Chapter4
1262 Words
Adrian
The gate was still open.
I walked through it slowly.
The house was dark except for the light coming from the hallway. Lena stood just inside the doorway, watching me.
She looked surprised.
Annoyed, too.
Fair.
I stopped a few feet away.
“You said fine.”
“I said you could drive.”
Her eyebrows lifted.
“I didn’t say I’d stop watching.”
It was a reasonable answer.
It was also only partly true.
I wasn’t following her. I was checking the house.
Making sure it was safe.
At least, that was the explanation I was willing to give myself.
My wolf hadn’t helped.
Follow her.
I ignored him.
Lena folded her arms.
“You followed me?”
“I stayed behind you.”
“That sounds exactly like following.”
I looked past her into the house.
“The gate was open.”
“So?”
“So you said you were fine.”
“I am fine.”
I looked at her.
She sighed.
“You really don’t know when to leave things alone, do you?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Something shifted in her expression.
Not quite a smile.
Then she stepped aside.
“Five minutes.”
I walked in.
The first thing I noticed was the silence.
The second was the smell.
I stopped.
It was faint.
Old.
Buried underneath ordinary things—the food left on the table, the furniture, the lingering scent of cooking oil and soap.
But it was there.
Wolf.
My body went still before I could stop it.
Not Lena.
Something else.
The scent had settled around the kitchen chair beside the dining table. It was days old, maybe more.
I looked at the half-eaten plate on the table.
The food on it looked like it had been sitting for hours.
“What’s wrong?”
Lena’s voice came from behind me.
I looked at her.
“Nothing I can explain.”
She didn’t believe me.
Her eyes moved to the chair, then back to my face.
“You stopped.”
“I noticed something.”
“What?”
I hesitated.
The scent was old enough that it couldn’t tell me who had been here tonight.
But it was strong enough to tell me that someone had been here before.
Someone who wasn’t human.
I wasn’t ready to tell Lena everything.
But I didn’t see a reason to lie about the part I could explain.
“There was someone here.”
Her expression changed.
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
That was the truth.
She looked around the kitchen.
“You can smell that?”
I met her eyes.
“Yes.”
She went quiet.
Her gaze dropped to the floor for a moment before returning to me.
“So there was a wolf here?”
“Probably.”
“Probably?”
“The scent is old.”
“How old?”
“Days. Maybe longer.”
Her eyes moved toward the chair again.
Someone had been in this house before tonight.
Someone she hadn’t known about.
She looked back at me.
“You really can smell things other people can’t.”
“Yes.”
She looked away.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then she glanced toward the plate.
“It was cold.”
I looked at her.
“How long ago?”
“I don’t know. I only noticed when I came in.”
I nodded.
That was more useful.
The food hadn’t been abandoned moments ago.
Neither had the scent.
Lena walked toward the hallway.
“I should check my aunt’s room.”
I followed her.
The room was neat.
Too neat.
The bed was made.
A pair of worn slippers sat beside it, one slightly turned toward the door.
I looked at them.
They were old.
The kind of slippers someone kept wearing because replacing them seemed unnecessary.
Something about the sight caught me off guard.
Maybe because it was the first thing in the house that made Amira feel like a real person rather than a missing piece of a puzzle.
Lena noticed me looking.
“She wears those every day.”
I nodded.
“She complains when I tell her to buy new ones.”
There was something almost fond in her voice.
I looked at Lena.
She was standing beside the bed, looking at the slippers.
For a moment, she seemed younger than she had at the cemetery.
Not helpless.
Just tired.
My wolf was quiet.
That was worse.
Usually he had something to say about her.
About her scent.
About her proximity.
About the bond I was still refusing to name aloud.
Now he said nothing.
I didn’t know why.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
Lena sat on the edge of the bed.
“I’ve spent my whole life thinking I knew my aunt.”
I said nothing.
“I know she has secrets. Everyone has secrets. But this…” She looked toward the doorway. “She left without taking anything.”
I watched her carefully.
“You said she left a note. What did it say?”
Her eyes moved to mine.
“Nothing that helps.”
She was lying.
I knew it now.
Her face had changed the moment I’d asked.
Not much.
But enough.
I could have pushed.
I didn’t.
My phone rang.
Marcus.
I stepped into the hallway before answering.
“Tell me.”
His voice was quiet.
“We need to talk.”
“About Elias?”
“No.”
I waited.
“The symbol on the girl’s necklace. I saw it at the cemetery.”
My attention shifted toward the room where Lena was sitting.
“What about it?”
“I remembered something.”
“What?”
“My father used to talk about it. He served your family for thirty years. He called them the Valerians.”
The name meant nothing.
But the symbol did.
The photograph came back.
My father’s study.
The old stone building.
The symbol.
His hand taking the photograph from mine.
Forget you saw this.
I had forgotten the photograph for fifteen years, until tonight.
“How much did he know?”
“Not enough to tell me everything.”
I waited.
“My father was a senior warrior during that period. I was nineteen then. Too junior to be told anything important. Most of what I know came from what he said years later.”
“What did he say?”
“That they were an old bloodline. That their symbol meant something to the old Alphas.”
I looked toward Amira’s room.
“What else?”
“He never gave me a full story. But if that symbol is on the girl’s necklace, I think you need to hear the rest.”
“Not over the phone.”
“I agree.”
“When?”
“As soon as you can.”
I ended the call.
I walked back into the room.
Lena looked up.
“What happened?”
“Someone from my pack needs to speak with me.”
“About what?”
I hesitated.
“The cemetery.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie.
Just not the whole truth.
She looked away.
“Of course.”
I glanced once more around the room.
The worn slippers.
The empty house.
The old scent lingering in the kitchen.
And Lena, sitting on the edge of her aunt’s bed with a warning she refused to show me.
She was hiding a note. I was hiding a name: Valerian. Neither of us said so.
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