Chapter 140 Little thief

Chapter 140 Little thief
EVE'S POV

The room was too quiet.

Everyone was staring straight at me. Ophelia was standing frozen, her arms crossed over her chest as if she were trying to physically shield herself from the weight of my words. Kai's eyes were fixed on my face--gold, sharp, and utterly unblinking. Seraphina held the map half-unrolled, her fingers frozen on the parchment as if she had forgotten it was even there, while Cassie looked like she was holding her breath.

I hated this kind of silence. It made my skin crawl, making the old scar along my ribs itch as if it were remembering things I had spent years trying to erase from my mind.

"I grew up near the northern wilds," I said. My voice came out flatter than I intended, the words already sitting heavy and cold in my chest. "My mother was a tracker for a small pack that lived right on the edge of the old forests. We stayed far away from the bigger territories. It was safer that way. Or, at least, we thought it was."

No one interrupted me. That almost made it worse. The suffocating quiet pressed hard against my ears, demanding I keep going.

"I was eight years old." The words tasted like ash on my tongue, and my throat tightened up. "We were out checking the trap lines after a massive winter storm. The snow was still falling in thick, wet flakes. I can still smell it if I close my eyes--cold iron, and something ancient underneath. The Dread Wolf found us. I don't remember every detail. Just the freezing air. The sound it made--like a bitter wind howling through dead trees. And the way its eyes looked right at me. They weren't animal eyes. They weren't human, either. It was something that had been waiting a very long time."

My hands curled into tight fists at my sides. Even now, I could feel the pressure of those massive jaws closing around me, the way the air left my lungs in one sharp, useless rush. I remembered the way the world went completely blank.

"It killed me." I forced the next part out before my voice could crack. "I died right there in the snow. My mother used the absolute last of her life force to pull me back using some old blood magic she wasn't supposed to know. She died doing it. I woke up completely alone with her frozen body and a scar that never fully healed. The cold stayed deep in my bones for days."

Ophelia's face went entirely pale. Beside her, Kai's jaw was clenched so hard the muscle jumped in his cheek, and I could almost hear his teeth grinding from across the room.

"The creature can only be calmed by freely given blood from Morwen's line," I continued, my stomach twisting into knots just pronouncing the name. "Not taken by force. Given willingly. That is the only thing that makes it pause. Everything else, it just... ends."

Seraphina was the first to break the tension, her voice careful and measured. "And you never told anyone this because...?"

"Because it sounds completely insane." I let out a short, bitter laugh that scraped against my throat. "Because I didn't want to be the freak girl who died and came back wrong. Because some things are just easier to carry alone. Every single time I tried to talk about it when I was younger, people looked at me like I was already half-ghost."

The heavy atmosphere in the room didn't lift. My pulse was drumming entirely too loud in my ears.

Then, I did something incredibly stupid. I decided to tell them the one part I had never dared to say out loud to a living soul.

"When it killed me," I said, slowing down as the memory gripped me, "it spoke. It knew my true name. The one my mother only used when we were completely alone in our cabin. And it called me 'little thief.'"

My stomach dropped down to my boots just saying the words. The old, familiar fear slid under my skin like cold water. For a split second, I wasn't standing in a warm room at Shadowfang anymore--I was eight years old again, lying helpless in the freezing snow, hearing that monstrous voice wrap around my name like it already owned me.

"I have no idea what it meant by that. I still don't. But the memory never left me. Some nights I still wake up hearing it ring in my ears. Some nights I still feel that exact same cold."

Silence stretched across the room once more. In the quiet, I could hear the wind whistling outside the stone walls and my own heartbeat trying to climb out of my chest.

Damien was the one who finally broke the spell.

He had been leaning silently against the far wall, his arms crossed, watching me with that unreadable, intense expression he always got when he was thinking too hard. He pushed off the wood and stepped forward into the light. His movement was deliberate and careful; he was still clearly favoring the arm he had brutally cut open to break the Architect's control.

"I'm coming with you," he said.

Kai's head snapped toward him so fast I almost heard the strain in his neck. "You're still healing. The serum--"

"The residual serum in my blood might affect it," Damien cut in, his voice steady but carrying a tight undertone. "You heard what the Architect said before he died. The old formulas are all tied to the exact same root. If the Dread Wolf responds to Morwen's bloodline, there is a strong chance whatever is left in my system can at least slow it down or confuse it. I am not sitting this one out."

Ophelia looked up, her gaze locking onto him.

It lasted for only a second, maybe less, but something heavy passed between them--an old, unresolved tension, the weight of unfinished conversations, and the dark reality of everything that had happened in the fortress when he was still under the Architect's thumb. Her eyes softened just a fraction. Damien's mouth tightened instantly, his jaw setting as if he were holding back a flood of words.

Kai saw it.

I watched him see it.

Kai's shoulders went absolutely still, and the very air in the room shifted, turning suffocatingly thick. A wave of intense heat rolled off his massive frame, a physical reaction that had absolutely nothing to do with the room's temperature. Vai was pushing so incredibly close to the surface that the primal bond between Kai and Ophelia felt sharper, heavier, and dangerously volatile.

No one dared to say a word for a long, agonizing moment.

When Kai finally spoke, his voice came out low, quiet, and controlled in a way that was somehow infinitely more terrifying than if he had started shouting.

"We leave at dawn. Everyone who is coming needs to be packed and ready. No more secrets. No more half-truths."

He looked straight at Damien when the words left his mouth.

Damien didn't break eye contact.

Neither did Ophelia.

And I just stood there in the center of the room, the old, northern cold still sitting deep under my skin, wondering what the hell the Dread Wolf knew about me that I still hadn't figured out.