The Alpha's Assassin Bride

CHAPTER 4 — WRONG BRIDE

Torin didn't move toward the old chambers right away. He stood in the corridor a moment longer, still holding her hand, like the guard's news could wait one more breath.

"Did you hate hearing me call you that?" he asked quietly. "Wife."

"No." Wren's voice came out smaller than she meant it to. "That's the problem."

Something eased in his face, like he'd been braced for a different answer. "Why is that a problem?"

"Because I don't know how to be someone's wife. I know how to be a weapon. I know how to disappear into a room and vanish before anyone remembers my face." She looked down at their joined hands. "Nobody trained me for this part."

"Nobody trained me either." Torin's thumb moved slowly over her knuckles. "I've had a crown since I was nineteen. I know how to be a king. I don't know how to be someone's husband and mean it."

"Do you? Mean it?"

"More than I expected to." He studied her face like he was memorizing it. "That terrifies me more than any guild ever could."

She didn't have an answer for that. He didn't seem to need one. He just squeezed her hand once and finally let the guard lead them on.

The old chamber still smelled like her — faint soap, dust, a life she'd abandoned the morning of the wedding. Wren stopped in the doorway, staring at the dress laid across the bed like something arranged for viewing.

Silver silk. Same cut as hers. Same silver thread at the collar.

"That's not guild work," she said.

"How do you know?"

"Guild handlers don't waste fabric on theater. They care about efficiency, not spectacle." She crouched by the note pinned to the bodice, reading it twice before answering. "This is someone who wants me rattled. Wants me to feel replaceable."

"You're not replaceable." Torin said it plainly, like a fact rather than comfort, and something in Wren's chest twisted at how easily he believed it.

"You don't know that yet."

"I know it anyway."

She let herself have one second to feel the warmth of that before pushing past it. "There's a version of the guild's plan I never told you," she said, eyes back on the dress. "I wasn't the only candidate for this marriage. There were two of us trained for it. Sisters — not by blood, by the guild's naming. Only one of us was supposed to walk down that aisle."

"And the other?"

"Was supposed to be dead before the ceremony. Guild protocol. No loose ends."

Torin's face went carefully blank. "You're saying she's not."

"I'm saying someone wants me to think she is."

"Would that be worse? If she were alive?"

Wren considered it, honestly, for the first time. "Worse for the mission. Worse for the guild's plans. But if she's out there, she was raised exactly the way I was raised — alone, taught the same lessons, told the same lies. I don't know if I hate her or pity her."

"You could feel both."

"I could." She glanced at him. "You're very calm about the fact that your wife has a violent, guild-trained double who might be hunting you."

"I'm not calm." His jaw ticked. "I'm choosing to focus on the part where you keep saying 'my wife' instead of flinching from it."

Rurik arrived within minutes, hand going to his sword the second he saw the dress.

"Explain," he said, to no one in particular.

"Working on it," Torin said.

"Work faster. Third incident in two days." Rurik's eyes cut to Wren, sharp. "You want to tell me you're not the common thread?"

"I am the thread," Wren said. "That doesn't make me the danger."

"Forgive me if I need more than your word."

"Rurik." Torin's voice carried a warning.

"No, he's right to ask." Wren met Rurik's eyes directly, refusing to look away first. "I was trained alongside another operative — a backup, in case I failed. If she's alive and inside these walls, she's not here to help me. She's here to finish what I haven't."

"Kill the king."

"Yes."

"And if it came down to it — you against her — which way does that knife fall?"

"Toward whoever's threatening him," Wren said, without hesitation. "That's not a hard question."

"It should have been." Rurik studied her a moment longer. "The fact that it wasn't is the only reason I'm not calling the guard on you right now."

"Noted," Wren said. "For what it's worth, I'd rather have you suspicious and useful than trusting and dead."

That, oddly, seemed to land better with Rurik than anything else she'd said. Something in his stance eased, fractionally — not trust, but the beginning of something workable.

They searched the room and found nothing else. Just the dress, the note, and the unbearable knowledge that someone had walked these halls freely enough to leave it.

"Whoever did this has access to the private wing," Torin said. "That's guarded around the clock."

"Guarded by people who know me," Wren said. "Which means either a guard's compromised, or—"

"Or it's someone who doesn't need to sneak past them at all."

They looked at each other, the same thought landing at once.

"Kade said someone you trust," Wren said slowly.

"That's not a guard. That's household. Council." Torin's jaw tightened. "Or family."

"You don't have family left except—"

"Vessan."

The name sat heavy in the room. Torin didn't move for a moment, and Wren recognized the look on his face — the particular grief of suspecting someone you'd spent your whole life trusting without question.

"He raised you a little, didn't he," she said quietly. "After your father died."

"Taught me to ride. Taught me half of what I know about ruling." Torin's voice was tight. "I don't want it to be him."

"I know." She reached for his hand again, not because the moment called for it, but because she wanted to. "Wanting isn't the same as it being true. We'll find out either way."

They found the Duke reviewing correspondence with the mild, unbothered air of a man with nothing to hide.

"Nephew. And the new queen." He smiled immediately. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Where were you an hour ago," Torin said.

"Here. Ask any of the clerks." Vessan's smile flickered but held. "Though I'd love to know why I need an alibi in my own palace."

Wren watched him closely — no tells, no tension in his shoulders, no shift in breath. Either he was innocent, or better at this than anyone she'd ever tested.

"There's been an incident. Guild-related."

"How troubling." Vessan set down his pen, all polished concern. "Is she safe?"

"For now."

"Well." Vessan folded his hands. "If my resources can help — I've dealt with guild matters before, in my father's time—"

"We'll manage," Wren said.

"Of course." His eyes flicked to her, warm and unreadable. "Though I'll admit, my dear, it's curious that guild trouble arrived precisely when you did."

"Careful, Uncle," Torin said, an edge in his voice Wren hadn't heard before.

"Only an observation." Vessan smiled wider. "We all want what's best for the crown, surely."

Outside, Wren exhaled hard.

"He's lying."

"About which part?"

"I don't know. He's good." Frustration cracked her voice for the first time. "I couldn't read him at all, and I've read hundreds of people. That should worry you more than it seems to."

"It worries me plenty. I'm just better at hiding it than you are right now."

That startled a small, unwilling laugh out of her. Torin's hand found hers again, quieter this time, no words attached to it. Just present, just steady, in a hallway that suddenly felt less like a palace and more like the only safe place left standing.

"We need Kade conscious," Wren said finally. "He knows who the second operative is. He said it before he passed out—"

A commotion broke out ahead — raised voices, a slamming door. Elsbet came around the corner at a sprint, blood on her hands that hadn't been there an hour ago.

"He's gone," she said, breathless.

"Kade?" Torin said.

"No. Kade's resting." Elsbet's face was white. "The other patient. The one already in the wing before he arrived — fever case, three weeks, no visitors, nothing suspicious. He walked out an hour ago. No fever. No weakness. And he left something on the pillow."

She held out a folded scrap of parchment, hand trembling.

Wren unfolded it. The same cold, precise guild code from the message pinned to Kade's ribs.

Three weeks inside your walls, and none of you noticed me until I wanted you to.

The clock starts now. Two days.

— Your sister sends her regards.

Torin's hand tightened around Wren's, and this time, she was the one who didn't let go first.