Chapter 34 The Real Killer (Rowan POV)
The silver cuffs burned hotter as they dragged Sage away. I wanted to call after her, wanted to say something… anything… that would fix the jagged hole her confession had torn through what was left of my world. But my throat closed around the words. My best friend had drugged me. Had helped frame me for murder. Had chosen to trust a stranger over me when I'd needed her most.
And I still didn't hate her.
That was the worst part. Watching her disappear up those stairs in chains, face streaked with tears, looking more broken than I'd ever seen her, and all I felt was hollow. Empty. Like she'd taken the last piece of my ability to trust anyone when she walked away.
Before I could chase that thought any further, the alarms started.
Not the gentle warning bells used for fire drills or the sharp buzzes of security alerts. These were ancient, bone-deep, the kind of sound that bypassed your ears and went straight to your hindbrain screaming danger danger danger. They vibrated through the stone floor, through my bones, making my teeth ache and my wolf surge against the silver circle's suppression.
Garrett slammed his hand against his throne. "Report!"
One of the guards by the north entrance had his hand pressed to his earpiece, face pale. "Sir. Another body. South dormitory, third floor. Guard Carter. Throat torn out. Same MO as Morrison and Hendricks."
The bottom dropped out of my stomach. Carter. I'd seen him just yesterday, standing watch outside my cell, looking uncomfortable but doing his job.
Now he was dead.
"When?" Garrett demanded.
"Time of death estimated at... approximately ten minutes ago, sir."
Ten minutes ago. While we were all down here. While the entire campus population was gathered in this chamber, accounted for, visible.
The implications hit like a freight train.
"That's impossible," Catherine said. But her voice wavered. "Everyone is here. Every student. Every faculty member. We did a full count before the trial began."
"Not everyone." Headmaster Vance emerged from the crowd, tablet in hand, moving with that deliberate calm she always had even when everything was falling apart. She climbed the steps to address the three Alphas directly. "We have one unregistered visitor on campus. Someone who signed in through the administrative office three weeks ago. I pulled the records during the recess."
She turned the tablet around so everyone could see.
The form was standard visitor registration… name, purpose of visit, expected duration, sponsoring party. But the details made my skin crawl.
Name: Julian Cross
Purpose: Research observation - European pack cultural exchange program
Duration: 3-6 weeks
Sponsor: Professor M. Hendricks
Hendricks. The second victim. He'd been the one to let Julian onto campus.
Had he known what he was doing? Or had Julian fooled him the same way he'd fooled Sage?
"Pull the security footage," Garrett ordered. "Every camera. I want to see everywhere this Julian Cross has been since he arrived."
"Already done." Vance swiped through screens on her tablet. "I started compiling it when Sage mentioned his name. The system keeps a rolling thirty-day archive. I'm sending it to the main display now."
A section of the chamber's eastern wall shimmered… magic overlaying stone… and suddenly we were looking at a massive projected image. Security camera footage. Date stamped three weeks and two days ago.
The video showed the main administrative entrance. Normal afternoon traffic… students coming and going, faculty with coffee, a delivery person dropping off packages. Then a figure walked through the frame.
Tall. Dark hair. Plain clothes… jeans, a gray hoodie, backpack over one shoulder. Nothing remarkable. The kind of person you'd pass in a hallway and forget immediately.
But when he paused to sign the visitor log, when he looked up briefly at the camera, I felt something click into place in the back of my mind. A fragment of recognition, fuzzy and incomplete, like remembering a dream days later.
I knew that face.
"Next clip," Vance said.
The footage jumped forward. The Harvest Moon party. The commons packed with students. The camera angle was from above, mounted in the rafters, giving a bird's-eye view of the whole space.
And there, at the edge of the crowd, half-hidden in shadows near the refreshment table: Julian Cross. Watching. Waiting.
The camera caught him for maybe three seconds before he moved deeper into the shadows and disappeared from frame.
"He was there," someone breathed. "At the party. Right there."
"Next."
More footage. The night Tyler Morrison died. Exterior camera, courtyard view. Timestamp: 1:47 a.m. A figure moving through the frame… too fast for the camera's refresh rate to capture cleanly, just a blur of motion heading toward the fountain area.
Then leaving. Three minutes later. Moving slower now. More careful.
"Next."
Professor Hendricks' office building. Night of the second murder. Different angle, hallway camera. The figure again, this time more visible. Definitely male. Definitely wearing the same gray hoodie.
Entering Hendricks' office at 1:53 a.m.
Leaving at 2:11 a.m.
Eighteen minutes. Long enough to kill a man and stage the scene.
"The DNA evidence at both scenes," Vivian called out, standing in the heirs' section. "It matched Rowan's profile perfectly. How? How did he replicate her DNA that precisely?"
"Chimeric subjects," Declan answered, still holding Elena's journal like a talisman. "The successful ones. That was the whole point of Project Chimera… create wolves who could operate outside normal pack structures. Mimic scent markers. Change their biological signatures at will. The perfect infiltrators."
"Or the perfect frame," Meredith added quietly.
Vance swiped to the next clip. "This is from four hours ago. Administrative building, restricted archives level."
The footage showed a familiar corridor… I'd been dragged through it on my way to the trial. The figure moved through it like he owned the place, hood up, face hidden. But his build, his gait, the way he moved with that predatory grace that was just a little too smooth, too controlled to be human.
He paused at a door marked RECORDS. Looked directly at the camera for one frozen moment.
Pushed back his hood.
The face that filled the screen made my heart stop.
Sharp features. Intense brown eyes. Strong jaw. Dark hair falling across his forehead.
And in the bone structure, in the set of his mouth, in the way he held himself…
I was looking at my own reflection, masculinized, aged up, twisted by whatever seventeen years of isolation and rage had done to him.
"I know him," I whispered.
The words came out barely audible, but in the sudden dead silence of the chamber, everyone heard.
Heads turned. Eyes locked on me.
"I know him," I said again, louder. My voice shook but held. "He's my brother."