Rebirth Of The Lost Heiress

Chapter 9

Ryder

I hadn’t planned to stay in this region a single day longer than the summit required.

That wasn't new. I never planned to stay longer than required anywhere. Regional pack summits were one of the few things in my life that I had genuinely never found a way to make useful, no matter how many I sat through or how carefully I paid attention to what people said and what they meant.

Every summit was always so similar. Pack Alphas arrived, sat down, said things that sounded reasonable but meant very little, agreed to things they had already decided they weren't going to do, and went home feeling like they had accomplished something.

I had been doing this for fifteen years.

By the end of the second day, I could have written out every remaining conversation in advance and been right about ninety percent of it. By the end of the third day, my bags were packed. My Beta, Nathan, had the car arranged and confirmed the route. Mentally, I’d already moved on to all the things that needed my attention back home.

Then Nathan came back into the room and placed a picture on the table in front of me.

A girl, standing in an academy courtyard in the middle of a crowd. She had long black hair and a straight posture, with her arms held loosely at her sides. In the picture, the people around her had their mouths open, eyes wide, bodies turned toward something that had clearly just happened. She looked like she hadn't noticed any of them. Her face was completely flat, not empty or confused. She just looked like she’d made a decision and was completely comfortable with it.

I felt something shift deeper in my body, and the instinct that I had spent fifteen years learning to take seriously sharpened. It didn’t happen because I was looking for reasons to act on it, but because in fifteen years it hadn’t once been wrong. It was the feeling of something important being very close.

"Who is she?" I said.

"She’s a student at the Werewolf Academy," Nathan said. "She broke a classmate's nose this morning with one clean punch, then went back to her seat." He paused for a moment. "Over a book, apparently."

I looked at the picture. "Why was this brought to me?"

"She's supposedly Adrian's fiancée."

I looked up from the picture.

Adrian was my nephew. I loved the boy genuinely, even though he was the type of person who kept wading into deep water without checking how deep it went first. He was warm and well-meaning and he had a good heart, but he was also almost entirely unable to tell when someone was working an angle on him. It was his one reliable weakness. That and the fact that he never asked enough questions about the things that were important.

"Supposedly?” I repeated.

"The engagement is falling apart," Nathan replied. "She tried to end it publicly a few days ago. From what I hear, she made it very clear." He folded his hands. "And there's one more thing." He tapped the edge of the picture once. "The description matches..."

I went still.

Nathan met my eyes. "The woman from the woods," he finished.

The woman from the woods…

Three weeks ago, I had taken a bad hit during a night scout—my fault because my judgment call had been wrong—and by the time I made it past the tree line I was already getting weak.

I remembered the ground. The cold. The sky through the trees. And then a pair of steady hands working on the wound without hesitation. She hadn’t panicked or asked stupid questions. She didn’t stand there frozen because of what I was and what that meant and what might happen to them if they made a wrong move.

She had been completely calm as she worked on me.

I had been furious about that, somewhere in the part of my brain that was still mostly conscious. I was also aware, in that same vague way, that I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

"You're sure?" I said.

"Not completely," Nathan said. "But the description is consistent. Small, dark-haired, fast, knew exactly what she was doing with the injury. And she left before anyone could get a clear look at her." He paused. "Which is a choice someone makes on purpose."

I looked at the picture again.

Those eyes… Even in a still image taken in a courtyard full of people reacting to something she had just done, she still looked like she was already calculating her next move. Like she’d already dismissed whatever had just happened, and moved on to what came after.

She had treated me like a normal person, not a king, a threat, or someone to be afraid of.

I had found that infuriating. I also found that I respected it in a way I couldn't quite shake.

"Cancel the car trip back home," I said.

Nathan blinked. Just once. "Sir?"

"Set up a meeting with the Moonshine pack Alpha." I set the picture down, then picked it back up. "Arrange it for today if there's still time. If not, first thing tomorrow." I paused, still looking at the photo. "And I want everything you have on his daughter, including her family history, pack history, what she's been doing in the last three weeks, who she talks to, and who trained her, because someone did, and I want to know who."

Nathan nodded once and left quietly.

I sat alone in the room.

The car was waiting. I had a lot of things that needed my attention. The summit was over and there was nothing left here worth staying for.

Except…

I looked at the picture one more time.

Who exactly was she? This girl who broke bones over books, tried to end a royal engagement in public, and worked on a fatal wound in the woods like she had been doing it her whole life?

Who was she, and what had she been looking for when she walked into the woods that day? And why did something in the back of my mind keep insisting that whatever she was involved in was connected to things that were much larger than a broken engagement and a schoolyard fight?

I set the picture down on the table face-up.

Then I realized, somewhat to my own surprise, that I was looking forward to finding out.