Chapter 86 What Simone knows
Maddie POV
Elara was sitting on my bed when I got back to the dorm and the look on her face told me she had something to say before I even closed the door.
"Where have you been?" she asked.
"Outside with Calix," I said, dropping onto my chair. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong exactly but I have to tell you something and I need you to stay calm when I do."
"Elara."
"Simone set up the wolfsbane trap," she said. "I heard her on the phone with her father. She was in the hallway outside the common room and I don't think she knew I was on the other side of the wall."
I sat up straight. "What did she say exactly?"
"She said the obstacle course was handled and that the wolf didn't die but it didn't matter because it sent a clear message," Elara told me.
"Then she laughed and said something about how accidents happen to wolves who don't know their place."
Something cold moved through me but I kept my voice steady. "She actually said that?"
"Word for word," Elara said. "I stood there and listened to the whole thing. She told her father the wolfsbane was placed at the third marker and that she had someone on the inside do it for her so nothing would trace back to her."
I was already on my feet. "Which building is she in right now?"
"Maddie, sit down."
"She tried to kill me, Elara."
"I know that," Elara said, and she stood up too. "But if you walk over there right now and start something she's going to flip it. You know how she operates.
By the time she's done talking you'll be the one who looks unstable and she'll walk away clean."
I stopped near the door because she was right and I hated it. "So we just do nothing?"
"We do something smart," Elara said.
"We need proof that she can't talk her way out of. Something in writing or a witness who isn't just me because you know the Alpha isn't going to take my word over the beta's daughter."
I turned around and sat back down.
My hands were tight in my lap. "So what do we do?"
"We make her show herself," Elara said. "She's calculating but she's also proud. If she thinks you have something on her she won't be able to help herself. She'll move."
"You want to bait her."
"I want to give her a reason to come to us," Elara said. "We let it slip that you found something. Evidence about the obstacle course.
Something physical that you're planning to bring to the Alpha. She hears that and she's going to want to get to it before you do."
I thought about it. "And when she moves to get it we catch her in the act."
"Exactly," Elara said. "We just have to make the story convincing enough that it reaches her ears fast."
"That part won't be hard," I said.
"This school talks. If I mention it to the right person it'll get to her before lights out."
"That's what I was thinking," Elara said. "There's a girl in our study group who's friendly with one of Simone's cheerleaders. One casual comment is enough."
We spent the next hour working out the details and by the time we were done I felt slightly better but not fully.
The plan was solid but Simone wasn't stupid and there was always a chance she'd see through it or find a way to turn it around. Still, sitting and waiting wasn't something I was willing to do either.
After Elara left I got ready for bed but sleep didn't come. I lay on my back staring at the ceiling and going over everything in my head. Simone had someone on the inside which meant it wasn't just her.
Someone who knew the training schedule and the course layout well enough to plant wolfsbane at the exact right marker helped her. That was a bigger problem than just Simone acting alone.
The mark on my neck went warm somewhere around midnight and I reached up and pressed my fingers against it without thinking. It did that sometimes, a steady kind of warmth that came from nowhere, and I always knew without being told that it meant Calix was thinking about me.
The bond passed things like that between us without either of us choosing it.
I dropped my hand back down.
I didn't want it to mean anything to me but it did and that was the part I couldn't fix. He had just spent an hour telling me about his curse and his dead brother and the two pack members he lost and somewhere underneath all of that I heard what he wasn't saying out loud.
That he cared. That the distance he kept wasn't indifference. That it cost him something too.
But caring about someone and actually choosing them were two different things and Calix had shown me more than once which one he was better at.
The mark pulsed again and I turned onto my side so I was facing the wall.
"Stop," I said quietly, to nobody in particular.
It didn't stop. It stayed warm and steady against my skin for a long time and I lay there feeling it and being annoyed at myself for not minding it as much as I should have.
I thought about what Elara said about Simone and then I thought about Calix and his father and the framed image of the white wolf I had heard about from another student who said it was somewhere in the pack house.
Everything in this place was connected to something else and I was only seeing pieces of it.
Eventually the warmth faded and the mark went quiet and I closed my eyes.
Tomorrow we would set the bait and wait for Simone to take it and whatever happened after that I would handle then.
I was done being the one things happened to.