Claimed By Silver

Chapter Twenty-Two: Old History

Freya’s POV

Veera lives in a part of the city I've never had reason to visit, a quiet, upscale neighbourhood that feels deliberately unremarkable, the kind of place chosen specifically to avoid drawing attention. Sterling knocks with a formality that tells me he's already braced himself for whatever this conversation is about to cost him.

She opens the door herself, and my first thought, unbidden and unwelcome, is that she's beautiful in the kind of way that doesn't require effort to notice — long blonde hair falling in soft waves past her shoulders, doe-shaped green eyes wide and guileless, fair skin that seems to catch the hallway light like something lit from within. It's the sort of beauty that would stop most men mid-sentence, mesmerizing in a way that feels almost unfair, and I understand immediately why Sterling's family once assumed this was the woman he'd eventually choose.

"Sterling." Her voice carries genuine warmth, genuine surprise, and for a moment I almost doubt everything Grant uncovered. Then her eyes shift to me, and something flickers behind them too fast to fully name — assessment, calculation, gone before it fully surfaces, replaced by a soft, curious smile that doesn't quite reach those wide green eyes. "And this must be Freya."

"Veera." Sterling's voice is carefully neutral, giving nothing away. "We need to talk."

"Of course. Come in." She steps back to let us through, composed, unhurried, every movement deliberate in a way that suddenly makes Grant's warning about her patience feel entirely justified. I find myself watching her more closely than I mean to, cataloguing the particular grace of her movements, understanding that a woman who looks like this has likely never had to work very hard to get whatever she wanted, right up until the one thing she actually wanted refused to be swayed by it.

Her apartment is tasteful, understated, nothing in it suggesting the capacity for violence Grant's investigation uncovered. She gestures us toward a seating area, offers tea we all decline, and settles across from us with the particular stillness of someone entirely comfortable in her own space, legs crossed elegantly, hands folded like she's hosting nothing more significant than an old friend's casual visit.

"I assume this isn't a social visit," she says finally, when the silence stretches too long for comfort.

"A wolf attacked us during the Council hearing," Sterling says, watching her carefully. "Paid, according to Grant's investigation, by a woman matching your description."

Something flickers across her face — not shock, not the wide-eyed confusion I might have expected from someone genuinely innocent. Something closer to resignation, quickly buried beneath composure, though I notice her fingers tighten slightly against each other before she catches herself.

"That's a serious accusation," she says carefully.

"It's not an accusation. It's a fact Grant has confirmed through multiple sources." Sterling's voice hardens slightly. "I'd rather you simply tell me the truth, Veera. We've known each other too long for you to insult me with a denial you know I won't believe."

She's quiet for a long moment, gaze moving between Sterling and me, something calculating happening behind her composed expression. I watch her study me in turn, those doe-green eyes moving over my face, my clothes, my posture, clearly trying to understand exactly what quality in me managed to unravel decades of expectation she'd apparently built her entire life around. Whatever conclusion she reaches, her expression gives nothing away.

When she finally speaks, her voice has lost some of its earlier warmth, something colder surfacing underneath.

"You want the truth," she says. "Fine. I'll give you the truth, Sterling, since apparently that's the only currency you still respect from me."

She rises, crossing to the window, back to us for a moment before turning to face us both directly, the afternoon light catching her hair and turning it nearly gold, an image so striking I understand, distantly, why any man might have found himself unable to look away from her once.

"I have loved you since we were children," she says plainly. "Not the soft, uncertain affection people mistake for infatuation. Something real, built across decades, something I believed — foolishly, apparently — you understood and simply hadn't acted on yet because you're careful, because you've always been careful, because that's who you've always been. And then this—" her gaze flicks to me, something sharp and bitter moving through it "—this human appears, and six years later you're prepared to burn down everything our families have built, everything the Council stands for, for a bond you didn't even choose."

"I didn't choose it," Sterling says quietly. "You're right about that. But I choose her now, Veera. Every day, with full understanding of what it costs. That's not nothing."

"It's everything," she snaps, composure finally cracking, something raw and genuinely wounded surfacing beneath the beauty for the first time since we arrived. "It's everything I've spent my whole life waiting for you to choose me the way you're choosing her, and instead I watched you kill nine men for a stranger while I stood by and said nothing, because I kept believing you'd eventually see reason."

