Chapter 155 Seeds Of A Perfect Lies
Chapter 146
"King Xavier!"
The words jumped out of my mouth before I could stop them. Like a frog leaping out of a pond.
My heart knocked hard against my chest. Once. Twice. Three times.
We stared at each other. His eyes were red. Not the soft red of a rose. The dark, burning red of hot coal pulled straight from a fire. The kind that could burn a hole through anything it touched. A thick vein ran up the side of his neck, rising and falling like a rope pulled too tight. I searched my mind quickly, turning it upside down the way you turn a bag looking for something lost. What had I done? What had I done to make the most powerful king in alpha Dominion's pack look at me this way?
I had known King Xavier for many years. Many, many years. I had watched him in his good days. Watched him laugh. Watched him settle fights between warriors twice my size. Watched him sit on his throne like a mountain that nothing could move.
But this?
This was something I had never seen before.
His whole body shook. Not the small shaking of someone standing in cold weather. The deep, heavy shaking of a man holding back a storm inside him. He reminded me of a polar bear that had just been poked with a sharp stick. Big. Dangerous. Ready to destroy everything around it.
He did not speak right away.
He just breathed.
In. Out.
Then he started moving. Back and forth across the stone floor of the cell, like a lion that had been locked inside a cage too small for its size. His feet hit the ground with heavy, deliberate steps. Each step said something his mouth had not yet said.
I watched him move. My fingers felt cold. My throat felt dry.
Then he stopped.
He turned around slowly and faced me. His eyes found mine and held them the way a hand holds a throat.
"What evil have you done," he said, and his voice came out low and rough, like gravel being dragged across stone, "that made you play a part in the killing of my only daughter?"
I blinked. Once.
"I do not know what you are talking about, King Xavier."
My voice came out steadier than I felt inside. I was proud of that small thing.
He said nothing. He simply turned and walked toward me. Each step slow. Each step certain. Like a man who already knew where he was going and was in no rush to get there because the destination was not going anywhere.
Then he raised his hand and slammed something against my chest.
A note.
The paper crinkled under the pressure of his palm. I grabbed it before it could fall. My eyes dropped to the words written on it. Small, neat handwriting. Careful handwriting. The kind of handwriting that belongs to someone who thinks before they write. Someone who chooses every word the way a person chooses a weapon.
My breath stopped inside my chest like a bird frozen mid-flight.
Madam Ravenna.
That foolish, greedy, loose-tongued woman.
I had paid her. I had paid her more money than most people in this pack would ever see in three lifetimes. I had pressed the coins into her palms myself and watched her fingers close around them. I had trusted that gold to buy her silence. And yet, before she vanished like smoke on a windy day, she had found a way to leave this. This letter. This small dangerous paper now trembling slightly in my hands.
I read every word. Slowly. Carefully. The way you read something you are hoping will say something different from what it actually says.
But then something caught my attention. Something that made my heart slow down just a little.
She had not said my name.
Madam Ravenna, for all her sneaking and scheming, had not written my name inside this letter. She had only said that the king knew who the guilty person was. She had pointed a finger without pointing a finger. She had spoken without truly speaking.
They were using Caramel's death as a trap. A net thrown into water to see what fish would swim into it.
I understand now.
My breath moved again. Slowly at first. Then more steadily.
I did not let the relief show on my face. I was smarter than that.
Instead, I let my eyes go soft. I let my shoulders fall forward just a little, the way they fall when something heavy sits on top of them. I reached deep inside myself and found the place where real tears are made, and I borrowed from it. I was good at this. Better than most people knew.
"I swear, Alpha King," I said, and my voice cracked right on the word swear, cracked like dry wood splitting in two, "may I never see the sunrise again if I had any knowledge of who killed Astra."
The tears came then. They rolled down my face slowly. Real enough to look real. Heavy enough to feel real.
"Astra was my blood," I said. "She was my flesh. The only she-wolf I knew who carried my heir inside her. The only one who gave me something to look forward to. Something to live for."
And as the words left my mouth, I realized with a strange, cold shock that some part of them was not a lie. Astra had been those things. Truly. She had been everything Rosa was not. Steady. Sharp. Loyal in her own fierce way.
Rosa.
Even now, even locked inside this dark cell with the most dangerous king in the land standing over me with fire in his eyes, my mind went to her. That wicked, reckless, beautiful disaster of a woman. Even now, some stubborn part of me was wrapping itself around her name like a hand around a flame, holding on even while burning.
How would it sound, I thought, if King Xavier knew the truth? That it was Rosa who had taken Caramel from him. His only daughter. His only begotten child. The one he had given his whole heart to.
The thought was too big to hold. I pushed it down.
"The omega," King Xavier said suddenly, cutting through my tears like a blade, "the one you ordered your guards to dispose of. She was not the killer, was she? That is why you removed her. She knew too much about you."
I let out a small, broken laugh. The kind of laugh that sits right next to a sob. I wiped my face with the back of my hand and shook my head slowly.
"I swear to the goddess of this land," I said. I paused. I swallowed. There was something thick and bitter sitting at the back of my throat. I forced it down. "What happened with the omega had nothing to do with Astra. That was a separate matter. A private shame. A misunderstanding between the two of us that went too far."
I looked down at the ground and let the silence sit for a moment before I continued.
"This is not Stormfang, my king. I am already far from home. Already hiding from eyes that would love to see me fall. If word reached Jax, the one who stole my seat, that I had run from my duties and buried myself in another pack's affairs, he would use it. He would sharpen it into a knife and slide it right into my position without blinking. Everything I have left will be gone."
I looked up at him then. Slowly. Letting him see my eyes clearly.
"Instructing my guards had nothing to do with Astra's death. Nothing. I swear it on everything I have left to swear on."
King Xavier did not answer immediately. He stood very still. His chest rose and fell. The fire in his eyes did not disappear, but it shifted slightly. Like a flame that has found less wind.
I could feel my words landing somewhere inside him. Not softly. But landing.
Then he spoke.
"I am not stopping here," he said. His voice was quieter now, but the quietness of it was more frightening than the shouting. "I am going to write to your father. Everything you have done in this pack, he will know it. Because if something is not done, you will turn this place into a graveyard."
Something cold dropped through my stomach.
"Please," I said quickly. I pressed my hands together even though they ached. Even though my wrists were sore and stiff. I pressed them together anyway. "Please, Alpha King. Do not do that. You know what it would mean. You know what it would cost me."
"That is my final decision," he said firmly. "I will not allow you to poison the friendship I have with your father. He will be the one to decide what happens to you."
He turned away from me. He walked toward the iron gate at the front of the cell. His feet came down on the stone floor with a force that echoed up the walls and into the ceiling above my head.
The gate slammed shut behind him.
The sound rang out like something final. Like the closing of a heavy book.
And then there was silence.
I breathed out. Long and slow. I pressed the back of my palm against my forehead and then dragged it down my face, wiping away what remained of my borrowed tears.
And then, slowly, a smile began to spread across my face.
I had won.
My lies had found every soft place inside him and settled there like seeds. I had not expected it to work so cleanly. So perfectly. But it had.
The most important thing was that Rosa was safe. That foolish, dangerous, ungrateful Rosa was safe. She would never know what I had endured inside this cold, dark cell for her sake. She would never know what I had risked. What I had said. What I had swallowed and smiled through.
And as for King Xavier's letter to my father, I could already see it arriving. I could already see my father's face as he read it. There would be no punishment from that direction. My father would demand my release, bring me home, and then deal with me
behind closed doors in his own way. Not the way King Xavier imagined. Not even close.
The letter would land, and it would land dead.