The Warden Wore No Mark

CHAPTER FOUR

Serene POV.

Priya led me to the garden behind the pack house my old garden, the bench I used to disappear to during pack gatherings when nobody quite knew what to say to the Luna who couldn't give her Alpha an heir.

She didn't sit right away. She stood at the edge of the roses, arms wrapped around herself, and for a moment I thought she'd lost whatever nerve had carried her down the hallway.

"You have to understand something about this pack," she said finally. "Nothing here is simple. Not me. Not you. Not even Elena, though God knows she's earned every bit of what's coming to her.”

"Priya." I kept my voice gentle, the way I would with a witness who might bolt if pushed too hard. "What did you come to tell me?"

She was quiet for a long moment, watching the last light go copper over the training yard.

"I filed the grievance," she said. "The one that sent you here."

That landed harder than I expected. I'd assumed it came from a healer, a Council contact, someone with clinical access to my old records.

"Why?"

"Because I've watched this pack destroy people for two years, and I couldn't do it anymore from the inside without saying something." Her jaw tightened. "I filed it anonymously. I buried it in enough legal language that it would go to Regional instead of getting quietly dismissed at intake, because I know exactly how this family handles things it doesn't want looked at too closely."

"You could have told me directly."

"I didn't know if I could trust you yet." She finally looked at me, and there was something raw and unguarded in it that I hadn't seen from her before, not once, not even on the steps two hours ago. "I still don't, entirely. But you're the only person who's ever walked back into this house and made Elena Ashwood's hands shake. That's worth something."

I filed that away, careful, the way I filed everything now.

"There's more," I said. It wasn't a question.

Priya's arms tightened around herself.

"There's more," she agreed. "But I'm not ready to say all of it yet. Not until I know it won't destroy the one good thing that's come out of any of this." Her eyes went, briefly, toward the house, toward wherever her son had been taken for his evening meal. "I need you to trust that I'll tell you when it's safe. Not before."

I wanted to push. Every trained instinct I had told me to push, to ask the follow-up question, to not let a witness leave a room with information half-given.

I didn't push. Because something in the careful, frightened way she held herself reminded me too much of my own reflection, two years ago, deciding how much of my own truth I could afford to hand to people who might use it against me.

"Okay," I said instead. "When you're ready."

Relief moved through her whole body, visible, like something unclenching.

"Thank you," she said. And then, quieter, almost to herself: "You're not what I expected."

"What did you expect?"

"Someone bitter." A small, humorless smile. "Someone who'd want to burn this whole house down and everyone standing in it, including me."

"I might still," I said, and something about the honesty of it made her laugh short, surprised, the first real sound I'd heard out of her since I arrived.

We sat with that for a moment, two women who should have hated each other by every rule the pack house had ever taught, finding something that felt almost like the beginning of an alliance instead.

Then Priya's head turned, sharp, toward the house.

"That's Elena's voice," she said. "She's found out I came looking for you."

I stood too fast, one hand going to the small of my back. Through the open study window above us, I could hear it Elena's voice, sharp and rising, and under it, Kane's, lower, harder, matching her word for word.

I couldn't make out most of it. Just fragments, carried loose on the evening air.

"No right to interrogate this family."

"She has every right, Mother, she's a Warden."

And then, clear enough to stop my heart in my chest, four words that reached the garden like they'd been aimed there on purpose.

"Ask your precious Warden."

Priya went white.

"She's going to tell him something," she whispered. "Before you're ready. Before I'm ready."

I was already moving toward the house, heart hammering, the careful, patient Warden I'd trained myself to be for two years losing ground fast to something rawer underneath it.

Because whatever Elena was about to say next, I had the sick, certain feeling it wasn't going to be the truth.

It was going to be whatever version of the truth kept her standing the longest.