Chapter 7 The Wolf Who Remembered
I barely made it to the edge of the garden before anyone caught me. But suddenly, someone grabbed my hand, it wasn't the guards, it wasn't Renna's lackeys but Ryder himself.
His hand closed around my wrist and I spun around, ready to fight, ready to claw his eyes out if I had to. But the look on his face stopped me cold.
He wasn't angry. He was... afraid.
"Are you insane?" he hissed, pulling me behind a cluster of rose bushes where we couldn't be seen from the house. "Do you have any idea what you just did?"
I yanked my arm free. "I told the truth. Remember that concept?"
"The truth?" His laugh was bitter, desperate. "The truth will get you killed, Sienna. They're already calling for your banishment. Some want worse."
"Then let them…"
"I can't protect you if you keep doing this!" The words exploded out of him, raw and jagged. "Don't you understand? Every time you fight back, every time you show them you're not broken, they want to break you harder. And I... God, I can't watch them destroy you completely."
Something in his voice made me pause. The way it cracked on the last word. The way his hands were shaking almost as badly as mine.
"Then why didn't you stop them?" My voice was barely a whisper. "Why didn't you speak up when they made me crawl?"
His face crumpled. "Because they would have killed you. Right there in that room, they would have torn you apart, and I would have had to watch because if I'd interfered..." He ran his hands through his hair, pacing like a caged animal. "There are things you don't know, Sienna. Things I can't tell you."
"What things?"
But before he could answer, footsteps crashed through the garden. Zane appeared, flanked by two guards, his face twisted with rage.
"Found them," he called over his shoulder. "Told you she'd run straight to her Alpha."
"He's not my…" I started, but Zane cut me off.
"Touching scene, really. The mighty Alpha sneaking around with his servant whore."
Ryder's entire body went rigid. "Watch your mouth, Zane."
"Or what? You'll challenge me? Over her?" Zane's smile was poisonous. "By all means, let's make this even more interesting."
That's when Renna appeared, her face a mask of cold fury. But there was something else there. Something that looked almost like... panic?
"Enough," she said sharply. "Ryder, step away from her. Now."
"Renna…"
"I said now." Her voice cracked like a whip. "Unless you want the entire pack to know what you really are."
The words hung in the air like a threat. Ryder went completely still. What he really was? What did that mean?
But I didn't have time to think about it because suddenly Maya was there, bursting through the garden gate with her eyes wide and terrified.
"They found it," she gasped, stumbling toward us. "Oh Moongoddess, they found it."
"Found what?" Renna snapped.
Maya looked at me, then at Ryder, then back at me. "The contract. The real one. Mr. Harvey... he had a copy hidden in his safe. The one that shows what Zane really did."
My heart stopped. "What are you talking about?"
"The inheritance clause," Maya said, tears streaming down her face. "It's still valid. You never legally forfeited anything because the contract was forged. Everything Zane took... it's still yours."
The silence that followed was deafening. Zane's face had gone white as bone.
But it was Renna who spoke first, her voice deadly calm. "Where is this contract now?"
"Harvey's office was... there was a fire," Maya whispered. "But he got the document out. He's on his way here, with witnesses."
I felt like I was drowning. All this time, everything I'd lost, everything I'd suffered... it had been based on a lie. A forgery.
"This changes nothing," Zane said quickly, but his voice was strained. "She signed the papers. There were witnesses that saw her…"
"The witnesses you paid," Maya interrupted. "Harvey found the receipts. The money trail. All of it."
The earth felt like it was shifting under my feet. Not just because of what this meant for me, but because of the way Renna was looking at Zane. Not like a sister-in-law. Not even like an ally.
Like she wanted to kill him herself.
"You fool," she hissed at him. "You incompetent, greedy fool."
"Hey, this was your plan too…"
"My plan was elegant. Subtle. This..." She gestured wildly. "This is going to bring everything crashing down."
My plan? I stared at her, pieces clicking into place. "You knew. About the contract. About everything."
