Chapter 16 The Weight of Doubt
Rhys’s POV
I told myself it was the route.
The east corridor ran past the garden, which connected to the reading room, which connected to the back hallway, and the back hallway was a reasonable path between my study and the lower hall. Efficient. Practical. Logical.
The fact that Bella spent most of her mornings there was irrelevant.
I used that route more times than I needed to in three days.
My wolf went quiet every single time I came within twenty feet of her.
Not partially. Not briefly. The constant low-grade pull that had been living in my chest for months, the one I had stopped noticing because it had become so familiar, just went quiet. Like a noise you have been hearing so long you forgot it was there, and then suddenly it stops.
The first time, I put it down to coincidence.
The second time, I noted it and kept moving.
The third time, I stood in the corridor for a moment after she had passed and tried to understand what was happening to me, and came up with nothing useful.
The fourth time, I stopped pretending I didn’t know why I was choosing that route.
That was the part I didn’t like.
I was the Alpha of this pack. I had held this territory through things that should have broken it. I did not wander corridors because of a feeling.
Except apparently I did now, and my wolf had zero interest in being embarrassed about it.
\-----
I pulled the phone out that evening.
Kattie had given it back after the confrontation with Bella. I had taken it briefly to read the messages again and never returned it, which she hadn’t mentioned, which was its own small thing to note.
I sat at my desk and went through it carefully this time. Not the content. The details around it.
The messages themselves were simple. Short back-and-forth, Bella’s name at the top, the kind of thing that looked straightforward at a quick glance.
But I hadn’t gotten to where I was by taking quick glances.
I looked at the timestamps.
The first message in the thread was dated two days after Bella arrived at Moonstone. Just past eleven at night.
I set the phone down and thought about that.
Bella had arrived exhausted. I knew this because I had watched her, which I was not examining too closely. She had barely left her room that first evening, had eaten little at dinner and gone upstairs early. Mira had confirmed the lights in her room were out before ten.
So she had sent a message at eleven at night, on her second day here, after falling asleep early.
From a phone that had shown me a completely empty thread when I asked to see it two days later.
I looked at the metadata again.
The device ID attached to the sent messages didn’t match the phone Bella had handed me. Not exactly. Close enough that you wouldn’t notice unless you were looking for it.
I closed the app and sat back.
Two explanations. Either Bella had a second phone she hadn’t shown me, which was possible but felt thin, or someone had constructed this carefully and assumed I wouldn’t check beyond the surface.
The second option had nothing to do with Bella.
And everything to do with someone much closer than her.
I put the phone in my desk drawer, locked it, and sat in the quiet for a while.
My wolf, for once, was not restless. He had the focused, waiting energy of something that had picked up a trail and was being patient about following it.
\-----
Elder Gerran lived at the far edge of the residential quarter, in a small stone house he had occupied for longer than anyone could confirm. He was older than the pack’s written records, or close enough that the difference didn’t matter. He had outlasted four Alphas and had opinions about all of them.
He was also the only person in Moonstone whose discretion I would have put real money on.
I went at dusk, alone, and knocked once.
He opened the door before I had finished knocking. Either he had heard me coming or he had been expecting me. With Gerran, both were equally likely.
“Alpha.” He stepped back to let me in.
His house was exactly what you would expect. Small, warm, every surface holding something old and considered. Books stacked with purpose. Dried things hanging from the low ceiling. A fire in the corner that smelled like pine resin and something else I had never been able to name.
He poured tea without asking and set it in front of me.
I didn’t touch it immediately.
“I need to ask you something,” I said. “And I need it to stay in this room.”
He sat across from me, hands folded, expression giving nothing away. In thirty years I had never once been able to read Elder Gerran’s face before he decided to let me.
“Ask,” he said.
“Dark magic,” I said. “I need a precise answer. Is there anything that can change how a scent reads to a wolf? Alter it.”
Gerran was quiet for a long moment.
Not the quiet of someone thinking. The quiet of someone deciding how much to say.
“What kind of alteration?” he asked carefully.
“A mate bond,” I said. “The scent that signals it. Could dark magic do that? Redirect it? Make a wolf believe the bond points somewhere it doesn’t actually point?”
The fire popped.
Gerran looked at me with the slow, careful attention of a man who had heard a lot of things over a very long life and knew which ones to take seriously.
“Why are you asking me this?” he said.
“Because you’re the only person here I trust to answer honestly.”
He considered that. Picked up his own cup, took a slow sip, set it down.
“It is not common knowledge,” he said finally. “This kind of magic. Most wolves live and die without ever needing to know it exists.”
“But it does exist.”
“Yes.” The word came out carefully, like he was setting it down rather than saying it. “There are workings. Old ones. Not easily done, and not by just anyone.”
Something cold settled into place. Not comfort. The specific feeling of a suspicion being confirmed that you had quietly hoped would stay a suspicion.
“Has it ever happened here?” I asked. “In Moonstone?”
Another silence.
Longer this time.
“Once,” he said. “Long before your father’s time.”
“What happened?”
“It was found out eventually.” His voice stayed level. “These things usually are. You cannot maintain a false bond indefinitely. The real one pushes back.” He paused. “The wolf it was done to, he felt it the whole time. Something wrong. Something that didn’t sit right. He couldn’t name it. But it was always there.”
I looked at him.
“The bond fights to be known,” Gerran said quietly. “That is the nature of it. You can cover it, confuse it, delay it. But the moon’s work does not disappear just because someone put something over the top of it.”
The fire shifted, a log settling into the coals.
I looked at the cup I still hadn’t touched.
“And the person who did it,” I said. “The one who used the magic. What happened to them?”
Gerran looked at me with that steady, unreadable expression that somehow managed to say several things at once without saying any of them directly.
“I think,” he said slowly, “that the answer to that question is something you are already working toward.”
He didn’t say more.
He didn’t need to.
I stood. “Thank you.”
“Rhys.” His voice stopped me at the door, low and even. “Be careful how quickly you move. Someone patient enough to do this,” he paused, deliberate, “planned for most responses.”
I nodded once and stepped out into the cool evening air.
The walk back to the manor was quiet. My wolf moved through it with that same focused, waiting energy from earlier. Not agitated. Not searching.
Just certain.
I had three things now. A timestamp that didn’t add up, a device ID that didn’t match, and an old man who had just confirmed, without confirming anything specific, that everything I had been feeling for the past several weeks was not in my head.
The bond was fighting to be known.
Which meant something had been done to stop it.
And if that was true, the question was no longer whether someone in this pack had betrayed me.
The question was how long they had been doing it, and how close they were standing to me while they did.