Selene's POV

I didn't lower the blade. "What did you just say to me?"

"You heard me. I don't have time to explain tonight, and even if I did, you wouldn't believe me yet. Just know this. Not everyone circling you wants you dead. Some of us are actually trying to keep you alive long enough to matter."

Then he was gone, melting back into the shadow of the wall like he'd never been standing there at all.

I stood alone in the training yard, heart pounding, with about a hundred new questions crowding out all the old ones.

I didn't tell Mara. Not this time. Not the second time sat too weird in my chest to hand over before I even understood it myself.

Two days went by in a blur of fittings and rehearsed speeches. My dad kept practicing the formal words of the alliance out loud at breakfast, like saying them enough times would make them feel less hollow.

"To unity," he said, testing the phrase. "To peace between our packs."

"You've said that four times now."

"I want it to sound natural."

"It sounds like you're reciting something. Which you are."

"Helpful, Selene."

"I will try."

Theo, buttering toast beside me, didn't even look up. "For what it's worth, you both sound insane right now."

"Nobody asked you," my dad said, without any real heat behind it.

"I'm just saying. If I have to hear 'to unity, to peace' one more time before we even leave the house, I'm going to start reciting it back at both of you every time you ask me to pass the salt."

"Please don't," I said.

"No promises."

My dad actually laughed at that, and for a second the whole table felt almost normal, almost like a family getting ready for an ordinary dinner instead of whatever this actually was.

Then, way too fast, the night of the dinner showed up.

The ride over felt endless and instant at the same time. I sat across from my dad, running through everything one more time. Damon's warning. The two notes. Elias Kane's name is buried in old paperwork.

"You're quiet," my dad said.

"Just nervous."

"That's normal. I was nervous the day I married your mother too."

"Did it go away?"

"Eventually." He smiled a little, though it didn't quite reach his eyes. "Mostly."

The Vance estate looked exactly like I remembered it. Stone walls, old iron gates, windows lit up gold in the dark.

The dining hall was already half full when we got there. This time I looked everyone in the eye as I walked past. Memorizing faces.

Then I saw him.

Kellan stood near the head of the table, dressed in dark colors, wearing that same cold, controlled look I remembered from three years of marriage. When his eyes found mine across the room, I felt that same weird jolt I always used to feel.

"Selene," he said, when I reached the table, like he was testing how the name sounded out loud.

"Kellan."

"You look well."

"You sound surprised."

Something flickered across his face, gone before I could name it. "I didn't mean it like that."

"I know," I said, though I wasn't sure I did.

"How is your father finding the negotiations?" he asked, the kind of question people ask when they've run out of anything to say.

"Thorough. He reads every line twice."

"Smart man."

"He raised me, so I'd hope so."

That earned the smallest hint of a smile, there and gone so fast I almost missed it, and for one strange second I saw a flicker of the boy I used to know before the wedding turned him into someone colder.

I took my seat, and it was only once I sat down that I saw who they'd put almost right across from me.

Camille.

My whole body went cold and still, that old feeling of being hunted kicking in before I could stop it.

She gave me a polite little smile, the same one she wore the night she killed me, and I made myself smile back.

"Selene Hart," she said, testing my name the way Kellan had. "I've heard so much about you."

"All good things, I hope."

"Mostly."

There was something underneath that word I didn't like at all. I filed it away, the way I've been filing everything away lately, useful or not, until it made sense.

So I watched her. Watched her eyes, the way the note had told me to.

And almost stopped breathing.

She wasn't looking at me like a predator looks at prey. She was looking at me like you looked at a ghost. Pale under all that composure, her hand shaking just slightly around her wine glass.

Dinner went on forever, slow and formal, plates coming and going, treaty talk passed low between my dad and Kellan's advisors.

"Your father tells me you've taken an interest in the treaty negotiations," Kellan said at one point, mostly to fill the silence between us.

"Someone has to."

"That someone used to be me."

"Things change."

He studied me a beat too long after that, like he was trying to work out a math problem he couldn't quite see all the numbers for.

Near the end of the meal, an old advisor stood up to give the traditional toast. The exact one I'd heard word for word at my own wedding. Unity. Peace. Both packs are finally coming together. I lifted my glass along with everyone else, stomach twisting at how familiar it all felt, and right at that moment, glass raised, candles flickering, Camille's composure finally broke completely.

Her glass slipped and shattered on the floor.

The whole table went quiet. She stood up so fast her chair almost tipped over.

"You," she said, voice cracking wide open, loud enough for the whole room to hear. "You're supposed to be dead. I watched you die. I felt the knife go in myself."

The room exploded into noise.

Kellan's eyes locked onto mine across the table.

Dark. Stunned. And, somehow, full of memory that shouldn't even be there.

I opened my mouth, even though I had no idea what I was about to say, and that's when I noticed Camille wasn't even looking at me anymore. Her eyes had moved past my shoulder, toward the doorway at the end of the hall, and whatever she saw there drained every last bit of color out of her face.

I turned to see what she was looking at.

A man stood just inside the entrance, calm, like the chaos happening in this room didn't bother him at all. I didn't know his face. I didn't know his name. But the whole room went quiet around him in a way that had nothing to do with Camille's confession and everything to do with him.