Renna's smile was sharp as broken glass. "Oh, darling. I didn't just know. I orchestrated it."
The world suddenly spun. "What?"
"Did you really think it was a coincidence? Poor little Sienna, drugged and manipulated by her cruel husband? The tragic victim?" She laughed, a sound like ice cracking. "You were so easy to manipulate. So desperate for love, for acceptance. All I had to do was plant a few words in Zane's ear about your inheritance, about how useful it would be to have access to your family's land holdings..."
I couldn't breathe. "You... you planned all of this?"
"Not all of it," she admitted. "The part where you ended up in bed with my mate? That was an unfortunate complication. But it worked out beautifully in the end, didn't it? It gave me the perfect excuse to destroy you completely."
Ryder was staring at his wife like he'd never seen her before. "Renna, what are you saying?"
"I'm saying our dear Sienna was never the real threat, darling. She was just a convenient scapegoat." Her eyes glittered with malice. "The real threat was always you."
"Me?"
"Oh, come now. Did you think I didn't know? About the curse? About what you really are?" She stepped closer to him, her voice dropping to a whisper that somehow carried to all of us. "Did you think I married you for love?"
The color drained from Ryder's face. "How do you…"
"I've known for months. The moon sickness. The way you disappear during the full moon. The way you can't properly shift." Her smile was venomous. "You're not just any Alpha, are you, darling? You're a broken Alpha. Cursed. Weak."
I looked between them, my mind reeling. A curse? What was she talking about?
But Ryder's expression told me everything I needed to know. The shame. The fear. The way he wouldn't meet my eyes.
"The pack laws are very clear," Renna continued conversationally. "A cursed Alpha cannot lead. Cannot hold territory. Cannot pass on his bloodline." She turned to the guards. "Take him."
"What? No!" I lunged forward, but Zane caught my arm.
"And as for you," Renna said, turning back to me, "well, Harvey and his contract might have complicated things, but accidents happen, don't they? Especially to lawyers who dig too deep."
The threat was crystal clear. I felt sick.
But then something extraordinary happened.
Maya stepped forward. Small, quiet Maya who'd brought me bread in the dark. "Actually," she said, her voice surprisingly steady, "there's one more thing you should know."
Renna's eyes narrowed. "What?"
Maya looked directly at me, and for the first time, I saw something familiar in her eyes. Something that made my heart skip.
"Harvey isn't coming alone," she said. "He's bringing the Council of Alphas. All of them. Because the contract isn't the only thing he found."
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, worn photograph.
"He found proof of who Sienna really is. Not just who she was married to, or whose daughter she thinks she is." Maya's smile was sad and knowing. "He found proof of her real bloodline. The one that was hidden from her. The one that makes her not just an Alpha..."
She held up the photograph. It showed a woman who looked exactly like me, standing beside a man in royal regalia.
"But the rightful heir to the Crown."
The silence that followed was absolute.
I stared at the photograph, at my own face looking back at me from decades ago, and felt something deep inside me begin to wake up. Something that had been sleeping. Waiting.
My wolf.
She stirred for the first time in months, and when she did, power rolled off me in waves that made everyone step back.
Everyone except Ryder, who was staring at me with wonder and terror and something that looked like… Recognition.
"That's impossible," Renna whispered.
But even as she said it, I could see in her face that she knew it wasn't.
The woman in the photograph wasn't just anyone.
She was Queen Elena. The lost Queen. The one who'd disappeared twenty-five years ago with her infant daughter. The one whose bloodline carried not just Alpha power, but something older. Something that could break any curse.
Something that could change everything. And somewhere in the distance, I could hear the sound of cars approaching. The Council, they are coming to witness the return of a Queen who never knew she was royal. They are coming to witness the moment everything changed.
I looked at Ryder, at the hope dawning in his eyes, and felt my wolf rise fully for the first time in my life.
But before I could take another breath, before I could process what this meant, Renna's hand moved to her hip. To the silver dagger she always carried.
And I realized that queens could still die. Even the ones who'd just discovered their crown.