Chapter 229 The Unforgiving One
ADRIANA
Alpha Damon appeared within four minutes of Nancy sitting down beside me.
I’d been expecting him. The way his eyes had tracked her since my arrival told me he’d brought her here specifically for this moment, and now that it was happening ahead of his schedule, he needed to manage it.
He crossed the room with deliberate unhurried movement. He looked like someone performing confidence rather than someone who embodied it. He stopped on the other side of the table with a smile that had been assembled very carefully.
“My Queen.” He inclined his head. “What a pleasant coincidence. I see you’ve found Nancy.”
Nancy is the wife of a prisoner and an upstanding pack member. What I wanted to understand was the interest alpha Damon had in her.
Her hand was flat on the table. Her knuckles were white.
“Sit down, Nancy,” I said, even though she was already sitting. I said it for Damon’s benefit, so he could hear clearly that I was the one directing this and not him. Then I looked at him. “It wasn’t a coincidence. You brought her here knowing I’d be here.”
His smile didn’t waver. “I thought it might do her good to be around people. She’s been rather isolated.”
“Because you isolated her.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, as though he was gathering his thoughts. When he did speak, his words were slow and measured.
“She’s under my care, My Queen. I’ve had to make difficult decisions about who she has contact with given the nature of her husband’s charges.”
“Damien’s charges,” I said. “Which haven’t resulted in a completed trial or a confirmed execution. Which means he’s a man in a cell awaiting a process that stalled when my husband fell ill.” I looked at Damon steadily. “And you’ve been using that unresolved process to keep his wife completely cut off from anyone who might help her.”
Something shifted in his expression. Not guilt. Something cooler than that. Recalibration.
“My Queen, I’ve only been—”
“I’m not asking you to explain yourself right now.” I kept my voice level and unhurried. “I’m telling you that Nancy is coming back with me tonight. I’m not borrowing her. I’m not requesting her. I’m taking her. If you have an objection, you can raise it through the appropriate channels at the next elder session, and I’ll be very interested to hear you explain publicly why you’ve been restricting the movement of a woman who hasn’t been charged with anything.”
The room around us had not gone quiet exactly, but the nearest conversations had thinned. People were listening while pretending not to. Damon knew it. His jaw moved slightly before he spoke.
“Of course, My Queen. She’s yours.” He looked at Nancy, just for a moment, and the look said several things that weren’t meant for me to translate. Then he stepped back. “Things can only improve from here.”
I watched him walk away.
Nancy exhaled so quietly beside me that I nearly missed it.
“He’s going to make this difficult,” she said.
“Good.” I reached for my glass. “I’ve been waiting for him to try.”
For the remainder of the party I did what I’d come to do. I moved through the room at my own pace, spoke to the people I chose to speak to, and ignored everyone else. I watched which Alphas gravitated toward Damon when they thought I wasn’t looking and which ones gave him deliberate distance.
I noted the two wolves near the main entrance in serving uniforms who moved with the specific body language of people who had never actually served food in their lives, and the way Damon’s attention kept returning to Nancy even when he was mid-conversation with someone else. I didn’t need any special discernment skills to know it was not out of concern.
There was a pattern here. I could feel it the way you feel a shape in the dark before your eyes adjust. Damon. The red crown symbol. The dead man in the dungeon. The shooter at the Moonlight Celebration. The anonymous letter that had put Damien in prison. These were not separate problems. They were the same problem wearing different faces.
When we left, I made sure Nancy was in the car before anyone could intercept her. Milo handled the logistics of it without making it visible, which I was quietly grateful for.
In the car, Nancy sat beside me and Hazel was in the front and nobody said anything until the Sterling Pack gates were behind us. Then Nancy took a breath that seemed to come from somewhere very deep.
“He told me you wouldn’t help,” she said. “He said you had too many problems of your own and that Damien’s case was closed and there was no one left who cared about it.”
“He was wrong about all three of those things,” I said.
Leo turned from the front seat. “What are you going to do about Damon?”
“Right now I’m going to find out what Elijah knew when Damien was brought in. Then I’m going to reopen the case.” I felt Hazel’s slight tension from the front but she didn’t interrupt and I kept going. “And while I’m doing that, I’m going to find out exactly how Damon connects to a red crown that keeps showing up everywhere I don’t want it.”
Nancy’s head turned sharply. “A red crown?”
I looked at her.
“You know that symbol,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
She pressed her lips together for a moment. The city lights moved across her face through the window and she looked older than she had at the party, or maybe just less performed.
“Damien knew it,” she said carefully. “Before he was arrested. He’d seen it somewhere and he was worried about it. He didn’t tell me everything but he said—” She stopped. Started again. “He said the people who used that symbol didn’t forgive mistakes.”
The car was very quiet.
“Then we’d better find out what mistake they think was made,” I said.