The Alpha's Wolfless Breeder

The Seventh Morning

Mitchelle's POV

My father came to me on the fourth night.

I was sitting on the floor surrounded by pack archive files, my mother's journal open in my lap to the Golden Crest pages, three candles burning low around me. I had been there since midnight. I didn't look up when he knocked.

"The servants say you haven't been sleeping," he said from the doorway.

"The servants are observant." I responded, still without looking up.

"Mitchelle." He stepped over the threshold and stopped when he saw the files. His expression shifted. "Where did you get those?"

"The pack archives. I requested them three days ago." I held one up without looking at him. "Did you know Mama filed a formal investigation request twelve years ago? Into a rogue organization called Golden Crest? She had documented evidence, Father. Years of it. She tracked their movements across four territories."

He said nothing.

"The council denied the request. Elder Rowan's signature is on the denial." I set the file down carefully. "She came to you, didn't she? She told you what she had found and you told her to let it go."

He didn't utter a word. I guess the truth struck him so hard to speak up.

"She was a Luna," he said finally. "Not a warrior. It wasn't..."

"Safe?" I looked up at him for the first time. "She died anyway. In the sacred grove. With silver blades in her side that came from a group nobody has been watching for twelve years because you told her to let it go and Rowan buried her report."

He sat down on the edge of my bed. He looked old suddenly., diminished in a way I had never seen before and I could not find it in myself to feel sorry for.

"I have trackers,professional ones looking into the attack..."

"You have trackers performing the appearance of looking into it so the pack believes something is being done." I closed my mother's journal and held it against my chest. "You're going to let it go again. I can see it on your face."

"That's not—"

"You remarried."

The words landed and he flinched slightly, but recollected himself almost immediately.

"I heard from one of the servants," I said. "Vivienne Crane. Council supporter. Good bloodline. Very practical timing." I watched his face. "Did you wait until after the funeral or—"

"That is not fair."

"No," I agreed. "None of this is fair. But we're past fair, Father. We have been past fair since the night Mama died and you sat in a council chamber and let Rowan call her death my fault without saying a single word."

He stood abruptly, and went to the window. He stood with his back against me for a long moment.

"Adrian Throne is not a gentle man," he said to the glass.

"I know."

"The stories about his wolf—"

"I know the stories."

"He has never had a mate. He has never allowed anyone close. His rages have—"

"Father." I got to my feet. "I understand what you're doing. You're trying to tell me you're sorry without saying you're sorry. I appreciate the effort. But I need you to hear this." I waited until he turned. "I am going to Shadowfang. I am going to learn everything there is to know about the Golden Crest pack. And I am going to find the people who killed Mama and I am going to make them answer for it. Whether you help me or not. Whether anyone helps me or not."

He looked at me for a long time. Something moved in his face that I couldn't name—grief, maybe, or the recognition of something in me that hadn't been there before.

"She would be proud of you," he said quietly, reaching out his hands to feel my cheeks. But I retraced my steps.

"I know," I said. "Go to bed, Father."

He didn't utter a word. He just left. I sat back down on the floor and opened my mother's journal to the last entry she ever wrote.

It was dated three days before my birthday. Her handwriting was smaller here than in the rest of the journal, more careful, precise, like she was writing with one eye over her shoulder. Most of it was about me, about the blood moon coming and what she hoped and what she feared and what she believed regardless of both.

But it was the final lines that I read three times and then tore carefully from the binding and folded against my heart.

"Golden Crest. They don't stop. They only pause. And then: I believe her wolf is not absent. I believe it is waiting for something that cannot be forced. Something that must be found." the page read.

I pressed the torn page against my chest until I could feel my own heartbeat through it.

"I'll find it," I whispered. "Whatever it is. I'll find it."

* * *

I was in the carriage before the sun rose on the seventh morning.

I had packed light, my mother's journal, the torn page, three practical dresses, and the small knife I had taken from the armory the night before and sewn into the lining of my traveling coat because I was wolfless. I was going to the most dangerous pack in the region and I was not entirely foolish.

My father stood in the courtyard with his new wife at a careful distance behind him. Vivienne Crane was tall and fair-haired and looked at me with an expression of polite concern that told me she had been practicing it. I looked at her for exactly one second and then I looked at my father.

"If you find anything," I said. "Anything about Golden Crest. Send word."

He nodded. "Be careful."

"Send word," I repeated.

I climbed into the carriage and didn't look back.

We drove through the pack gates as the sun came up over the mountain, and I watched Moonridge disappear through the rear window—the grove, the rooftops, the mountain where the Moonsword sat in its place on the Mountain of Eternal Flame waiting for an heir who could claim it.

I pressed my hand flat against my sternum. Something moved, not a shift, nothing that dramatic. It was just a stir, a faint pressure against my ribs, like something turning over in a deep sleep.

My mother's words came back to me.

"Not yet," I said quietly, to whatever was inside me. "Wait until I know what we're walking into. Then you can wake up."

The pressure eased.

The trees thickened around the road and grew older and darker and the air changed—heavier, charged, carrying the weight of a territory that had been held by the same bloodline for centuries through methods nobody discussed at polite dinners.

And then the fortress appeared on the mountain and my breath left my body entirely.

It was worse than the stories. It was always worse than the stories.

I folded my hands in my lap and kept my face absolutely still and told myself for the hundredth time that I was not afraid.

My hands betrayed me by shaking slightly until I pressed them flat against my knees.

Fine. I was a little afraid. But I had made my choice. I was going in anyway.