starting to understand it might be the opposite.

"I don't know how to do this," Torin admitted quietly. "I've had advisors. Guards. People who serve me. I've never had someone stand beside me and mean it as an equal."

"I've never been anyone's equal either," Wren said. "I was always a weapon, or a shadow, or a name in someone else's plan. Nobody's ever asked me to just — stand beside them."

"I'm asking now."

"Then I'm saying yes." She held his gaze. "There's a version of this where I still don't tell you everything."

"And the other version?"

"I'm done with that one."

He held her gaze, quiet, waiting.

"The guild doesn't waste two operatives on one target unless the target matters more than a political marriage," Wren said, pulse hammering as she said it aloud for the first time. "This was never just about killing you. Something bigger sent me here. I don't know what yet. But it's bigger than either of us."

"Then we find out what it is. Together." He said the word deliberately this time, testing its new weight in his mouth. "I meant it."

"I know you did." Wren allowed herself a small, unguarded breath. "That's what scares me most about you."

Before he could answer, a guard rounded the corner at a dead run, face white.

"My king. Queen Wren." He gasped for breath. "Your old chambers, my lady. Someone's been inside."

"Nothing's in there. I emptied it before the wedding."

"Not anymore." The guard swallowed hard. "There's a second wedding dress on the bed. Identical to yours. A note pinned to it."

"What does it say?"

His voice dropped to a whisper.

"The wrong bride walked down the aisle."

Torin's grip on her hand went very still.

"Whoever she is," he said, voice turning cold, "she made one mistake."

Wren looked at him. "Which one?"

"She threatened my wife."

Wren's heart clenched — not because he'd called her that. Because for the first time in her life, she realized she wanted to be.