The Alpha Who Let Me Go

Chapter Three

Silas POV

Six years old.

I look at the girl standing near the door, thin as a reed, a tray trembling in her white-knuckled hands, and I try to picture a child of six capable of murder. My wolf, Ronan, snarls low and disgusted somewhere behind my ribs, refusing to accept the story even before I've had a chance to weigh it myself properly.

"Hardly seems fair to punish a child for an accident," I say, keeping my voice level even though my temper is anything but steady beneath the surface.

"She should have known the difference between plants," Torin snaps, straightening in his chair like a man defending a position he already knows is weak.

"Should she?" I lean back, studying him the way I study any man trying to sell me something that doesn't quite add up. "A six-year-old, alone in a kitchen, somehow finds and prepares a poison strong enough to kill two full-grown wolves? That isn't an accident story, Trey. That's a story someone wrote for her, and gave her no choice but to wear for the rest of her life."

His jaw tightens visibly. "You weren't there."

"No," I agree, holding his gaze without blinking. "I wasn't. But I know poison, and I know children, and the two rarely mix well on their own without someone guiding the hand that pours it into the cup."

I don't miss the small, sharp catch of breath from the girl by the door. Like no one, in sixteen years, has ever once suggested out loud that this wasn't her fault to carry on her own shoulders.

"I did not invite you here to discuss my sister," Torin says, gathering the papers on his desk into a neater stack, a clear attempt to steer us back onto safer, more familiar ground. "I invited you here to discuss trade between our two packs."

I could let it drop. Should let it drop, if I'm being honest with myself. It isn't my business how another Alpha chooses to run his own household, however much it turns my stomach to witness it firsthand, sitting across a desk from him like an equal.

But Ronan won't let it drop. He's been pacing behind my ribs since the moment that girl walked through the office door with a cleaning basket in her arms and a scent clinging to her skin that I cannot, for the life of me, place. Something underneath the ordinary smell of a wolf. Something almost familiar, though I know for certain I have never crossed paths with her before this morning.

"You're right," I say finally, rising from my chair. "Let's discuss trade, then. I'm afraid I'll need to add a new term to our agreement before either of us signs anything binding."

Torin's eyes narrow with open suspicion. "What sort of term?"

I glance once more toward the girl. Rhea, he'd called her, though he says her name the way most men say the name of something they've long since stopped valuing. Her shoulders are hunched so far forward it looks as though she's trying to physically fold herself out of existence, to take up as little space in this room, in this house, in this world, as she possibly can.

"We'll get to it," I say. "First, I'd like a tour of your grounds. I find it useful to see the full scope of what I'm agreeing to before I put my name to any paper."

Torin hesitates only a moment before forcing a tight, practiced smile onto his face. "Of course, Alpha Silas. Right this way."

He leads me from the office and down a long hallway lined with framed photographs his wedding day, his mate smiling in a garden somewhere, a pack that, on the surface, looks entirely ordinary and even a little proud of itself. Nothing in these walls would tell a stranger anything was wrong here. That's exactly what troubles me most about this house. A place this careful about its own appearance is a place with something worth hiding underneath the polish.

We pass room after room, Torin narrating each one with practiced pride, and I nod along, only half listening, my senses stretched wide, cataloguing every scent, every sound, every small detail that doesn't sit quite right against the picture he's trying to paint for me. A locked cupboard here. A patched hole in a wall there, too high up to have come from ordinary wear. Somewhere beneath the surface of this careful, tidy house, there is rot buried deep, and I intend to find exactly where it lives before I ever put my signature to anything that ties my pack's fortunes to his.

"And here," Torin says, gesturing toward a closed door at the end of the hall with the same easy pride he's shown every other room, "is simply a storage space. Nothing of interest to you, I'm afraid."

I stop walking. The scent coming from behind that door is anything but ordinary storage, and every instinct I own tells me I have just found exactly what I came looking for.

"Alpha Silas," Torin says quickly, stepping half in front of me, "I assure you there's nothing behind that door worth your time. Perhaps we should return to the office and finish our discussion properly."

"I've already seen your office," I say, not moving. "I'd like to see this instead."

His smile falters for the first time since we left the study. It's a small thing, barely a flicker, but I've spent years learning to read the exact moment a man realizes he's about to lose control of a room. That moment is happening now, right in front of me.

"It's only storage," he repeats, and this time his voice has lost some of its polish.

Ronan is no longer simply pacing. He's pressed hard against the inside of my chest now, every sense straining toward that door, certain in a way I can't yet explain to myself in words. Whatever waits behind it, my wolf already knows it matters more than anything else in this house.

I reach for the handle before Torin can find a way to steer me elsewhere, some part of me already certain of what I'll find, and another part hoping, foolishly, that I'm wrong.