Chapter 13 An Unhelpful Development #2
I looked at the hedge. I could see it now. The gap near the service gate. The sign. The angle where Henry had vanished. The slope beyond. The memory came back too clean and my fingers gripped the chair arms.
Ian moved beside me. “Cassie.”
“This is it,” I said. “That gate.”
The gate looked harmless in daylight. That offended me. Tragedy should have the decency to leave teeth marks.
“The lock was not broken,” Lucien said. “The override came from this side.”
“So Brenner opened it,” I said.
“Or someone using Brenner’s access.”
Ronan glanced at Lucien. “The code?”
“Changed three hours before the rite.”
Ian’s hand tightened on the chair grip.
Ronan’s head turned slowly. “By whom?”
Lucien’s expression remained smooth, but something behind it had gone tense. “Council authorization. The request came through Elder Malrec’s office.”
The silence after that had weight.
Even I knew enough to understand Elder Malrec. Old man with a blade. The ‘kill her now before the mark roots’ guy.
Ronan stood.
“No accusations,” he said.
Ian’s voice was very quiet. “I didn’t make one.”
“You were about to.”
“I do not need to accuse Malrec to know his office touched the gate.”
Ronan stepped close enough to lower his voice. “And if you say that where the wrong wolf hears it, the council turns this into Alpha interference before I know what was actually done.”
Ian’s jaw tightened and the mark warmed with his anger, but this time, I didn’t flinch. I reached back and touched two fingers to his wrist. I could feel him going hard and bright behind me, and some part of me understood that he was trying to hold a knife by the sharp end.
Ian went completely still.
So did Ronan.
I realized what I had done after I did it.
Wonderful.
New development. My hand had apparently joined the diplomatic service.
Ian looked down at my fingers on his wrist and his anger changed. It didn’t vanish. More like focused. Settled. Became something he could carry without bleeding all over the room. Or garden.
Whatever.
I pulled my hand back.
“Don’t make me regret helping,” I said.
His voice came rough. “I will try not to.”
Ronan watched us for one long second.
Then he turned to Lucien. “Continue.”
Lucien looked at the tablet again. “The gate code was changed under Malrec’s office because Thorne ritual staff requested secondary access for ceremonial preparation.”
“Thorne staff,” Ian said.
“Yes.”
My head turned toward Ronan. “Evelyn’s people.”
Ronan gave me one look, nearly a warning. I had said the thing he didn’t want said out loud.
Good. I was poisoned, not decorative.
“The request was valid,” Ronan said. “Political rites involve both packs.”
“But someone from Evelyn’s side needed access through the gate before the ceremony,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And the gate stayed open.”
“Yes.”
“And the guard is….gone.”
“Yes.”
The answers built a staircase none of them wanted to climb.
I looked at the iron bars.
“At least Henry didn’t get lured. He got lucky.”
“Unlucky,” Ian said.
I looked back at him. He was looking at my bandaged shoulder.
“For everyone,” I said.
His eyes lifted to mine and his expression changed again.
“No,” he said. “Not for everyone.”
The mark pulsed once, slow and warm beneath the bandage. That was dangerous enough that I immediately turned back toward Ronan.
“Track the missing guard,” I said. “That’s where this goes, right?”
Ronan’s gaze sharpened. “You are giving orders now?”
“No. I’m organizing the obvious because everyone here has too much testosterone and too many old rules to move in a straight line.”
Lucien looked down at the tablet.
Sava muttered, “She is not entirely wrong.”
Ronan ignored her. “Ian tracks Brenner’s trail from the gate.”
“No,” Ian said.
Ronan didn’t look surprised.
I did.
“Why no?” I asked.
Ian’s eyes stayed on Ronan. “If I leave her here, the mark worsens. If I take her with me, she is exposed. If I follow Brenner and the trail goes to the west side while her father and the groom is already pushing boundaries, I divide focus.”
“Your focus is already divided,” Ronan said.
Ian’s face turned hard.
I felt that one too.
Ronan looked toward the hedge, then back at his brother. “You will track five minutes beyond the gate. Lucien and Sava stay with Cassie. I stay here. If anything happens, you return.”
“And if the trail continues?”
“Then you decide.”
Ian’s silence was pure refusal.
Ronan stepped closer. The Alpha entered his body, not loudly, not visibly enough for a human crowd to understand, but my skin knew. Every wolf nearby knew. The garden seemed to lower itself around him.
“Five minutes,” Ronan said. “You are still my enforcer.”
The mark tightened at that and Ian looked at me, not Ronan.
Me.
I hated that the question was there, because I didn’t want the responsibility of answering it. I hated more that if I refused, he might actually stay.
“Go,” I said.
His gaze didn’t move.
“I don’t want you to,” I added, because lying seemed pointless when my pulse had become public property. “But go.”