Camille's confession had scared everyone at that table.

Whoever this man was, he scared Camille.

The Beta Who Watched Too Closely

Mara's POV

Selene asked me to watch him. She didn't say why exactly, just that something about Damon didn't sit right with her, and that she trusted my instincts more than she trusted her own right now.

"Just watch him," she'd said, sitting on the edge of my bed with her arms wrapped around her knees, looking more rattled than I'd seen her look in weeks. "Don't talk to him. Don't ask him anything directly. Just watch."

"You know I'm terrible at just watching."

"I know. Try anyway."

I didn't ask what that meant, the rattled look or the request itself. I've learned not to, lately, with her. She's been different for weeks now, careful in a way she never used to be, like she's carrying something heavy enough that asking about it feels almost cruel.

So I started showing up wherever he showed up. Training yard. Border meetings. The narrow hallway outside Kellan's study where betas apparently like to stand around looking important. It wasn't subtle. I'm not exactly built for subtle.

He noticed me the third day.

"You've been following me," he said, not even turning around, like he'd known the whole time and just hadn't bothered mentioning it.

"I have not."

"You were behind the same tree twice yesterday. Same tree, Mara. Trees don't usually move."

"Maybe I like that tree."

"Sure. Great tree." He finally turned around, and I hated how unbothered he looked about the whole thing. "You want to just ask me whatever it is you're trying to figure out, or are we doing this the slow way?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're a terrible liar. It's actually kind of impressive how bad you are at it."

"I'm an excellent liar."

"You're really not."

I didn't have a good comeback for that, mostly because he wasn't wrong, and I hated that even more than the following-me comment.

"Fine," I said. "Selene doesn't trust you. I'm trying to figure out if she should."

Something shifted in his face, quick, there and gone before I could name it. "Smart woman."

"That's not exactly a denial."

"I didn't say it was."

We stood there a second, and I got the distinct feeling I'd just lost whatever advantage I thought I had by being direct with him. He had a way of making silence feel like a weapon he was choosing not to use yet.

"You're not going to tell me anything, are you," I said.

"Not today."

"Then why are we still talking?"

"Because you're still standing here." He said it plainly, no teasing in it at all, which threw me more than if he'd made it a joke. "You could've walked off three questions ago. You didn't."

I hated that he was right about that too.

I made myself walk off then, mostly to prove I could, and I felt his eyes on my back the entire way across the yard. It wasn't a comfortable feeling. It also wasn't entirely unwelcome, which annoyed me more than anything else that happened that day.

I reported back to Selene that evening with exactly nothing useful to tell her.

"He didn't say anything?" she asked.

"He said a lot of things. None of them were answers."

"That's very on brand for him, apparently."

"You'd know better than me."

"I thought I did." She was quiet a second, turning something over in her head the way she does when she's deciding how much to actually say out loud. "Just be careful with him, Mara. I mean it."

"I'm always careful."

"You followed a man behind the same tree two days in a row. That's not careful, that's a hobby."

I didn't have a response to that either, which was becoming an uncomfortable pattern for the week.

I went back the next day anyway. Told myself it was for Selene. Told myself that enough times that I almost believed it by the time I found him again, out past the training yard this time, alone, sharpening a blade that already looked sharp enough.

"Back again," he said, without looking up.

"I have questions."

"You had questions yesterday too."

"I have different questions today."

That got him to look up, at least. "Go on, then."

"Why does Kellan trust you so much? You barely say anything to anyone. That's usually not how trust works."

"Some people talk a lot and say nothing. I figured I'd skip straight to the nothing part and save everyone the time."

"That's not an actual answer."

"It's a better one than you're giving me credit for."

He set the blade down slowly, like he was actually considering the question instead of brushing it off the way he had everything else.

"Sometimes silence is easier to trust than talking," he said. "People lie a lot less when they're not saying anything."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting today."

"You keep saying today like there's going to be a tomorrow where you actually tell me things."

"Maybe there is." He almost smiled at that, the first real crack in the calm I'd been trying to pick apart for two days straight. "You're more patient than I expected. Most people give up asking after the second brush-off."

"I'm not most people."

"No," he said, and something about the way he said it made my stomach do something I did not appreciate at all. "I'm starting to notice that."

I left before he could see whatever my face was doing, because I genuinely wasn't sure, and I did not trust myself to find out in front of him.

I told myself, walking back, that this was still just about Selene. About figuring out whether he was dangerous. About doing my job.

I almost believed that too, right up until I caught myself already planning what I'd ask him tomorrow. Not because Selene needed the answer. Because I did.

Two nights later, Selene came to find me, pale and shaking, saying she'd overheard something in the woods she couldn't explain. Damon's name. A stranger in a dark coat. Four words that meant something was very wrong.

I didn't tell her that the last time I'd seen Damon, he'd looked at me like I was the only interesting thing that had happened to him in years.

I didn't tell her because I wasn't sure yet what that meant.

But standing there listening to her describe a man I'd apparently badly misjudged, I felt something cold settle low in my stomach, and it took me a long moment to realize it wasn't fear.

It was the sick, sinking feeling of hoping I was wrong about someone I probably shouldn't be hoping anything about at all.