"So you decided to remove her yourself." His voice comes out steadier than I feel, my heart is hammering in my chest.

Her gaze cuts to me, something venomous flashing behind her eyes before the composure slides back into place, that mesmerizing beauty settling back over her features like a mask returning to position. "I decided," she says carefully, "that a bond built on circumstance rather than choice doesn't deserve to override decades of genuine devotion. I'm not going to apologize for that belief, whatever consequences it apparently requires me to face now."

"You tried to kill her," Sterling says, voice going dangerously low. "Inside a Council hearing. That's not devotion, Veera. That's madness."

"Is it madness to fight for what should have been mine?" Her voice cracks slightly, old grief bleeding through the anger, and for just a moment, watching her, I understand why this woman's pain might have moved someone less certain than Sterling. "I watched you for years, Sterling. Patient, the way I was raised to be patient, believing eventually you'd understand what I already knew we could be together. And then a bond neither of us asked for simply erased five decades of that patience overnight, and I was supposed to simply accept it, gracefully, without a single attempt to fight for what I'd already given my whole life toward."

"Was my father involved," Sterling asks, quiet, direct. "The funding for the assassin. Grant's investigation suggests resources beyond your own means."

Something flickers across her face again, quick and calculated, and this time I catch the exact moment she decides how much to reveal. "Your father," she says carefully, "shares my belief that this bond represents an unacceptable risk to pack stability. Beyond that, I have nothing further to say on the matter."

"That's not a denial." Sterling says.

"No," she agrees. "It isn't."

The silence that follows carries its own confirmation, heavier than any explicit admission could have been.

"What happens now," I ask, watching her carefully, trying to read whatever calculation is happening behind her composed, lovely expression.

"Now," she says, something cold settling into her voice, "I imagine you'll run back to the Council with whatever proof Grant believes he's assembled, and attempt to have me formally charged for an assassination attempt that, I should remind you, failed entirely. Without success, without a body, without anything beyond circumstantial evidence and second-hand testimony from wolves willing to say whatever price dictates. I wouldn't be terribly concerned about the outcome of that particular effort, if I were you."

Sterling's jaw tightens, understanding arriving at the same moment I do — she's calculated this carefully, protected herself against exactly the response we're planning to make.

"This isn't finished," Sterling says quietly, rising to his feet, pulling me up alongside him.

"No," Veera agrees, something almost sad moving behind her calculated composure, those green eyes flickering with what might, if I let myself believe it, be genuine grief rather than pure manipulation. "I don't imagine it is. I loved you for too long to simply let this go quietly, Sterling. I hope you understand that, whatever else you choose to believe about me going forward."

We leave without further words, the door closing behind us with a soft, deliberate click that somehow carries more menace than any shouted threat could have managed.

"She'll try again," I say, once we're back on the street, my hands still shaking slightly from the confrontation.

"Yes," Sterling agrees grimly. "And we have almost nothing concrete to bring to the Council. She's protected herself carefully, and unless we can prove my father's direct involvement, this ends exactly where it started — suspicion, without consequence."

"She's beautiful," I say quietly, unable to keep the thought entirely to myself. "I understand now why everyone assumed you'd choose her eventually."

Sterling stops walking, turning to look at me directly, something fierce entering his silver eyes. "Beauty was never the variable that mattered, Freya. I've known Veera my entire life. I've had every opportunity a lifetime could offer to choose her, and I never did, long before the bond ever found you. Don't mistake what she looks like for anything close to what actually determines who I want."

I nod, something in his certainty settling the uneasy flicker of comparison that had started creeping in despite myself. "What do we do now?"

Sterling is quiet for a long moment, something hard and determined settling into his expression. "We stay careful," he says finally. "And we stay together. Whatever she and my father are planning next, I'd rather face it prepared than blindsided."

I lean into him as we walk, trying to shake the image of Veera's composed, calculating face, understanding with sudden clarity that whatever peace we found after the hearing was always going to be temporary. Somewhere out there, a woman who's loved Sterling for decades is already planning her next move, and this time, I suspect, it won't be anything as simple or as survivable as a wolf through a door.