The honesty did something to him, something I felt. A low, aching warmth and beneath it, that wolf presence turned toward me with terrible attention.
Ian stepped through the gate and the second he disappeared beyond the hedge, the mark pulled.
I gripped the chair arms.
Sava moved in front of me. “Eyes on me.”
“I am not going to faint.”
“Eyes on me anyway.”
I looked at her because arguing required more air than I had.
One minute passed. Then two. The pull became pain, but not the same as before. It was less fire now, more absence. A cold line drawn from the bite through my ribs toward wherever Ian had gone.
I could sense…direction? That realization frightened me enough that the pain spiked.
Sava touched my wrist. “Breathe.”
“He’s that way,” I said.
Ronan turned towards me. “What?”
I pointed before I thought about it. Not toward the gate. Beyond it, left down the slope, toward a place I could not see.
“He went that way.”
Lucien looked at the tablet. “That path leads toward the old service dock.”
Ronan’s expression changed.
The old service dock meant something, but before I could ask, Ian came back through the gate with a strip of torn black fabric in his hand.
His eyes were gold.
My body settled when I saw him and the relief was so immediate it embarrassed me.
Ian noticed. He came straight to me, stopped at the edge of the chair, and held himself there with visible effort.
“Pain?” he asked.
“Less now.”
His shoulders eased by a fraction.
Sava saw the monitor. “Mark response stabilized on visual contact.”
“Excellent,” I said. “Now my shoulder is sentimental.”
Ronan held out his hand. “Fabric.”
Ian gave it to him.
“Brenner’s uniform,” Ian said. “Caught on the inner thorns. His trail goes toward the old service dock. He was afraid.”
“Running?” Ronan asked.
“Yes.”
“Chased?”
Ian’s jaw tightened. “Maybe.”
Lucien’s face was no longer smooth. “The dock security went offline for twelve minutes after midnight.”
Ronan turned slowly toward him, one brow raised.
Lucien continued. “I didn’t have that report when we left the suite.”
“Why not?”
“Because it was buried under maintenance flags.”
“By whom?”
“I am finding that out now.”
The garden felt suddenly colder. A gate opened. A guard missing. A dock camera down after midnight. Someone had moved through the wolf side before and after the rite, and my accidental survival had turned their quiet plan into something with witnesses.
Well. One witness. Currently in a wheelchair with supernatural dental trauma.
A shout came from the west side of the grounds, familiar enough that my stomach dropped before my brain attached a name.
Grant.
Ronan turned toward the sound with murderously controlled patience.
Lucien checked his phone, then looked up. “Mr. Carrington left the west terrace.”
Ian’s face went blank.
I grabbed the arm of the chair, not him this time. “Why?”
Lucien’s mouth tightened. “He told staff he had a private letter for Ms. Morgan and didn’t trust it to not be withheld.”
Of course Grant had a letter.
Of-fucking-course.
A normal person would wait. A decent person would send concern through my father or Tessa. Grant would write something private, slippery, intimate enough to make me feel dirty and vague enough to deny.
Ian’s voice dropped. “Where is he?”
“On the west garden path with two staff trying to redirect him,” Lucien said.
Ian moved but Ronan blocked him with one step.
“No.”
“He is coming toward her.”
“He is human.”
“He is a threat.”
“He is not as bad as the threat in your hand.”
Ian looked down. His claws had come through. The torn fabric from Brenner’s uniform was still clenched in his fist.
“Ian.” His name came out sharper than I intended.
He stopped, actually, everything in him stopped.
That power terrified me, but it also told me something important. My voice reached him, because some part of him was listening for me now, choosing to hear me through the wolf’s noise.
He looked at me. Gold eyes. Human grief. Wolf certainty.
“Do not make Grant important,” I said.
The words landed exactly where they needed to and his claws withdrew slowly.
Ronan watched him do it with an expression I could not read.
“Grant wants to be important,” I said. “That is the entire engine of the man. If you tear through a hedge over him, he wins a prize he does not understand but will absolutely attempt to display.”
Lucien’s phone buzzed.
He read the message. “Staff have stopped Mr. Carrington. He is asking to speak with me directly.”
Ronan looked at me. “Do you want the letter?”
Ian’s head turned toward him. So did mine. That was the first time Ronan had asked what I wanted before deciding whether I was allowed to want it.
It was probably strategic…I took the win anyway.
“Yes,” I said.
Ian’s face tightened.
I looked at him. “I said the letter. Not the man.”
“I know.”
“You are thinking loudly again.”
“I know.”
That almost-smile threatened me for half a second and vanished under the weight of the day.
Ronan nodded to Lucien. “Take it. Do not let Carrington past the west gate. If he resists, embarrass him with witnesses, not injuries.”