Chapter 26 26
Lucien’s POV
James’s dead eyes glared up at the overhead trees with a mid-scream, silent face. Stagnant blood simmered below his head, caressed by my claws which had cut his throat; iron and wood scenting the renovated floors.
“Can’t stay away from my turf, eh?” I muttered, dropping to a squat beside the body.
But even as words left my mouth, I had a nagging feeling. James was too relaxed when we fought, too ready for what would have been an ambush. As if he had been waiting for me to find him.
I explored his body panicking thinking I would find an explanation for him being here. Rolled up in his coat pocket I found a parchment, sealed with black wax. It was sealed with a symbol I didn’t recognise—a serpent entwined about a crescent moon.
“What were you doing, you bastard?” I broke the seal and read the message.
The handwriting was neat, precise. Too educated to be just another rogue shifter.
Phase One complete. Lycan defenses mapped as discussed. He depends heavily on eastern patrol routes – weakness there can be used against him. Subject remains unaware of surveillance. Phase Two When you are ready, go to Phase Two. Payment as agreed. -J
And in that one second of realization, a glacier replaced my blood. It wasn't some by chance attack or a deviant shifter taking a risk. This was reconnaissance. Intelligence gathering.
Someone had been watching us. Watching her.
“Son of a bitch,” I hissed, crushing the parchment in my fist. "This was all planned."
I rifled through the rest of James’s things and in the same state of foreboding. Four gold coins stamped with insignias of three different Realms in a leather pouch: my compensation. It was a second letter, like the previous one, it too was unfinished but included detailed descriptions of our daily activity, guard shifts and most unnvervingly comments regarding Lena's routine which comprised of her usual activities during the day.
‘Target maintains regular pattern. Morning walks in garden between 9-10 am and Evening reading in library from 7-8 pm. Guards relatively lax during these hours. Suggest return during night-fell when Lycan not inhabit territory for business.’
The blood thundered in my ears as I read. They'd been planning something specific. Something that needed a precise knowledge of when Lena would be alone and unprotected.
"How long have you been spying on us? I questioned the dead man, though James would never reply.
I brought together the proofs and went to work on the body. James’s meat and marrow burned with fervour upon the impromptu funeral pyre I had erected, yet they did naught to extinguish the cold knot of terror nestled in my own belly.
Somebody out there knew our soft spots. Knew our routines. Had something planned that involved my mate.
I looked back at the smoke filtering through the trees, James’s last words ringing in my ears:
“You can’t protect her forever.”
“Maybe not. But I'd die trying.”
It smelled like home, too, which ought to be comforting: pine and earth and the familiar must of my pack. ’nstead it only increase the paranoia as I came closer to the pack house. From any shadow an enemy might spring. Any sound could mean a new attack coming.
Lena was pacing back and forth in our bedroom, by the window with agitation clearly on her face. The second I crossed into the room, she whirled around and I saw her wide brown eyes full of worry.
"Thank heaven you have come home," she gasped, pouncing upon me. “I heard you, I felt it I felt your panic in the bond. Your rage. What happened out there?"
Her hands roved over my chest, a thorough check for injuries that made my heart hurt. This lovely, fierce creature who fretted about my safety instead of me protecting her.
“Just a stray shifter that got lost near our lands,” I replied, not entirely lying. "Nothing I couldn't handle.",
But Lena was becoming suspicious as she watched my face. "You're lying. Or at least not telling me everything.”
“I killed the menace,” I said firmly. That’s all you need to know.”
"Is it?" She drew back, her arms crossed. "Because I know through our link you're not over it. Still afraid. What aren't you telling me?"
The smartness in the sound of her voice, in the way she could read me so well, it was one of things I loved about her and also one of the things that scared me. She was too sharp for her own good.
"Lena—"
"Don't." Her tone was warning enough to check me. “Don’t pander to me like some fragile blossom who can’t handle the truth. I roomed with Godric for years. I know what a real threat looks like.”
