I don’t remember walking back into the house. I remember standing in the clearing with Maren’s words hanging in the air, and then I remember sitting in the same small sitting room that had hosted every hard truth this estate had handed me so far, Selene across from me with her hands folded and an expression I hadn’t seen on her before — not the composed authority she wore like a second skin, but something closer to guilt.
“You knew,” I said. Not an accusation, not yet. Just a fact I needed confirmed before I could decide how to feel about it.
“I suspected,” Selene said carefully. “The moment I said your name in the courtyard that first day. Morse isn’t a common surname in wolf circles, and something about your face — I told myself it was coincidence. I told myself a great many things tha
