Chapter 187 THE SHADOW WEARING MY FACE
Chapter 184
Rosa's POV
Lyra didn't shake. She didn't cry. She didn't even blink.
She just turned around, slow and easy, like someone who had already decided everything long before this moment.
"Fine. I will pack all my things and leave tonight."
That was it. Five words. Clean and flat, like a door closing softly.
I had expected a fight. I had wanted one, actually. I had been ready to enjoy watching her scratch and beg and plead. But she gave me nothing. No tears to enjoy. No shaking hands to laugh at.
And that told me everything.
If Leo had fought that hard to send those pictures, risking everything, burning bridges just to get that information to me, then whatever he was protecting had already been destroyed.
Jax was gone.
I was sure of it now, in the way you are sure of something you feel in your stomach before your brain catches up.
I walked back to my room and shut the door behind me.
I peeled off my clothes slowly and stepped into the shower. The water ran down my face and neck and arms, warm and steady, and I stood under it like a statue, thinking.
What do I do now?
The options lined up in my mind one after another, like soldiers waiting to be chosen.
Do I send for Ryder? Tell him the road is clear, that the throne is sitting empty and waiting, that the man who stood between him and that crown is no longer breathing? Ryder would jump for joy. But I would not do that especially how he had been sleeping with caramel at my back. I was fighting both tooth and nail for him to claim this throne.
If Ryder have access to the throne, like he has been dreaming all his life. He would sleep and impregnate all the young omega not only in the palace but in the pack.
Do I go straight to Alpha Vexhood and break the news myself, so I'm the first voice in his ear when everything changes?
Or do I say nothing? Do I keep my mouth shut and move quietly, the way water moves around a stone, finding every gap, filling every space, until somehow I am the one sitting at the top?
That last thought spread through my chest like warm honey.
Me. On that throne.
My head swelled with it. My stomach felt like it was floating. The sheer height of it, the impossible, ridiculous, magnificent height of what I was imagining, made me grip the shower wall just to keep it steady.
I thought about where I had started. Where my mother and I had started. Two people with very little, wanting very much.
I remembered watching Jax leave with Mila once, the two of them walking side by side, her laughing at something he said, and the way my chest had tightened like a fist closing around my heart. The thought that she could become queen of Stormfang before me had felt like swallowing glass.
But we had to be careful. Patient. All of us together, me, Ryder, my mother, Alpha Vexhood, the elders, each pulling the same rope in the same direction.
We had pulled Mila out of the picture so smoothly, so cleanly. Twisted the story until Jax believed with his whole heart that the woman he loved had poisoned his mother. Made him watch her be condemned with his own eyes. And finally condemned to the cold of death through the hands of all pack members.
What had once been nothing but late night whispers and secret meetings and wild dangerous dreams was now real.
And now I was the last one standing.
Everyone else had been swept off the board. Only me, still here, still breathing, still holding my cards.
I turned the shower off.
I walked into the bedroom. My cold feet glued to the floor, sending feelings I couldn't explain up my spin into my brain.
I stood at the edge of my bed, water still dripping from my hair, and let the quiet settle around me.
Then a thought hit me, sharp and sudden, like a finger snapping beside my ear.
Go into Jax's room.
Take everything.
The documents. The proof of ownership. The valuables. Everything that tied his name to this kingdom and made his power real on paper.
If things went wrong, if the whole plan somehow cracked and crumbled, I would still have something. Something to bargain with. Something to hold over people's heads. Insurance, wrapped in paper and sealed with wax.
I moved fast.
I pulled on dark trousers and a clean blue top. Simple. Sharp. The kind of outfit that said I belong here and I know exactly what I am doing.
I locked my own quarters behind me and walked toward Jax's apartment with my chin up and my eyes forward.
This land belongs to me now. The thought sat in my chest like a warm stone. It is time I start acting like it.
The corridor outside Jax's main door was quiet. The guards who usually stood at their posts in front of his apartment were not yet in position. Early morning emptiness hung in the air like fog.
I spotted a young guard nearby, barely older than a boy, standing with his hands loose at his sides.
I pointed at him. "You. Go and find whoever is holding the king's apartment keys and bring them to me."
He jumped and moved immediately, feet quick against the floor.
I stood there breathing harder than I wanted to admit. I needed to move fast. Get inside, take everything important, and be gone before the palace woke up properly. If things fell apart later, at least I would have documents. Property records. Pack agreements. The kind of papers that gave a person leverage.
The young guard returned with another man behind him, a senior guard, older, with heavy eyes that had seen many mornings.
I stretched my hand out toward him, relaxed, easy, like I was waiting to receive something that already belonged to me.
"Let me have the keys to the king's apartment. I need to collect a few of my personal items I left in his bedroom."
I kept my face perfectly calm. A small lie. A necessary one. No guard in his right mind would hand me those keys without a reason, and I want to take everything in that room was not a reason I could give out loud.
But something stopped me from speaking further.
The guard's face.
It moved in a strange way. Like three different feelings tried to cross it at the same time and none of them could find enough room. Confusion. Shock. And something else, something I couldn't quite name, something that looked almost like he was seeing a ghost standing in front of him.
"I… I don't know what you are trying to say… Your Honor."
My jaw tightened.
"What do you mean you don't understand?" I asked, biting each word carefully. "Am I speaking in the language of the gods? Give me the keys to the king's apartment."
He opened his mouth and closed it. Opened it again like a fish pulled out of water.
He looked like he was trying very hard to say something that his throat kept swallowing back down.
"I am so sorry, my… lord…" He stopped. Swallowed. "You…"
"I did what?" I snapped. My patience had run completely dry. "Spit it out."
"You came this morning." His voice dropped low and careful, like he was placing something fragile on a glass table. "Just a little while ago. To collect the keys."
I stared at him.
"Me?" I pressed my palm flat against my chest. Hard. "Are you completely out of your mind? Or have you been drinking again, you and your friends, first thing in the morning like animals?"
"I swear to God, Your Honor, I did not drink, I—"
The slap landed before I even decided to throw it.
His head swung sideways. His mouth fell open, wide and silent for one moment before the sting reached his brain.
"Shut your mouth." My voice came out low and dangerous, the way a fire sounds when it first catches on something dry. "Give me those keys and get out of my sight."
He dropped to both knees slowly, not in surrender but in the desperate way of a man who needs you to believe him before something terrible happens.
"Your Honor." His mouth trembled around each word. "I am not lying to you. You came to my door yourself, this early morning, not even two hours ago. You knocked yourself. You stood right where you are standing now."
My eyes went wide.
The words landed in my ears but my brain refused to accept them, the way your hand refuses to touch something your eyes tell you is burning.
"I was so shocked," he continued, his voice barely above a whisper, "because you came alone. Without sending anyone first. You never do that."
"Enough!" I threw my hand up toward him like I could physically push his words back into his mouth.
I turned away. My hand found my waist and gripped it tight.
I stood very still for a moment. Thinking.
Then I turned back to him, quieter now, the fire in my voice replaced by something colder and more dangerous.
"Fine. Go and find something to remove the lock. I am getting into that apartment. I forgot my jewelry inside."
The guard nodded and scrambled to his feet.
But as he moved away, a thought hit me hard.
If I had been inside this palace this entire morning, fighting tooth and nail with
Leo at orchard farm and all the drama comes with Leo.
Then who had come for those keys behind my back.
I went completely still.
“Lyra?”
The thought hit me.