She was right, of course. But that didn’t make it any easier to express my fears.
“The shifter was not by himself,” I confessed at last. "There are others. A network of them, maybe directed by someone with money and brains.
“ntelligence on our self,“She muttered. It wasn't a question.
I nodded, and now Youana recognized the look in my eyes. "They've been watching us, Lena. Learning our routines. Our weaknesses."
"How long?"
"I don't know. Weeks, maybe months." The words tasted bitter. "I should have noticed sooner. Should have been more careful."
But instead of the fear I’d been expecting to see in her face, Lena straightened up and jutted out her chin in that stubborn gesture I’d grown to love.
“Then we adjust,” she replied matter-of-factly. “We change our ways, adopt new routines and remember that they cannot use their intelligence against us,” he said.
“I’m doubling the guards on the pack house,” I informed her. “And putting on some shapeless rubbery thing and assigning a permanent detail to keep an eye on you whenever I’m out of the room.”
"Good." She edged closer to me, her hand finding mine. "But Lucien, promise me something."
"What?"
"Don't shut me out. We face whatever comes, together. I’m not only your mate — I am your partner. Just trust me enough to let me help.”
Staring down at the set of her jaw, I felt something in my chest move. She was right. Keep her in the dark and surround her with men at arms to protect her. It meant treating her as the smart, capable woman she was.
“Together,” I echoed, taking her hand and squeezing it. “But you have to make me a promise too.”
"What's that?"
"You'll be more careful. No more solitary strolls in the garden. No more late night reading sessions without a guard present. And if anything — anything — feels wrong, you come get me right away.”
She did, but I could read the price of that acquiescence in her eyes. The freedom she’d come to enjoy so much as my mate was once again hampered by the demands of life.
Hours later, I was poised all night over Apple it watching Lena sleep, reeling with ideas and fears. A long tendril of golden hair lay over the pillow, sprinkled by silver light through the window.
But it wasn’t just the allure of her beauty. There was something else about her scent recently—a slight shift that my wolf had been marking down for days. Richer. Warmer. More complex.
It struck me like a punch in the gut.
She was pregnant.
I should have been rejoicing to know this. The thought of Lena being pregnant with my child, building a family with me, was everything I never allowed myself to even hope for. Instead, all I thought was that she became all the more exposed.
A pregnant mate was a target. Not just for her own sake, but for the future Alpha prince she bore. Any enemy I had ever made would know she was the ideal means to finish me off for good.
“Oh God help us,” I murmured in the dark.
I thought about my own father — a brutal man who, in an attempt to assert his control, had terrorized us. He’d fathered me with clinical efficiency, children were tools to him, not blessings. Was I destined to relive his failures? Did I even know how to be a dad?
The idea of some innocent child being born pulling that violent streak, that potential for cruelty into the world made my stomach churn. What example was I setting?
But then Lena turned over in her sleep and put a hand on her still-flat stomach, something happened in me: I couldn’t breathe. Her face was at ease even in sleep; I had never seen it so smooth. A maternal radiance of acceptance and love.
She knew. Not consciously, perhaps, but somewhere inside her she already knew about the life forming within her.
“No harm will come to you.” I reached out and swept a strand of hair away from her face. "Either of you. At any cost, by whatever means necessary, I will protect you.”
But even as I offered the vow, I knew it might not suffice. The foes lurking in the shadows were resourceful, smart, and most deadly of all, patient. They were plotting something more ambitious than just territorial disputes or personal grudges.
And now, with pregnant Lena herself, the stakes were impossibly high.
I had to call the others, forge alliances I'd once despised. For decades, my lone-wolf approach had worked in my favor, but it wasn’t going to be enough for a family.
In the morning, I would start seeking supporters. Tonight, I’d hold my mate and I’d pretend that love could protect us from the storm headed our way.
But in the marrow of my bones, I knew better. The actual fight was just starting.