Chapter 12 Scent and Secrets
Rhys’s POV
I noticed it the first few days after she arrived.
I was in the study working through border reports — nothing unusual, just the kind of problem that needed attention before it became a larger one. I’d been at it about an hour. My wolf had been restless the whole time.
That had become normal. The low, constant agitation. Something pulled tight just beneath the surface, never fully settling. I’d learned to work through it the way you learn to work through background noise — you don’t fix it, you just move around it.
Then Bella walked past the study door.
She didn’t come in. Didn’t knock. Just passed in the corridor, footsteps light, probably heading somewhere she’d get slightly lost finding. The door was open a few inches. I caught the edge of her scent, faint, nothing I could have described clearly and my wolf went quiet.
Just like that.
Like someone had reached in and turned something off.
I sat there with the pen still in my hand and didn’t move.
What was that?
The quiet didn’t last. Maybe thirty seconds after she passed, the restlessness came filtering back. But for those thirty seconds, I had felt more like myself than I had in months.
I put the pen down and looked at the door for a long moment.
Then I picked it back up and kept working, because the reports still needed reading and I had no idea what to do with that information.
\-----
It kept happening.
In the hall at dinner when she sat at the far end of the table. In the corridor when we passed each other without speaking. Once, outside near the east garden — she came through the side door with a book, didn’t see me, just found a spot on the low stone wall and opened it. My wolf settled so completely that I stood still for a full minute before I realized I’d stopped walking.
I didn’t tell anyone.
Not my beta. Not the elders. Definitely not Kattie.
There was no version of this conversation that wouldn’t sound like instability, and I didn’t have enough certainty to defend it yet.
\-----
Kattie found me in the study one morning.
She knocked, which meant she wanted something and was approaching it carefully.
“Do you have a minute?” she asked.
“What is it?”
She came in and closed the door behind her. Sat in the chair across from me without being invited — a habit. She had a particular look on her face. Not quite worried, not quite satisfied. Somewhere between the two, which with Kattie usually meant she’d already decided how to frame whatever she was about to say.
She set her phone on the desk and slid it toward me.
I looked at the screen.
A message thread. Bella’s name at the top. Short exchanges, back and forth…the last one sent two nights ago.
I can’t stay here much longer. I’ll find a way back.
I read it twice.
The name she was messaging was Logan.
Her ex.
I kept my face even. “Where did you get this?”
“One of the maids saw her screen by accident. She came to me because she didn’t know who else to tell.” Kattie’s voice was careful. Measured. “I almost didn’t bring it to you,” she added quietly. “But you deserved to know.”
I looked at the screen one more time. Then I slid the phone back.
“Send her in,” I said.
\-----
Bella arrived looking like someone pulled away from something mid-thought. She stepped inside, took one look at my expression, and went still.
She was getting better at reading rooms. I’d noticed that about her.
“Sit.”
She sat. Eyes steady on me.
I leaned back. “Have you been in contact with Logan?”
Something moved across her face — quick, controlled. Surprise, maybe. Or a very good impression of it.
“No,” she said.
“Since you arrived. Messages, calls —”
“No.” Flat. “Why would I be?”
“You called off your engagement,” I said. “Doesn’t mean feelings disappear overnight.”
She looked at me like I’d said something mildly ridiculous.
“He slept with my sister,” she said. “In his own house. Then told me to learn from her.”
A pause.
“So no. I’m not contacting Logan. I don’t want to.”
She didn’t look away. No hesitation, no shift in her voice.
But I had already seen the messages. Or something that looked like them. That was the problem.
“Show me your phone,” I said.
She reached into her pocket without hesitating and put it on the desk.
I went through it. Recent messages. All of them. No thread with Logan. No deleted conversation markers. Nothing that matched what I’d seen on Kattie’s screen.
I set it back down.
She picked it up without looking at me.
“Whoever told you that,” she said evenly, “is wrong.”
I held her gaze. Her manner was too steady for guilt. But the messages had been real, I’d seen them myself. Something didn’t line up. I just couldn’t find where yet.
“Leave,” I said.
She left.
\-----
I hadn’t planned to see her again that evening.
The manor was quiet by the time I came back through — lights dimmed, corridors half-shadowed, most of the pack already settled for the night. I was passing the side corridor near the kitchens when I heard her voice.
Low. Just beyond a half-open door.
I stopped.
I couldn’t make out every word. Just the tone — different from how she sounded around me. Less guarded. She laughed once, quick and real, the kind that slips out before you decide to let it.
I stayed where I was longer than I should have.
Then she said a name.
I didn’t catch all of it. Just enough to know it wasn’t anyone in this house.
A man’s name.
Something tightened in my chest — sharp and immediate, before I could examine what it was or where it came from.
I stepped back from the door and kept walking.
By the time I reached my room, whatever quiet my wolf had found during the day was gone. Replaced by something edged and restless that I couldn’t talk myself out of, no matter how still I stood.
I braced my hands against the desk and stared at nothing.
Her phone was clean. Her voice through that door hadn’t.
One of them was a lie. I just didn’t know which.