Chapter 39 39
It happened on the twelfth night in the villa.
I was curled up on the velvet couch in the library, pretending to read some heavy tome about wolf bloodlines, while Sugar was sprawled dramatically on the rug, doodling moustaches on portraits in the margins of my “notes.” Gregor was pacing—as usual—like a caged beast.
That’s when the knock came. Sharp. Three times.
Gregor froze. His wolf surged so hard the room felt colder. Sugar stopped mid-doodle and looked up. I barely had time to put my “Margaux” mask back on before Gregor was at the door, yanking it open.
Two guards dragged in a trembling young man. One of Gregor’s sentinels shoved him forward, and he fell to his knees, clutching at the hem of my gown like I was salvation.
“Please, Princess! I didn’t mean to—”
“Get off!” I snapped in my best Margaux squeal, jerking my skirts away. (Internally, I wanted to vomit. His eyes were wide with real terror.)
Gregor’s snarl shook the room. “Explain.”
The sentinel bowed. “We caught him hiding by the garden wall. He carried no pack mark, but he had this—” He tossed a silver medallion onto the table. The crest of the royal family glinted under the lamplight.
Sugar let out a low whistle. “Well, isn’t that convenient?”
The “spy”—because that’s what he clearly was—started babbling. “I was only sent to observe! To make sure the princess was safe! I swear it! Please, don’t kill me, Alpha!”
I straightened in my chair, heart hammering. This was it. The king didn’t trust us. He had placed eyes right at our walls. And if this boy had reported back, then all my carefully staged princess tantrums were under a microscope.
Gregor’s wolf surged so close I could almost hear it. “Safe?” he spat. “You skulk at night with a stolen crest and call that safeguarding?”
The boy whimpered. The guards pressed their boots against his back, keeping him down.
Sugar tapped her pen against her chin, her tone casual but sharp. “Goldie, darling, what’s our royal response? Shall we faint? Throw wine? Or… ooooh, cry dramatically and demand justice?”
“Shut up, Sugar,” I hissed under my breath, then rose to my feet, spine straightening. This was my moment. Margaux’s moment.
“You dare to spy on me?” I snapped, stepping closer, letting every ounce of venom drip into my words. “I am the future queen of this realm! I don’t answer to petty shadows crawling my walls. Tell your master that if he wants to watch me, he can come grovel at my feet himself.”
The council chamber lessons, the sass, the act—I threw it all at him. And judging by the way the spy’s face went pale, it worked.
Gregor’s eyes flicked to me—dark, unreadable. He gave the faintest nod. Then, with a low growl, he ordered, “Lock him up. I’ll decide what to do with him by morning.”
The guards dragged the boy away, his pleas echoing down the hall. Silence fell.
I swayed, my hands shaking now that the adrenaline was gone. Sugar reached for me, but Gregor was there first. His hand closed around my arm—hot, steady, grounding.
“You were reckless,” he said low, voice like thunder. “But gods, you were perfect.”
And for one dizzying moment, with his wolf so close and his eyes burning into mine, I almost forgot who I was supposed to be pretending to be.
WOLFGAND PACK
At the Whiteland Villa, the air was thick with cigar smoke and stale wine. Beta Whiteland sat at the head of the long mahogany table, his shoulders stiff, his wolf pacing just beneath his skin. His wife, pale and finely dressed in silks, sat on his left, sipping quietly as though nothing in the world troubled her. Across from them, Hamlet and Alex lounged with the smug ease of sons who had never once been denied anything in their lives.
They had been summoned because of the news from the capital.
“Margaux is well,” Beta Whiteland said at last, his voice clipped. “The royal family has embraced her presence. She was seen in the throne hall beside Prince Leon himself. Though I…” His jaw clenched. “…was denied the chance to speak with her.”
“Denied?” Alex raised a brow. “By whom?”
“Alpha Gregor,” Whiteland spat the name as though it burned. “That damned wolf shadowed her every step. Guards circled her as if I were a stranger. A stranger—” he slammed his fist against the table, rattling the wine glasses, “—to my own daughter.”
Hamlet leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. “Father, isn’t that better? If she is kept under guard, it proves her importance. The more protected she is, the less risk she makes a scene. Eventually she’ll grow restless. She’ll remember her family. She’ll come to us herself.”
Beta Whiteland’s wife, her painted lips curving in a brittle smile, tilted her head. “And when she does, she will find us ready. Ready to remind her where her loyalty belongs.”
Thunder Wolfgang’s name entered the room like a thunderclap.
Hamlet glanced at his younger brother. “And what of Thunder? He was her fiancé. Surely he—”
“Thunder,” Whiteland interrupted with a sneer, “is worthless right now. Drunk. Brooding. He has been drinking himself to ruin since hearing that Margaux is now bound for the prince. But he will do nothing. He can do nothing. He knows defying the royals would mean the end of his father’s pack. Even his wolf cannot save him from that truth.”
Thunder Wolfgang, the once-proud heir, reduced to a bitter drunk in his chambers. They spoke of him with disgust, not pity.
The room fell into a hush for a beat, until Alex broke it with a scoff. “So. Our Margaux is safe, adored by the royals, shielded by an Alpha, and promised to the prince. Then why, Father, do you sit here like a man mourning?”
Whiteland’s eyes burned. “Because she is my daughter, and yet I could not reach her. Because another wolf dares stand between me and my blood. That, my son, is humiliation. And humiliation is something I will not forgive.”
No one mentioned Marigold.
Not once.
It was as though she had never existed. Not the quiet, neglected twin they had starved of affection. Not the girl they had mocked, ignored, or discarded. Not the daughter who had been offered poisoned milk and cruel words in equal measure.
If anyone had dared to whisper her name, it was erased by silence, by denial, by the convenient fiction they had built together.
“She ran away,” Beta Whiteland said, as if repeating a prayer. “She was weak. She could not endure. She was taken by rogues in the human territory and torn apart. That is all anyone needs to know.”
His wife nodded, cold eyes glittering. Hamlet and Alex said nothing, but their wolves stirred uneasily.
No guilt. No grief. Only the quiet, deliberate burying of a truth that might one day rise to devour them.
And in their silence, in their denial, in the way they dismissed her as nothing more than an inconvenience, they made one thing clear:
Marigold was a ghost to them. An afterthought. A mistake best forgotten. Only Margaux matters.
But to anyone listening, to anyone with a shred of conscience, their cruelty was enough to spark fury. Because deep down, they knew. They knew the daughter they had cast aside carried the kind of wolf that could one day destroy them all.
And still, they chose to bury her beneath lies.