Chapter 16 016

Chapter 16 016

MEIRA

I was up before six.

Couldn't sleep past it. I'd been waking early since I got here, some part of me still on edge, still waiting for something to go wrong. I lay there for a few minutes listening to the house and then got up and got dressed and went downstairs.

The kitchen was empty. Cora wasn't up yet which meant it was earlier than I thought. I made tea badly, found the cups after opening three wrong cupboards, and sat at the table in the quiet and waited.

At seven I heard him.

Footsteps down the hall, the study door, then a pause. Then footsteps again coming toward the kitchen. Darius came in, looked at me at the table, looked at the cup in my hands.

"You're up early," he said.

"You said morning," I said. "It's morning."

He almost did that thing with his face. Almost. He poured coffee and came and sat across from me and put both arms on the table and looked at me straight.

"Nicholas made calls last night," he said. "After he left here. He's been talking to three Alphas — Harrow, Vance, Castellan. Telling them you were taken. That you're here against your will."

I sat very still.

"He moved faster than I expected," Darius said. "Which means we move faster too."

"What does that mean."

"It means you can't stay in this house," he said. "Not out of sight, not hidden away. The story he's telling only works if nobody sees you. If you're out in this territory, visible, among my pack, going about your life — that story falls apart on its own."

I looked at him. "You want me to be seen."

"Yes."

"At what."

"Rhen is putting together a list. Events in the territory over the next two weeks. Nothing difficult, nothing that puts you in a bad position. Just — present. Out in the open."

I thought about that for a moment. Being out in the open. In a territory I didn't know, among wolves who didn't know me, as the woman the Lycan King had brought back from the Silver Fang ceremony.

I thought about what they would think. What they would say about me. The questions I'd get, the looks, the people trying to figure out what I was to him.

Then I thought about my father in his car making calls. Building a story about me, deciding what my life looked like from the outside, moving me around like a piece the same way he always had.

"Okay," I said.

Darius looked at me like he'd expected more pushback.

"I said I was in," I said. "I meant it."

He nodded once. "There's more."

"Tell me."

He leaned forward slightly. "Croft. My father's second who helped Nicholas from the inside. He's been in your father's inner circle for fifteen years. Nicholas doesn't know I know about him. That's the piece I've been holding onto, waiting for the right moment to use it."

"And now."

"Now the timeline has moved up," he said. "I need to decide whether to move on Croft before Nicholas gets further with these Alphas or hold it and let Nicholas keep building until he's too far out to pull back."

I sat with that. "If you move on Croft now."

"Nicholas loses his most trusted man. His inside source for fifteen years, gone. It shakes him, makes him paranoid, slows him down."

"And if you wait."

"He digs deeper with Castellan and the others. Harder to undo."

"So move now," I said.

Darius looked at me.

"You've been waiting fifteen years," I said. "He's already moving. Waiting longer just gives him more time to build something you have to knock down later. Move on Croft now while Nicholas is still feeling confident. He won't see it coming."

Darius was quiet for a moment. Looking at me with that steady expression.

"That's what I was already thinking," he said.

"So why are you telling me."

"Because you asked to be in the room," he said. "I'm checking whether you think the same."

Something settled in my chest. Not warmth exactly. Just — the feeling of being taken seriously. Of someone putting something in front of me and actually wanting to know what I thought about it.

I couldn't remember the last time that had happened.

"I think the same," I said.

He nodded and sat back.

We stayed at that table for a while after that. He talked me through the rest of it, the parts he hadn't told me yet. How he'd rebuilt after his father died. How he'd come back to this region five years ago specifically to start positioning himself. How every alliance he'd built, every piece of land he'd acquired, every title and agreement had been pointed at this. At Nicholas eventually having to come to him.

I listened to all of it without interrupting.

When he was done I sat there for a moment looking at my cup.

"You gave up a lot for this," I said.

"Yes."

"Do you ever think about what you would have done with it all if your father's pack hadn't been taken. If none of it had happened."

He looked at me. Something moved in his face, slow and brief. "Sometimes," he said.

"What do you think."

He was quiet for a second. "I think I would have been a different man," he said. "Whether better or worse I don't know."

I looked at him across the table. The morning light was coming in properly now, grey and soft through the kitchen windows, and the house was starting to wake up around us, small sounds from somewhere upstairs, the wind picking up outside.

"For what it's worth," I said. "The man you are now is someone my father should be afraid of."

He looked at me.

"That's not nothing," I said.

He held my gaze for a moment. Then he looked down at his coffee and something that was almost a smile crossed his face and disappeared before it fully formed.

Cora came in then, took one look at us sitting at the table in the early morning and said nothing, just went straight to the stove and started on breakfast like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

Maybe it was starting to be.

I looked out the window at the grey morning sky and thought about everything that was coming. My father and his calls and the Alphas he was trying to turn. Croft and whatever Darius was going to do about him. Being out in this territory, visible, letting people see me and draw their own conclusions.

It was a lot. It was more than I'd bargained for when I got in that car.

But I had bargained for it now.

My hand went to my stomach just for a second.

We're in this, I told them. All three of us.

And for the first time since everything fell apart