Chapter 12 In His Own Hand #2
A question posed to a man whose eyes, according to the scribe's careful notes, were unfocused. Whose voice was flat. Whose hands didn't move.
The candidacy terminates.
I hadn't said that. Not really. Some hollowed-out version of me had said it — a version Desmond had created, somehow, in the moments before that session even started, a version primed to answer exactly the question Desmond needed answered, in exactly the words that would end everything as quickly and cleanly as possible.
The Alpha has spoken. The candidacy is terminated.
Said immediately — before Marlowe had even finished her protest, before anyone in that room had a chance to ask the obvious question, the question the scribe's own notes practically begged someone to ask: is the Alpha all right?
Should we pause this? Should someone check on him before we proceed with something this significant?
Nobody asked. Because Desmond didn't give them the chance — moved immediately from my ruling to the practical consequences, you'll need to vacate territory by morning , closing the door on the entire matter before it could be reopened, before anyone could look at me too closely, before — I understood now, with a clarity that felt like ice — before whatever had been done to me had a chance to wear off in front of witnesses.
Perhaps you should retire. It's been a difficult evening, and you've borne the weight of a great deal these past months. The council understands.
He'd sent me away. Immediately. Before I could come back to myself in that room, in front of six council members and a scribe — sent me away to wherever I'd gone afterward, alone, while he handled "the candidate's departure arrangements personally," and by morning, whatever had been done to my mind had apparently settled into something permanent.
A clean gap. A four-sentence summary. No further action required.
I set the pages down, and found that my hands were not entirely steady.
"Alpha." Ilse's voice, gentle, from across the room. "Are you all right?"
"No," I said honestly. "I don't think I am."
"Do you want me to—"
"Give me a minute." My voice came out rougher than I intended.
I stood, walked to the window, and stood there for a long moment, looking out at the dark grounds of the packhouse, lit here and there by scattered lights, and tried to breathe through the thing that had taken up residence in my chest — not just grief, though grief was there, enormous and raw.
Rage, too. And underneath both of those, something else, something that felt almost like vertigo — the specific, dizzying horror of having just read, in painstaking detail, the moment your own life was taken from you by someone you'd trusted completely, and finding that you had absolutely no memory of it at all.
That the only proof it had happened to you, rather than to some stranger wearing your face, was a piece of paper and the careful, clinical notes of a scribe who'd watched it happen and hadn't fully understood what she was seeing either.
"He used my father's death," I said quietly, still facing the window.
"He used my grief — the fact that everyone in that room already expected me to be struggling, already expected me to be not quite myself — and he turned it into cover.
Nobody questioned why I seemed different that night, because I'd seemed different for months.
Nobody thought to ask whether something had been done to me, because the explanation that required no further investigation — grief, exhaustion, the weight of a new title — was sitting right there, ready-made, and he made sure it was the only explanation anyone needed. "
"Yes," Ilse said quietly. "I think that's exactly what happened."
"And then he kept doing it. For three years.
" I turned back to face her, and felt something settle in my chest — not the rage, not entirely, but something colder, more deliberate, the particular clarity that came from finally understanding the shape of a thing you'd been circling blindly for days.
"Every time anyone might have asked a question — about the gap in my memory, about why I'd changed, about anything — there was Desmond.
Helping. Stepping up. Being the steady presence the pack needed while the young, grieving Alpha found his footing.
And the whole time, he was the only person who knew exactly why I'd changed, because he was the one who'd changed me. "
"Alpha—" Ilse's voice was careful, but underneath the carefulness, something steadier, something that sounded almost like resolve. "What are you going to do?"
I looked down at the transcript — at Roman, you don't mean that, I know you don't mean that, please, just LOOK at me, please — and felt the last of my uncertainty about what came next settle into something solid.
"I'm going to find out exactly what was done to me," I said.
"Whatever method Desmond used — whatever spell, whatever it was — I need to know if it's reversible.
If there's a way to get those months back, or if they're just — gone, permanently, a piece of my life I'll never have access to again.
" My jaw tightened. "And then I'm going to confront him.
Not quietly. Not in a records office at three in the morning, where he can manage the conversation the way he's clearly managed everything else for three years.
I want witnesses. I want the council to hear, in his own words, what he did — and why. "
"And Marlowe?" Ilse's voice was gentle. "Does she know? About the transcript?"
I thought about her hand in mine, two nights ago. The way she'd seemed, since then, like she was working up to something — a hesitation I'd noticed and hadn't pushed on, telling myself there would be time.
"Not yet," I said quietly. "But she's in this transcript too, Ilse.
Every word of it. She begged me to look at her, and I didn't — because whatever was left of me in that room couldn't. She's been carrying that for three years, thinking I chose not to look.
Thinking I chose all of it." I picked up the transcript, carefully, and held it like something fragile, something that needed protecting now that it had finally been allowed back into the light.
"She needs to know the truth. As soon as possible.
Before Desmond finds out I've read this — because once he does, I don't know what he's going to do, and I'd rather she hear it from me than find out some other way. "
"Be careful, Alpha." Ilse's voice carried real concern now, the careful neutrality of the historian giving way to something more personal.
"If Desmond manipulated your mind once — if he has whatever knowledge or ability allowed him to do that — he may not be without options now, even cornered.
You said yourself, the gap might not be permanent on its own.
If he believes you're getting close to undoing what he did—"
"I know." I held her gaze, steady despite the weight of everything I was carrying.
"I'll be careful. But I'm not going to wait, either.
Every day this stays buried is another day Desmond gets to keep pretending none of it happened — and another day Marlowe doesn't know the truth about what was actually done to both of us. "
I left Ilse's office with the transcript carefully secured, and made my way back toward the guest suite — toward Marlowe, toward a conversation I knew was going to be one of the hardest either of us had ever had, and toward whatever came after, for both of us, once the truth was finally, fully out in the open.
I didn't make it there before everything changed again.