Chapter 70 Yes, She’s Gone - Aleksandr’s POV
I stared at the budget report until the numbers blurred together, meaningless symbols on an equally meaningless page. Five days since Amelia had vanished. Five endless days of pretending to function, to rule, to care about anything other than the hollow ache in my chest. The whiskey beside me remained untouched; the same glass I'd poured that first night, a testament to my refusal to dull the pain. Pain was all I had left of her.
'Still nothing,' Skoll growled, his restless energy prowling the confines of our shared consciousness. 'No scent, no trace.'
"I know," I muttered, pushing the papers away and rubbing my eyes. They burned from lack of sleep, from staring at security footage until dawn broke each morning.
The council thought they had me convinced—their perfect setup, their doctored evidence, their story of a frightened girl fleeing the monster she'd discovered. I'd played along, swallowing my rage, giving the performance of my life. Yes, I'll attend your ball. Yes, I'll meet these candidates. Yes, Amelia is gone.
Lies. All of it.
But as the hours stretched into days with no sign of her, doubt had begun to gnaw at me. What if Nora was wrong? What if the woman in that footage really was Amelia, walking away from the monster she'd glimpsed in those photographs?
'Never,' Skoll insisted, but I heard the strain in his mental voice, the fatigue of fighting the same battle within himself. 'Mate wouldn't leave. Not without goodbye.'
The door to my office opened without a knock; only one person would dare such a breach of protocol. Nora strode in, her silver-streaked braid swinging with each purposeful step, her ancient eyes taking in my disheveled appearance with a sharp glance.
"You look like hell," she said by way of greeting.
"Feel worse," I replied, gesturing to the chair across from my desk. "Please tell me you have something."
She settled into the seat with that fluid grace that belied her centuries, placing a thin folder on the desk between us. "I do."
The grim satisfaction in her tone made me sit straighter, stirring the first real flicker of hope I'd felt in days. "What have you found?"
"The footage was doctored," she said without preamble, opening the folder to reveal a series of still images from the castle's security cameras. "Expertly done, but not perfect. We've confirmed it wasn't Amelia who walked out of the castle gates."
The words hit me like a physical blow, air rushing from my lungs as if I'd been struck. "You're certain?" I needed to hear it again, needed the confirmation that my instincts had been right all along.
"Absolutely certain." Nora tapped one of the images with a weathered finger. "We isolated several anomalies in the footage. Lighting inconsistencies, shadow angles that don't match the time of day, and most damning of all, a reflection in one of the decorative mirrors that shows a completely different woman than the one supposedly walking down the hall."
She pulled out a magnified section of the image, showing what appeared to be a distorted reflection in a gilded mirror. The figure was blurry but unmistakably not Amelia—taller, with different proportions, wearing what looked like some kind of facial prosthetics.
"Someone impersonated her," I said, the words thick in my throat.
Nora nodded. "Someone with access to the security systems, detailed knowledge of the castle layout, and enough political leverage to ensure no questions were asked when a 'guest' suddenly departed."
'Told you!' Skoll was practically bouncing in our shared mind, his relief and vindication flooding through me like sunlight breaking through storm clouds. 'Mate didn't leave us! Mate taken!'
I closed my eyes for a moment, letting the confirmation wash over me. The relief was so intense it was almost painful, a crushing weight lifted from my chest only to be replaced by something hotter, darker. Rage. Pure, focused rage at whoever had taken her from me, whoever had staged this elaborate deception.
"She didn't leave me," I said aloud, the words both a question and a statement.
Nora's expression softened, just for a moment. "No, my king. She didn't."
I leaned back in my chair, my hands gripping the armrests so tightly I heard the wood creak beneath my fingers. "Tell me everything."
"We found a small segment of footage that wasn't properly erased," Nora continued, pulling out another set of images. "Just a few seconds, from a secondary camera in the east wing corridor, about two hallways from your office."
She laid the images before me, and my heart clenched painfully at the sight. Amelia, her dark hair pulled back in a simple braid, wearing a blue dress I remembered complimenting. Her face was set in that determined expression I'd come to know so well—brows slightly furrowed, jaw set, eyes focused straight ahead. In her hands she clutched what looked like an envelope and several loose papers.
"She was coming to me," I realized, my finger hovering over her image as if I could touch her across the void of days. "What was she carrying?"
"Based on what we found in her room and the timing, I believe it was the photographs of Marcus's punishment, along with something else she deemed important enough to bring directly to you." Nora's voice had taken on that careful neutrality she used when delivering particularly unpleasant news. "The scattered photos weren't the result of her packing in haste. They were deliberately placed to create a narrative."
The implications settled over me like ice. "Someone intercepted her on her way to my office."
"Yes." Nora pulled out one final image, this one showing the abrupt end of the footage—Amelia turning a corner, and then... nothing. "It appears the cameras were looped from this point forward. No new footage was recorded for approximately twenty minutes. By the time the system resumed normal operation, both Amelia and her abductor were gone."
'Find them,' Skoll snarled, his earlier joy giving way to murderous intent. 'Hunt them down. Tear them apart.'
For once, I was in complete agreement with my wolf's bloodthirsty suggestions.
"This was a coordinated attack," I said, my voice dropping to a dangerous growl. "Someone with extensive access to castle security, someone who knew about the punishment of Marcus, someone who could enter her rooms undetected not once, but twice."
"Someone on the council," Nora confirmed grimly. "Or with direct access to council privileges."
"Kane," I all but spat the name.
"Perhaps." Nora's measured tone suggested caution. "But we must be careful not to show our hand too early. Kane is the obvious suspect, yes, but he may not be working alone. And there's still the question of where they're keeping her."