The Alpha's Assassin Bride

CHAPTER 5 — TWO DAYS

"Describe him," Wren said. "Everything. Height, voice, eyes, anything."

Elsbet was still shaking. "Tall. Unremarkable — that's what's terrifying. Brown hair, plain face, the kind of man you forget the moment he leaves a room."

"That's guild training," Wren said. "Being forgettable is a skill they drill into you before you're old enough to understand why."

"He asked for water twice a day and barely spoke. I never once suspected—"

"You weren't supposed to." Wren folded the note into her palm, knuckles white around it. "That's the whole point of what she is."

Torin took the note from her, reading it again like the words might soften on a second pass. "Your sister sends her regards. She's real. She's here. Three weeks to learn this palace better than either of us."

"Three weeks to learn your schedule," Wren said. "Your guards' rotations. Every exit, every blind corner, every person you trust."

"Then we change everything. Rotations, guard assignments, my schedule—"

"Won't matter." Wren's voice was flat. "If she's guild-trained the way I was, changing patterns just tells her you're scared. She adapts faster than a schedule can."

Torin exhaled, frustration and something rawer underneath it. "Then what do I do? Sit here and wait to find out if my own wife's sister decides tonight is the night?"

"You don't sit anywhere alone again until this is over," Wren said. "That's not me being dramatic. That's me telling you how this works."

He looked at her for a long moment, something unguarded crossing his face. "You're frightened."

"I don't get frightened."

"You told me that on our wedding day, too. I didn't believe you then either."

Wren didn't answer, because he wasn't wrong, and she'd never been good at lying to someone who could actually see her.

They regrouped in Torin's private study — Torin, Rurik, Wren, Elsbet standing uncertainly near the door.

"Two days," Torin said, pacing. "She'll strike before the deadline, not on it. Usually how threats like this work."

"Not always," Wren said. "If she's disciplined, she'll hit exactly on the deadline. Precision is the message. It says *I control the timing, not fear.*"

"You'd know," Rurik said. Not quite an accusation this time. Closer to grudging curiosity.

"I trained under the same people. I think the way she thinks because I was taught to."

"Comforting," Torin muttered.

"It should be. It means I can predict her." Wren caught his eye. "It also means I know exactly what she'll try to use against you. Which is me."

Elsbet cleared her throat. "Can I ask something?"

"Go ahead," Torin said.

"Why is she doing this the way she is? The dress, the notes, the theater. If she's as skilled as you say, why not just—" Elsbet gestured vaguely. "Do it. Quietly. Why all the warnings?"

Wren went still.

"That's a good question," she said slowly.

"You don't have an answer," Rurik said.

"I have a guess. I don't like it." Wren looked at Torin. "She's not just here to kill you. If she wanted that, she'd have done it already. She's here to make a point first."

"What point?"

"That the guild picked the wrong sister for this mission." Wren's jaw tightened. "Every message has been about me, not you. She's not just finishing a contract. She's trying to prove she should have been the one standing at that altar."

The room went quiet.

"That's not strategy," Torin said finally. "That's personal."

"Guild training doesn't erase personal," Wren said. "It just teaches you to weaponize it."

Torin crossed the room and stopped in front of her, close enough that the others faded to the edges of her attention. "Then she's already lost, whatever she thinks this is."

"Why?"

"Because she wants to be standing where you're standing." His voice dropped, just for her. "And she'll never understand that the reason it matters isn't the crown. It's that I chose you before I had any idea what you were."

Wren's throat tightened. She didn't trust herself to answer that in front of Rurik and Elsbet, so she just reached for his hand instead, and he let her, right there in front of both of them, like he didn't care who saw.

They spent the next hour mapping the palace's weak points, Wren marking corridors and gates with the same clinical precision she'd once used to plan Torin's death. It was strange, watching herself do it for the opposite reason.

"The eastern wall," she said, tapping the map. "That's where Kade was left. She wants us watching that gate."

"Meaning she'll come from somewhere else."

"Meaning she wants us to think that, and then possibly come from exactly there anyway, because we'll have talked ourselves out of guarding it properly." Wren pressed her palm flat against the parchment. "Everything she does is a layer. I can guess two, maybe three moves ahead. I can't promise I'll guess right."

"Then we cover everything," Rurik said. "Double the guard—"

"And she walks in disguised as one of the extra guards you just posted," Wren said. "More bodies isn't the answer. Fewer blind spots is."

Torin studied her, something almost like awe under the worry. "You sound like you're already planning how you'd do it, if you were her."

"I am."

"That's unsettling."

"It's useful." Wren met his eyes. "Would you rather I stop?"

"No." He held her gaze a beat too long, the way he had at the altar. "Keep going. I trust you with this more than I trust anyone else in this room."

Rurik didn't argue, which was its own kind of answer.

Night fell without incident, which somehow felt worse than an attack would have. Wren stood watch outside Torin's chamber long after he'd gone to bed, blade in hand, every shadow a potential threat.

He found her there near midnight, having woken to find the bed half-empty again.

"You're supposed to be resting," he said quietly, leaning in the doorway.

"I can't. Not tonight."

He didn't argue with her. He just crossed the hall, took the blade gently from her hand, and set it on the sill — not far, not hidden, just close enough that he trusted her to still be who she was — before pulling her into him. She let herself lean into his chest, just for a moment, listening to his heartbeat instead of the silence of the corridor.

"Whatever she wants, whatever she is," Torin murmured into her hair, "I'm not handing you over to her."

"You don't know what that costs yet."

"I don't need to know the cost to know the answer."

She almost believed him. Almost let the fear in her chest go quiet.

Then a sound cut through the corridor — not a footstep. A window, somewhere down the hall, breaking inward.

Wren was moving before she finished processing it, blade back in hand, Torin half a step behind her despite everything.

She reached the window in seconds. Broken glass. Cold night air pouring through. And on the sill, placed deliberately where it couldn't be missed, a single silver hairpin — identical to the one in Wren's own hair since the wedding.

Torin's hand found the small of her back, steadying, refusing to let the fear win space between them even now.

But down the corridor, in the opposite direction, a second door stood open that had been locked an hour ago.

Elder Corvin's study.

And from inside it, no sound at all — the kind of silence that meant someone was either already gone, or waiting very still for her to walk in first.