Chapter 13 What the Pack Already Knew
Petra found me the next morning, before I'd even finished breakfast — Birdie still working through a plate of fruit with the slow, contemplative focus she brought to food first thing in the morning, and Petra appearing in the doorway of the small dining area with an expression that immediately told me whatever she'd come to say wasn't going to wait.
"Can I talk to you?" Petra's eyes flicked toward Birdie, then back to me. "Privately, if — Birdie's fine here for a minute, the kitchen staff love having her around, someone can keep an eye—"
"What's going on?"
"I found something." Petra's voice was low, urgent. "Or — someone told me something, and I think you need to hear it, and I think you need to hear it before your check-in with the Alpha today."
I glanced at Birdie, who was entirely absorbed in arranging her fruit by color, and one of the kitchen staff — an older woman who'd taken a clear liking to Birdie over the past several days — caught my eye and nodded reassuringly. "I'll watch her," the woman said. "Go ahead."
I followed Petra out into the hallway, and she led me a short distance away, toward a quiet alcove near one of the packhouse's many windows, before stopping and turning to face me, her expression serious in a way I hadn't seen from her before.
"You remember what I told you, the first night you were here. About the Alpha changing, three years ago. About something feeling off, and nobody ever asking what."
"I remember."
"I've been asking." Petra's voice was quiet, but there was something steely underneath it, the particular determination of someone who'd been turning a problem over for days and had finally found a thread worth pulling.
"Carefully. Just — talking to people, the way you do, when you've worked somewhere for fifteen years and everyone trusts you not to make trouble.
And yesterday, I talked to someone who was here, three years ago.
In the packhouse, that night. Someone who remembers things a lot more clearly than most people seem to. "
"Who?"
"One of the night staff. Older woman, mostly retired now, but back then she worked the late shift — cleaning, mostly, the kind of work that has you in and out of rooms most people don't think twice about.
" Petra's voice had dropped further, almost a whisper now, even though the hallway around us was empty.
"She told me she remembers that night. The council session — she remembers it because afterward, late, well after everyone else had gone to bed, she saw the Alpha.
Roman. Walking the halls, alone, looking — her words — 'like a man who'd just woken up from a nightmare he couldn't remember having.
' Confused. Disoriented. She said he asked her, at one point, what day it was — like he genuinely didn't know, like time had skipped somewhere and he was trying to figure out where he'd lost it. "
I felt something cold settle in my stomach. "Go on."
"She said she didn't think much of it at the time — it had been a hard year, the Alpha had seemed different for weeks already, and one more strange night didn't seem like anything unusual, given everything.
But what she remembers most clearly — what's stuck with her, all these years — is what happened the next morning. "
"What happened?"
"Desmond." Petra's voice was steady, but I could hear, underneath it, the weight of what she was about to say.
"She said Desmond came to find her, specifically — pulled her aside, very early, before most of the packhouse was awake, and asked her directly whether she'd seen the Alpha the night before. Whether they'd spoken. What he'd said."
"And?"
"And she told him the truth — that yes, she'd seen him, that he'd seemed confused, that he'd asked about the date.
And she said Desmond's whole — demeanor — changed.
Got very calm, very careful, the way he does.
And he told her — and these are her words, Marlowe, she remembered them exactly, she said they'd stuck with her for three years because of how strange they felt at the time — he told her: 'The Alpha had a difficult night.
He's grieving, and grief does strange things to a person's mind.
If anyone asks, I'd rather you not mention it — not because it's a secret, but because I don't want people gossiping about the Alpha's state of mind during an already difficult time.
He doesn't need that on top of everything else. '"
The cold in my stomach had spread, now, into something that felt almost like nausea.
"He was checking," I said slowly. "The next morning.
He was checking who'd seen Roman, what Roman had said, whether anyone had noticed anything — and then immediately, immediately , giving them a reason not to talk about it.
The same reason he gave Ilse, the same reason he gave Roman himself, two nights ago, in the records office.
Grief does strange things. I wouldn't put much weight on it. "
"Exactly." Petra's expression was grim. "Marlowe — I think this woman wasn't the only one Desmond talked to, that morning.
I think he went around the entire packhouse, quietly, checking who'd seen what, and giving everyone the same careful, reasonable-sounding explanation — and because it was reasonable, because Roman genuinely had been struggling, because grief genuinely does affect people in strange ways, nobody questioned it.
Nobody connected it to anything. It just became — part of the story everyone already believed.
The Alpha's having a hard time. Best not to make it harder by talking about it. "
"And meanwhile," I said slowly, the pieces settling into place with a clarity that felt like ice water down my spine, "the actual truth — that something had been done to him, the night before, in front of the entire council — got buried under a story that explained away every piece of evidence that might have pointed toward it.
The confusion. The disorientation. Even the gap itself — if anyone ever noticed Roman didn't remember something from that period, well, of course he didn't, he was grieving, grief does strange things, don't put much weight on it. "
"It's the perfect cover." Petra's voice was quiet, almost admiring in a horrified way — the particular admiration people sometimes had for a plan executed with terrible efficiency.
"Because it's not even a lie, exactly. Grief does do strange things.
Roman was struggling. Every individual piece of the story is true.
It's just — none of it is the whole truth, and Desmond made sure nobody ever had enough pieces, at the same time, to see the shape of what was actually missing. "
I leaned back against the wall of the alcove, and for a moment, just breathed — trying to absorb the full weight of what Petra had just told me, on top of everything else, on top of the conversation with Roman two nights ago, on top of the sealed record I knew he was planning to read.
"I need to tell Roman about this," I said finally.
"And I need to tell him — everything. My side of it.
What that night was actually like, from where I was standing.
I've been putting it off, telling myself there'd be time, but—" I shook my head.
"There isn't time. Not anymore. Every piece of this is connecting, and he deserves to have the whole picture, not just the parts that come from official records and sealed transcripts. He deserves to hear it from me, too."
"Do you want me to come with you? Or—"
"No. No, I think — I think this needs to just be us.
" I straightened up, and felt something settle in my chest — not certainty, exactly, but resolve, the particular steadiness that came from finally deciding to do something you'd been afraid of for a long time.
"Thank you, Petra. For all of this. For asking the questions nobody else thought to ask. "
"Someone had to." Petra's expression softened, just slightly. "Go find him. I'll keep an eye on Birdie until you're back."
I found Roman's study on the second floor of the main wing — a room I'd never been inside, in my time here before or now, but one Petra had pointed me toward with the easy confidence of someone who knew the packhouse better than almost anyone.
The door was slightly ajar, and as I approached, I could hear voices inside — Roman's, and another, lower, more measured.
I stopped, just outside the door, and felt my stomach drop.
Desmond.
"—understand your concern, Alpha, but I really must insist that whatever you think you've found, it would be wise to discuss it with the full council before—"
"I'm not discussing anything with the council yet, Desmond. I'm discussing it with you. Right now. Because I think you already know exactly what I found, and I think you've known, for three years, that someday someone would find it."
The voices inside the room had gone tense, sharp in a way that hadn't been there in either of my previous encounters with Desmond — and I stood frozen in the hallway, one hand raised to push the door open, and found myself, for just a moment, unable to move at all.
Whatever was happening in that room, it was happening right now. The confrontation Roman had told me about, two nights ago — I want witnesses, I want the council to hear, in his own words, what he did — apparently hadn't waited for witnesses, hadn't waited for careful planning.
It was happening. Right now. Without me.
I pushed the door open.