SETH'S ODYSSEY

CHAPTER SIX: WHAT MALRIC WENT LOOKING FOR

Malric noticed Ella's absence before anyone else did.

He'd gone to her window near dawn, some excuse already prepared about training schedules, and found her bed untouched, the latch on her window still swinging loose in the breeze. He stood there a long moment, jaw tight, piecing together exactly where she'd gone and exactly who she'd gone to see.

He didn't wake the Alpha. Some careful, calculating part of him decided this was better handled quietly, a problem he could fix himself, a rescue he could be the center of, without her father ever needing to know how far she'd actually strayed.

He gathered three wolves he trusted to keep quiet and moved before the sun fully cleared the ridgeline.

They tracked her scent to the stream easily enough, mixed unmistakably with Seth's. Malric's face hardened with every step closer, some old, festering anger finding new fuel in the confirmation of what he'd already suspected.

They found the two of them still there, close together near the water, Ella's hand still resting where she'd left it.

"Get away from her," Malric said, stepping into the clearing with his three wolves fanning out behind him.

Seth rose slowly, positioning himself half a step in front of Ella without seeming to decide to. "This isn't what you think."

"I don't care what I think it is." Malric's eyes were dark, focused entirely on Seth now. "You don't get to touch her. You don't get to look at her. You're exiled, remember? Nothing. You shouldn't even be breathing pack air."

"Malric, stop." Ella stepped forward, placing herself firmly between the two of them, refusing to be shielded. "This is my choice. It has nothing to do with you."

"Everything about you has something to do with me." His voice cracked, just slightly, something raw showing beneath the anger. "Your father approves of me. He's made that clear enough times. And you're out here, in the middle of nowhere, with him."

The three wolves behind Malric shifted, tension coiling through all of them, waiting on some signal to move.

It was Ella who stopped it before it started.

"If you touch him," she said, voice low and absolutely steady, "I will make sure my father knows exactly why you snuck out here without telling him first. Three wolves, Malric. You didn't come to check on me. You came to hunt."

Something flickered across his face, calculation warring with fury.

"You'd really choose him," Malric said quietly, "over everything you already have."

"I'm not choosing anything tonight. I'm telling you to leave. All of you."

The standoff held a moment longer, tension thick enough to taste, before Malric finally broke it, jaw tight, humiliation flashing behind his eyes at being the one forced to back down in front of his own men.

"This isn't over," he said, echoing words he'd already used once before. He turned before either of them could respond, gesturing sharply for his wolves to follow. "You'll regret this, Ella. Both of you will."

They disappeared back into the treeline, and only once they were gone did Ella let herself exhale.

Malric didn't go straight home.

He paced the border for the better part of an hour, humiliation curdling slowly into something colder, more purposeful. By the time he finally returned to the pack, his face had settled back into its usual careful composure, the mask he wore so well most people forgot it was one.

It didn't matter. The Alpha was already waiting for him.

"Where have you been?" Ella's father asked, standing in the doorway of his study, voice deceptively calm.

"Training," Malric said. "Early start."

"With three of my best wolves, gone before sunrise, returning without explanation?" The Alpha stepped closer, something sharp settling into his expression. "I know you went after my daughter, Malric. I know exactly where you found her, and exactly who she was with."

Malric said nothing, jaw tightening.

"You went behind my back," the Alpha continued, voice low, dangerous in a way that had nothing to do with volume. "You gathered wolves under my command and used them for your own purposes without so much as a word to me first."

"I was protecting her."

"You were protecting your own claim on her." The Alpha's eyes narrowed. "Do not mistake my approval of a match between you and my daughter for permission to act as though you already own her, Malric. That mistake will cost you far more than you understand."

Malric's composure cracked, just for a moment, something bitter and wounded showing through. "And Seth gets to just exist out there? Untouched? After what he did to the Heart?"

"Seth," the Alpha said carefully, "is not your concern. He is mine."

Something about the way he said it, quiet, controlled, carrying weight far beyond the words themselves, made Malric go still.

"You know something," Malric said slowly. "About him. About what happened that night."

"I know enough to understand this situation requires patience, not recklessness." The Alpha's tone shut the conversation down entirely. "You will not go near either of them again without my explicit order. Is that understood?"

Malric didn't answer right away. But he nodded, eventually, the picture of obedience on the surface, something far less obedient simmering underneath it.

That same night, far beneath the council hall, in the locked room where the two halves of the Heart of the First Beast had lain wrapped and silent since the night they shattered, the glow that had begun days earlier finally broke into something else entirely.

The guard stationed outside heard it before he saw it, a low, resonant hum building steadily behind the sealed door, growing louder, more insistent, until the door itself began to vibrate against its frame.

By the time he found the courage to open it, both halves of the Heart were glowing bright enough to cast shadows across the walls, pulsing in a rhythm that matched, though no one in that room could have known it, the exact rhythm of a heartbeat three ridgelines away.

Seth's heartbeat.

The guard didn't wait to investigate further. He ran to wake the Alpha, and this time, there would be no burying the report, no quiet word to make the problem disappear.

Whatever the Heart wanted, it had stopped waiting to be noticed.