Chapter Five The Bait Takes
Chapter Five: The Bait Takes
Seven days.
I sit at the window and watch the dark come in over the grounds and I do not move, because moving would mean the waiting is unbearable, and I have decided the waiting is manageable.
My hands are in my lap. My breathing is even.
Not yet. I tell myself this the way I have been telling myself this for seven days.
The information is out. The channels are reliable. My father will move on it, and when he does I will know, and until then there is nothing to do but sit here and not let the sitting feel like what it is.
Not yet. A little longer.
The door opens behind me.
Nessa crosses the room at a speed that is not quite running, and she holds the envelope with both hands, like something breakable.
"It worked." She keeps her voice low but can't keep the shake out of it. "Your father sent an invitation. On Alden Alpha letterhead. Family dinner. Tomorrow."
I look at the envelope. The wax seal. The familiar crest pressed into red that I have spent many years trying to get distance from.
My shoulders drop. I hadn't noticed how high I'd been carrying them until they come down, and something in my chest cracks open. Not breaking. Just releasing, the way a fist unclenches when it's finally safe to.
I tip my head back and the smile comes before I can think about whether to let it.
The door opens again.
Gideon stops just inside the threshold, and his eyes find my face, and whatever he sees there changes the quality of his attention immediately.
He crosses the room in a few strides, takes my wrist, and pulls, and I am up and against his chest before I decide to stand.
"You're happy." His voice is low, almost wondering. "You haven't smiled at me like that in a long time."
He looks at me the way he looked at me in the hospital room once, a long time ago, when I was something he was afraid of losing.
"He took the bait." I look up at him. "We go back tomorrow."
I stay where I am, my cheek against the fabric of his shirt.
"The men you assigned." I keep my voice even. "To bring my mother out. It's arranged?"
He makes a quiet sound, amused. His hand moves to the back of my neck, thumb pressing gently once.
"The moment she's past your father's territory line, they'll have her. I promise."
Good.
***
The Alden estate smells the same as it always has. Old stone, old money, something underneath both of those things that I have no name for — the specific scent of a place that has never been safe.
They've put her in the back wing.
The room is dim, the curtains drawn against the afternoon light, and the air carries the bitterness of medicinal herbs that have been brewing too long.
My mother is on the bed with a shawl pulled around her, and she is smaller than she was six months ago.
I close the door behind me.
The armor goes. All of it, in the half-second before she looks up. What's left is just me, standing in front of the person I have built every calculation around.
I cross the room and go to my knees in front of her and take both her hands. Her fingers are cold the way hands get when they haven't been warm in a long time.
"Lysandra." Her voice is rough. Her grip tightens. "You shouldn't have come back. What has your father made you do now?"
I shake my head, smiling, and reach up to settle her shawl more firmly around her shoulders.
I don't speak. Through the wall, behind the closed door, the guards are standing exactly where they were when I walked in. Werewolf hearing is not a thing you forget.
I find her palm and press my fingers into it once — one hard, deliberate press, the message with no words — and then I lean in until my mouth is at her ear, and I keep my voice below breath.
"Don't be afraid." The words are barely sound. "Pack what you love most. A few things only. Nothing heavy."
Her hand tightens on mine.
I pull back before she can respond, and I straighten, and I raise my voice to the register that carries through walls without straining.
"I'm going to ask Father if I can take you to the thermal springs for a few days. Your health has been poor. The mineral water would help."
She looks at me. I watch her understand. It moves across her face in sequence. First the confusion, then the calculation, then something that is not quite hope but is reaching toward it.
Her lips press together. Her eyes go bright and wet.
She nods.
I hold her gaze for one more second and then I stand, and I turn, and by the time my hand touches the door I have put everything back where it lives.
The walk to the main house takes four minutes. I know because I have walked it enough times to stop counting.
He is waiting around the corner of the corridor. Both hands clasped behind his back, posture arranged into the silhouette of a man who happened to be passing through.
Alden does not happen to be passing through anything.
His eyes lock onto mine the way they always have, the particular look of a man who has never fully believed he knows everything I'm thinking and has spent years being right to be uncertain.
"The mineral vein." Low, direct. "Is it real?"
My chest rises. Falls.
The rhythm is exact, no faster than it was ten seconds ago. My heartbeat is a thing I learned to control the same way I learned to control my face, and I have been lying inside this family for long enough that the lie arrives before I do.
"Yes. Gideon's team surveyed the site. The deposits are massive."
His eyes narrow. "How confident?"
"Eighty percent."
The line of his jaw softens. The smile that comes next is the one he uses when he decides someone has been useful — the one he has always believed reads as warmth.
He claps me on the shoulder. Once, heavy.
"You've done well this year. The more you give this family, the better it is for your mother here." The smile stays. "You understand."
I lower my chin. The gratitude is legible. Whatever is under it stays where I put it.
***
The family meeting room smells like leather and old decisions.
Alden takes the head of the table. Gideon and I sit to the side, and I watch my father lean forward the way he does when he is about to tell you what he actually came here for.
"Given how promising the survey results sound, I'd like to discuss a joint mining operation." He keeps his hands flat on the table.
"As a show of good faith, I'm prepared to offer a five percent concession across all collaborative ventures for the next year."
He looks at Gideon.
Gideon is leaning back in his chair, long fingers loosely laced together, listening with the expression of a man who already knows how this ends.
When my father finishes, he makes a small sound that might be amusement, and turns his head.
He looks at me.
"My Luna has been managing this project from the beginning." The ease in his voice is genuine. "The decision is hers."
I feel Alden's attention shift to me like a change in air pressure.
My finger taps the table once. Twice. The gesture of a woman thinking it through.
"I'd be happy to discuss a joint venture." I let a pause sit. "I do have one personal request."
Alden's expression goes carefully neutral. "Go ahead."
"I'd like to take my mother to the thermal springs estate for two days. Her health is poor, and the mineral baths would do her good."
Something moves behind his eyes. His shoulders tighten, not much but enough — the body's answer before the mind's answer, the reflex of a man who does not like anything in his controlled collection being moved.
He says nothing.
"If you're concerned," I continue, and I let the ghost of something accommodating into my voice, "you're welcome to send additional men along. To protect us."
The tightness goes out of his shoulders.
I watch him weigh it. The numbers on one side: massive mineral deposits. On the other side: two days, a thermal springs resort, and however many guards he chooses to attach to us.
"Fine." He smiles. "It's good that you think of her. Go."
They stand to shake hands, my father and my husband, and the room fills with the sounds of concluded business.
I stand beside the table.
My nails are in my palms. I find the sharpest point and press down, harder, and the pain becomes a door. I close everything else behind it.
The tightness in my throat. The heat behind my eyes. The way my blood is moving too fast for a woman who is supposed to be standing still.
Once she's past the territory line. The thought is precise and bright, brighter than anything has felt in months.
Gideon's people are positioned. She just needs to cross the line.