Chapter 244 244
Maurice POV
I ease Bee down onto the bed the guest bed I’ve been using more often than not lately. For a pack I hadn’t spoken to in years, the Bloodnight territory was beginning to feel unsettlingly familiar. Almost like a second home.
I should have returned to Ash Valley by now. My men were holding things together without me, but my wolf… my wolf was restless. Trying to settle with an unmarked mate while carrying the weight of another pack’s walls around us was too much. A mate not yet claimed. A pack not my own. Another Alpha’s den.
Too much at once.
That was exactly what had happened to Bee.
She’d been given far too much information, too quickly more than her mind could process. My father used to preach about restraint. Bite-sized truths. One piece at a time. Overload the mind, and it will protect itself the only way it knows how by shutting down, by making choices rooted in fear instead of clarity.
She curls into herself on the bed, arms wrapped tightly around her legs, chin resting on her knees. Her body instinctively folds inward, forming a shield. A small, guarded shape trying to stay safe.
I step into the ensuite and turn on the shower, letting the sound of running water fill the space. When I return, I lay a thick, freshly laundered towel across the bed.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I tell her gently, my tone firm but calm. “Have a shower. It’ll help you relax.”
She doesn’t argue. I close the door quietly behind me.
Downstairs, I head straight for Damien’s office. The files we’d been showing Bee are stacked where we left them. Damien will be occupied for a while he won’t notice me taking them. Besides, she’s my mate. These files are as much mine as they are his.
One step at a time.
No more dumping truths on her all at once. She needs space to read, to absorb, to ask questions when she’s ready. To grieve the life she thought she had before stepping into ours.
“Alpha?”
Lucas enters behind me, another folder tucked under his arm. His gaze drops immediately to the files in my hands, one brow lifting in question.
“I’m going to let her see them one by one,” I explain. “Help her digest things slowly. Her entire world just shifted. She needs time to explore ours, and to mourn the one she lost.”
Lucas hesitates. “I was waiting to show this to Alpha Damien. It just came in.”
I can feel the conflict rolling off him, his loyalty pulling in two directions. After a moment, he exhales sharply and hands me the file.
The moment I open it, my stomach drops.
“Shit.”
The photograph stares back at me Bee, pristine and untouched. Her long blonde hair spills down around her face, framing skin too soft, too unmarked by reality. Her grey eyes hold a faint yellow slit, almost ethereal.
She looks like something torn from a fairy tale.
The woman upstairs the one wrapped in my robe on my bed is just as beautiful. But her darker hair, the hollowness in her cheeks, the quiet exhaustion etched into her features tell a different story. One shaped by loss and survival.
“I found it on the dark web,” Lucas says quietly. “There’s a reward. The search was approved by Gaston himself.”
My jaw tightens.
If Gaston has signed off on this personally, it’s only a matter of time before someone connects Bee to Damien. Brother and sister. Blood.
And when that happens, Bloodnight becomes a target.
“I’ll call my men,” I say immediately. “Bring more here. But you need to put both Bloodnight and Darkvale on alert. Every warrior standby.”
“Yes, Alpha.” Lucas turns to leave.
“Wait.” His voice stops him. “There’s something else.”
He hands me two documents.
For a second, my hands refuse to cooperate. The papers feel wrong like touching them alone might curse us both.
Death certificates.
One for her mother.
One for Bee.
Cause of death: pneumonia.
Lucas’s voice pulls me back from the image forming in my mind my mate lying cold on a hospital bed, declared dead on paper.
How could Gaston do this?
No wonder her friends vanished. They thought she was gone. Dead. This revelation will shatter her.
After speaking with my beta, Maxime who’s already mobilizing more warriors and coordinating directly with Lucas I head back upstairs. The dark web listing gnaws at me. Bee’s existence is no longer confined to our world. Anyone could see it. Anyone could come looking.
I open the bedroom door to find her sitting on the bed, freshly showered, wrapped in my dressing gown. It hangs loosely on her frame, the fabric swallowing her whole.
And something in my chest tightens.
The mate bond is already working on her.
I can feel it.