MARKED BY THE ALPHA I WAS TOLD TO FEAR

Chapter 3

Ronan's POV

I've smelled a lot of things I couldn't explain in twenty-seven years of being an Alpha. I've smelled fear so thick it curdled a room, grief that clung to a person for months after the funeral was over, the particular rot of a lie right before someone tells it.

I have never, not once, smelled anything like whatever just walked out of that stairwell.

"Alpha, I really must protest..." Garrick Thornhollow is still talking. I've stopped listening to him somewhere around the fourth excuse, which is a personal best for how long I usually let a man dig his own grave before I stop him.

"Sit down," I tell him, once we're in his study and the door's shut. Not a suggestion.

He sits.

I don't. I need the room, need to move, because whatever just happened in that hallway is still sitting under my skin like static, and pacing is the only thing keeping me from doing something rash, like turning around and going straight back out to find her.

"Tell me about the girl," I say.

"Wren. She's a distant relative, actually, if you want the full picture. Our parents passed away some years back; I took her in out of obligation more than..."

"You called her staff five minutes ago."

His mouth works for a second. "She does work in the house. It seemed simpler."

"Nothing about that was simple." I stopped pacing and looked at him directly, and I watched him flinch under it, which tells me more than any answer he's given me so far. "What's her bloodline?"

"I'm not sure if I understand the question, Alpha."

"You understand it fine. I've caught a thousand scents in my life, wolves and humans and everything in between, and I have never caught one like that. So either you tell me what she is, or I find out myself, and I promise you, you'd rather it is the first option."

He goes pale under the study's low light, and for a second, just a second, I see something underneath the charm that looks almost like fear of something other than me. Like there's a story here bigger than a servant with a bruised wrist, and he's terrified of where it goes if he starts pulling the thread.

"She's nobody," he says finally, and it comes out too fast, too desperate to be anything but a lie. "She's not part of the contract, Alpha. She's not part of this. I'd ask that you leave her out of your business here entirely."

"That's interesting," I say, "because until about ten minutes ago, I didn't have any business involving her at all."

"And now?"

I think about the way she froze in that stairwell, like she'd trained her whole body to disappear. I think about the bruise she tried to hide and the flinch when her brother raised his voice. I think about that scent, layered under fear and old blood and cheap soap, something ancient and half-buried that called to something in my own chest I didn't know was still capable of answering.

"Now," I say, "I think you and I are going to have a much longer conversation than either of us planned. Starting with why the girl you just called nobody has a scent I haven't caught anywhere in this region in twenty-seven years."

Garrick doesn't answer. But his hands, folded in his lap, are shaking, and that tells me everything his mouth won't.

"The contract," he says finally, changing direction so fast I almost respect the attempt. "Alpha, surely we should discuss the border terms while you're here. I've had my people draw up..."

"I don't care about the border terms right now."

"You came here for the border terms."

"I came here for a lot of reasons." I sit down across from him, finally, because looming over a man rarely gets you the truth; it just gets you a better performance of fear. "Tell me about your parents."

Something shutters behind his eyes. "I don't see what that has to do with..."

"Humor me."

"They died. Six years ago. It was a tragedy." He says the word tragedy like it's something he's practiced saying, smooth and hollow, the way you'd describe a stranger's loss rather than your own.

"How?"

"Does it matter?"

"It does if it's connected to why your sister flinches every time you raise your voice."

His jaw goes tight. "She's not my sister. Not, not really. Distant family, as I said."

"You called her Wren Thornhollow five minutes ago."

"A courtesy. She was raised in this house."

I let the silence stretch, because silence does more work than most people give it credit for. Garrick fills it the way guilty men always do, talking just to have something to hide behind.

"Look," he says. "Whatever you think you smelled, whatever's got you asking about my parents, it's not relevant to our business today. She's dealt with. She's handled. There's no need for the Alpha of Ravencross to concern himself with a servant's paperwork."

"Paperwork," I repeat.

"Figure of speech."

"You said dealt with. Like she's a problem you solved." I watched that land, watched him realize what he'd said a half a second too late to take it back. "What was she before you dealt with her, Thornhollow?"

He doesn't answer that one either. Instead, he stands, smooths his jacket, puts the charm back on like a coat he'd only taken off for a minute. "I think we should reconvene tomorrow, Alpha, once you've had time to rest from your travels. This conversation seems to have gotten away from its purpose."

I could push. I have the rank to push, the size to push, every advantage a man like Garrick Thornhollow understands in his bones even when he's too proud to say it out loud. But pushing a coward just makes him lie faster, and I've gotten more out of him in ten minutes of letting him talk than I would out of an hour of threats.

"Fine," I say, standing. "Tomorrow."

Relief moves through him so visibly it's almost embarrassing to watch. He starts toward the door like the conversation is over, like he's won something, and I let him get halfway there before I speak again.

"One more thing."

He stops.

"The girl doesn't work tonight."

"Excuse me?"

"Wren. Whatever chores you have planned for her, she doesn't do them tonight. Consider it a condition of tomorrow's negotiation going well." I keep my voice even, keep it reasonable, the way you'd discuss any other term of a contract, because I know exactly how much weight sits under a request like that when it comes from someone who could burn his whole pack down and call it self-defense. "I trust that's not a problem."

Garrick's smile didn't reach anywhere near his eyes. "Of course, Alpha. Whatever you'd like."

He leaves. I stand alone in a study that smells like old money and older lies, and underneath both of those, faint but unmistakable, the last trailing thread of that scent, the one that stopped me cold in a hallway and hasn't let go of my chest since.

I don't know what Wren Thornhollow is yet. I don't know what her brother did to bury it, or why he's so afraid of me finding out, or what it means that something in my own blood sat up and took notice the second I caught her scent, like it recognized something it hadn't smelled since I was a boy watching my mother's territory burn.

But I know this house is built on a lie thick enough to choke on.

My eyes catch on the desk before Garrick's even fully out the door. A ledger, half-shoved under a stack of correspondence like someone meant to hide it and ran out of time. I wait until his footsteps fade down the hall before I flip it open, and I almost wish I hadn't.

It isn't a business ledger. It's a record of payments. Small ones, monthly, going out to three different names I don't recognize, starting almost exactly six years ago and never once missing a month since. Beside the earliest entry, in handwriting too careful to be anything but deliberate, someone has written two words that make my blood run cold.

For silence.

And whatever Garrick Thornhollow thinks he's protecting himself from, he's about to find out that the man he's protecting it from doesn't leave a room until he has the whole truth in his hands.

I'm still standing there, working through it, when I catch a second scent under the door, softer, quicker, gone almost before I place it.

She was listening.

Good, I think, surprising myself with how little I mind. Let her hear that I'm not her brother. Let her hear that somebody, for once, is asking the right questions about what's been done to her.

I have a feeling it's going to take a while before she believes it. But I've got time. I'm not planning on being anywhere else until I understand exactly what I found in that hallway, and exactly what I'm going to do about it.