Draven's POV
Marcus tells me the last name in the corridor outside the courtyard door, two words spoken quietly while Arwen crosses the stone toward the boy with the travel bag, and the name lands in my chest like something physical.
Ashford.
I know that name. It lives in the Hunter Pack archives in a file I read when I was sixteen and going through every document my mother ever touched, looking for anything that explained what she was and what she did and why she chose it. Daniel Ashford. Mentioned twice in her private correspondence. Referenced in a financial record I couldn't fully decode at the time. I assumed the worst because assuming the worst had become the framework I used for everything connected to Selene Hunter.
I was wrong.
The picture I built of my mother's disappearance
