Chapter 91 The Trap Springs
Calix POV
I was up before six.
I got dressed quickly and headed straight for Maddie's dorm before breakfast. I had the photographs on my phone, I had made up my mind on the walk over that I was going to show her everything without softening it first.
She deserved the full truth, not a version of it.
I knocked twice. Elara opened the door and looked at me the same way she always did, like she was deciding whether to let me in or not.
"She's up," Elara said finally and stepped aside.
Maddie was at her desk with a cup of something warm in her hands. She looked at me when I walked in, then at the expression on my face and her posture shifted slightly.
"What happened?" she asked.
I sat down across from her and handed her my phone with the photographs already open.
She took it without saying anything and started scrolling through them slowly. I watched her face change as she read, afraid of what she might think.
"He wrote this himself," she said. It was not a question.
"Yes," I said.
She kept scrolling. When she reached the last entry she stopped and did not move for a moment.
Then she handed the phone back to me.
"He killed them because she chose someone else," she said quietly.
"That's what the record says," I told her.
She nodded slowly and looked at her cup. "So the obsession in his study, the image on the wall, all of it connects back to my mother."
"It looks that way," I said. "Which means if he finds out who you are, he is not going to treat it like a pack violation. It becomes something personal."
"I know," she said.
We sat with that for a minute and neither of us pushed to fill the silence. Then Maddie straightened and looked at me directly.
"Does anyone else know you went into the archive?"
"A guard caught me on the way out," I said. "I covered it but he will probably mention it to my father."
She exhaled. "So we don't have much time."
"No," I said. "We don't."
Before either of us could say anything else Elara knocked once and opened the door a crack. "Jace is outside the building," she said.
"He's been standing there for about ten minutes."
Maddie's jaw tightened. "What does he want?"
"He said he wants to talk to you," Elara said. "He said it won't take long."
Maddie looked at me and I looked back at her. I did not tell her what to do because that was not my place but I did not like it either.
"I'll go," Maddie said and stood up.
"Keep it short and public. He doesn't get a private conversation."
She went downstairs and I stayed by the window where I could see the front of the building. Elara stood beside me without saying anything.
Jace was waiting on the path outside with his hands in his pockets, looking casual in the way people do when they are trying too hard to look casual.
Maddie walked out and stopped a few feet away from him.
I could not hear what they were saying from up here but I could see the body language and none of it sat right with me.
Jace kept leaning in and Maddie kept her arms crossed the whole time. After about five minutes she turned and came back inside.
I did not know then that the conversation was the whole point.
I found out later, from Finn, that while Maddie was outside with Jace, Simone had gone straight to my father's office on the other side of campus.
Jace had fed her everything she needed before that morning, Maddie's real identity, her origin, the white fur, all of it.
Simone had been holding onto it and waiting for the right moment, Jace standing outside Maddie's building was just the distraction to keep us in one place while Simone moved.
By the time Maddie came back upstairs my phone was already ringing.
It was Finn.
"Calix," he said. "Simone just left your father's office. She was in there for twenty minutes and she looked pleased when she came out."
I was already moving toward the door. "How long ago?"
"Maybe five minutes," he said. "You need to get to Maddie right now."
But I was too far.
I heard it before I got back to the building. Not loud, but clear enough. Voices in the corridor outside Maddie's room, more than two, official and flat in the way pack enforcers always sound when they are following orders.
By the time I got up the stairs the door to her room was open and two enforcers were standing inside. Elara was in the hallway with her back against the wall and her arms crossed tight over her chest, not saying a word but her eyes said everything.
Maddie was standing in the middle of the room and she was not panicking. She looked at me when I appeared in the doorway and her expression was steady but I could see what was underneath it.
"Calix," one of the enforcers said.
"Alpha Hawthorne's orders. Step aside now."
"On what grounds," I asked quietly.
"Concealment of identity and deception of pack leadership," he said.
There was nothing I could do. I knew it and so did Maddie. If I fought them here it would make everything worse for her and give my father exactly the reason he needed to escalate.
Maddie picked up her jacket from the chair without being told to. She looked at me one more time before they walked her out.
"Don't do anything stupid," she said.
Then she was gone and the door was open.
The hallway was quiet, I was standing there with nothing but the photographs on my phone and the knowledge that I had been one step too slow.