Something in the air
945 Words
Sara's p.o.v
I did not sleep.
I sat on the edge of the bed with that photograph in my hands and I turned it over twice and looked at it and thought very carefully about what it meant.
Someone in this pack had this photo and had placed it where I would find it. Not Caden. He had not touched that cabinet long enough. But someone had been in that office before him, or after him, and they had left me a message.
We know.
I put the photo in my bag. Kept my face neutral. Started the next day.
"He keeps watching you."
Lena said it cheerfully, sliding into the chair across my desk like we had been friends for years.
"He is managing an assessment of his pack," I said. "It would be strange if he was not paying attention."
"There is paying attention and then there is what he is doing."
I closed my laptop. "Lena. I am here for six weeks. That is all this is."
She gave a small shrug that said she was not convinced. "The patrol lead is ready for you."
She stood, moved to the door, then paused.
"For what is it's worth," she said, "I think you are the first person who has walked in here in years who makes him uncertain. He has been very certain about very wrong things for a long time."
She left before I could respond.
The morning patrol walk was the best part of the day.
I walked the eastern perimeter with Finn, the patrol lead, twenty-two and eager, and I asked questions and took notes and let the cold mountain air clear my head.
We were halfway down the northern line when the wind shifted.
Just slightly. Just enough.
His scent hit me like a door opening in a room I had locked years ago. Pine and something darker. Rain on stone. The unmistakable warmth of an Alpha that your blood files under dangerous and yours in the same breath, because the bond does not care if you have healed or not. It just responds.
I stopped walking.
"Strategist Ash?" Finn turned.
"Say that again, the east patrol runs every six hours?"
"Every eight, actually. Alpha Vale changed it last year after..."
He kept talking.
I stopped hearing him.
Because Caden was coming through the trees forty metres ahead.
Dark clothes. No jacket. Three senior wolves flanked him. He was mid-sentence with one of them and then he was not, because the wind had shifted and he had gone very still.
His head came up slowly.
Like an animal testing the air.
His gaze cut straight to me across the open ground.
My wolf surged hard. I caught her, held her, breathed.
The look on his face was something I could not name. Not full recognition. But close. Something raw and confused and searching.
I looked back at my notepad.
"Every eight hours," I said to Finn. "The north-west overlap needs to go in the report. What's next?"
I did not look back.
Dinner in the great hall was communal three nights a week.
I sat at the end of a long table with Lena and two staff members and told myself it was just a room. But the noise, the voices, the laughter and warmth, lived in my body before it reached my head. I had grown up eating at the edge of spaces like this.
Never quite at the centre. Always just near enough to feel the warmth without fully belonging there.
Across the hall, Caden sat at the head of the main table.
Beside him was Vivienne Croft.
Pale, sharp-featured, precisely beautiful. She had her hand on his arm and her head tilted toward him. He was listening to her the way a man fulfils an obligation he has stopped questioning.
I pulled my eyes away.
Then Vivienne looked up.
Straight at me. Not a general scan of the room. Directly at me, like she had known exactly where I was sitting before she looked.
A slow smile.
I held her gaze for one flat second. Then I looked at my plate.
I was almost at the door when her hand closed around my arm.
"Strategist Ash. I don't think we've been properly introduced. I'm Vivienne."
"I know who you are."
"Of course." She tilted her head. "Forgive me, but you seem so familiar. Have we met before this week?"
"I don't think so."
"Hm, perhaps not." She let go of my arm. "Enjoy your evening. I hope you find Silverstone comfortable."
She walked away.
I watched her go and I understood clearly that was not a polite introduction.
That was a warning.
Back in my room, I called Mara.
"Vivienne Croft knows something," I said. "I don't know how much yet."
A pause. "Do you want to come home?"
I thought about the patrol gaps. The broken chain of command. The young wolves with nowhere to take their concerns.
"Not yet. I will be careful."
"He doesn't know yet right?" she said quietly.
"He doesn't"
"How long do you think that lasts?"
I looked at the mountain through the window, and the moon, not quite full, but getting there.
"I don't know," I said honestly.
I ended the call.
Picked up the old photograph from my bag.
Looked at my eighteen-year-old face looking at someone just outside the frame.
There was a small mark at the back of the photograph I had not noticed the night before. Neat handwriting. Three words, the same as the blocked number.
I remember you.
Same words.
My blood went cold.
This was not Vivienne.
This was someone else entirely.
- Writer
