Chapter 228 Nancy
ADRIANA
The security footage showed nothing useful, which was somehow worse than showing something incriminating.
Hazel had been through every camera covering the dungeon block and the surrounding corridors from eleven in the morning to six in the evening, and the result was a clean, unbroken record of absolutely nothing. No hooded figure. No anomaly. Either the cameras had been interfered with at the source or whoever came through that ceiling shaft had a copy of the building layout and knew every blind spot by heart.
Both possibilities were deeply unpleasant.
I was going through the maintenance schematics in Elijah’s office when Leo appeared in the doorway with Lorain on his back, her arms looped around his neck, her chin resting on his shoulder. She was watching me with the serious, measuring look she’d had since she was old enough to have an expression.
“She wanted to find you,” Leo said.
“I’m here.” I held my arm out and Lorain unwound herself from her brother and crossed the room and climbed into my lap. She smelled like the garden. Like grass and fresh air and something that was just her. I pressed my lips to her hair and held on for a moment longer than necessary.
Leo dropped into the chair across the desk and stretched his legs out.
“The twins are outside,” he said. “Elijah Junior is attempting to teach Liam some kind of defensive move he found in a video. It’s not working.”
“Is anyone bleeding yet?”
“Not yet. Lorain refused to watch after the first attempt, which I think means it was bad.”
Lorain opened the small book she’d been carrying in her pocket and didn’t comment. She didn’t need to. The refusal to watch said everything.
I looked at Leo over the top of her head. He was pretending to check his phone. He wasn’t actually checking his phone. He was here because he’d decided to be here, the same way he’d been deciding to be within reach since the night of the Moonlight Celebration, quietly and without making it into a thing that needed to be discussed. He was fifteen years old and he’d somehow learned the difference between hovering and presence.
Elijah had taught him that. Whether he knew it or not.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“I know,” Leo said, still looking at his phone.
I let it go.
The invitation from Sterling Pack was still sitting in the corner of the desk for the Alpha’s birthday celebration, the following evening. I’d accepted it before the shooting, before the hospital visits and the dead prisoner and the red crown symbol that was starting to appear in places like a recurring bad dream.
Part of me wanted to send a cancellation. A significant part of me wanted to do exactly that, stay home, hold my children, keep watch over Lana who was finally back in this house and breathing steadily in the crib beside my bed.
But I’d given my word. And more than that, I needed to be seen. The rumors about the Moonlight Celebration had traveled faster than I’d anticipated — half the kingdom had received some version of a story where I was dead or incapacitated or both, and the throne was empty and available. Showing up to a public gathering, visibly present and functional, would accomplish more than any formal statement.
Hazel appeared in the doorway behind Leo, reading my expression before I said anything.
“The doctor just cleared Lana to come home,” she said. “Leo and I can go get her if you want to keep working.”
I was already standing. Lorain grabbed the edge of the desk to stay in my lap and gave me a look of profound reproach.
“I’m coming,” I said.
“All of us?” Leo asked.
“All of us.”
The hospital room was quiet in the particular way that hospital rooms are — not peaceful, just suppressed. Milo was in the chair beside Lana’s crib with his phone face-down on his knee, which meant he’d been waiting long enough that looking at the time had stopped being something he wanted to do. He stood up the moment I walked in.
“She’s been good,” he said. “She ate at four and slept most of the afternoon.”
I leaned over the crib.
She was smaller than she should have been at this age. Her color wasn’t fully right yet. But her chest was moving in that steady, reliable rhythm, and when I reached in and touched her cheek she turned her head toward my hand without waking, and that single automatic movement reached into my chest and rearranged something in there.
I picked her up carefully and held her against me and just stood there for a moment while the doctor came in and delivered his report in the cautiously optimistic tone of someone who had genuinely good news and wanted to make sure I received it as such. Infection caught early. Responding to treatment. Medication to continue at home. He’d come by to check on her in a few days.
I thanked him and meant every word of it.
We brought her home and I sat with her for two hours after the others had gone to bed, just the two of us in the quiet of my room, and I told her about her father in the way I hadn’t been able to tell anyone else, without managing my tone or choosing careful words.
I told her he was coming back. I told her she was going to know him. I told her she was going to drive him absolutely insane with whatever personality was currently developing behind those dark eyes, and that he was going to love every second of it.
She slept through all of it, which was probably for the best.
The party at Sterling the next evening was everything I’d expected and nothing I wanted.
Hazel had the driver take us in the SUV, no motorcade, nothing that announced our arrival before we were ready to announce it. Leo was already there when we pulled up, having gone ahead to sweep the venue. He met me at the door with a quiet nod that meant nothing obvious had flagged.
The Alpha of Sterling was waiting just inside. His welcome was warm in the elaborate.
“Your Majesty.” He bowed deeply. “We weren’t certain you would make it.”
“Then why invite me?” I asked pleasantly.
He blinked. Recovered with visible effort. “We hoped, Your Majesty. That’s perhaps more accurate.”
I let Hazel hand over the gift we’d brought and followed the waiter toward our table.
Leo fell in step beside me. “Do you think whoever’s been targeting you is in this room?”
The question was quiet and direct and landed exactly as cold as it was meant to.
I looked around the room slowly. Alphas in formal dress. Their senior wolves at the perimeter. Serving staff moving between tables with the smooth efficiency of people who had done this many times. A live band in the corner playing something low enough not to interfere with conversation.
“There’s a strong chance,” I said, equally quiet. “Don’t eat or drink anything I haven’t cleared. Don’t go anywhere alone. If someone approaches you that you don’t recognize, don’t engage with them, come and find me first.”
He nodded once and didn’t ask follow-up questions.
I spent the first hour watching instead of talking. It was more useful. People at parties were revealing in ways they weren’t in formal settings. Where they positioned themselves, who they sought out, who they avoided, where their eyes went when they thought no one was paying attention.
Alpha Damon was across the room and his eyes had found me within thirty seconds of my arrival, which confirmed that whatever he claimed to be here for, I was part of the reason.
Then I saw Nancy and everything else became secondary.
She was standing near the far wall, holding a glass she hadn’t touched, wearing the expression of someone managing a situation they hadn’t chosen and had stopped expecting to improve. I recognized it immediately and specifically. I’d worn it myself for two years before I stopped needing to.
I crossed the room without hesitating.
“Nancy.”
Her head came up fast, like she hadn’t expected her name. The relief that moved across her face before she could arrange it into something more composed was real and immediate and told me more than anything she could have said.
“My Queen—”
“Come sit with me.” I touched her arm briefly. “Now.”
The stares were immediate. I walked through them.