"You're late."
Elena froze at the servants' entrance, her hand still on the cold iron handle.
The voice hadn't come from inside — it came from directly behind her.
She turned slowly, forcing her face into the blank, obedient mask she'd rehearsed for three weeks.
Alpha Kael Blackthorn stood in the shadow of the wall, arms crossed, watching her like a predator watches something that hasn't realized it's already caught.
"Forgive me, Alpha." She dropped her gaze. "I lost track of the hour."
"Did you."
Not a question. Elena kept her breathing even, though her pulse betrayed her, hammering hard enough that a wolf like him could probably hear it from across the yard.
He stepped closer. Cedar and something colder underneath, like the air before snowfall.
"New maids don't usually walk the east corridor," he said. "That hallway leads to my study."
Her stomach dropped. A wrong turn twenty minutes ago, desperate to memorize the palace layout. A small mistake.
"I got lost. I'm still learning the palace, Alpha. It won't happen again."
Kael studied her, his grey eyes sharper than any blade she'd held. "What's your name?"
"Elena."
"Elena what?"
She'd rehearsed this a hundred times on the road here. It should have come out smooth.
Instead there was a half-second hesitation — barely noticeable to anyone who wasn't listening for it.
He was listening for it.
"Elena Marsh," she said.
"Marsh." He repeated it slowly, testing the shape of a lie in his mouth. "There's no Marsh pack registered within two hundred miles of this territory."
Her blood went cold. "My family kept to themselves. We weren't affiliated with any major pack."
"Unaffiliated wolves don't usually have hands like yours."
She hadn't realized she was still gripping the door handle. She let go, but it was too late — his eyes had already caught the calluses on her palm.
"Kitchen work," she said quickly. "Before I came here."
"Mm." His expression didn't change. That was the terrifying part. He wasn't angry, wasn't visibly suspicious. He simply watched her the way he watched everything — like a man deciding whether something was worth keeping or worth destroying.
"Report to the head housekeeper," he said finally. "Tell her I said to assign you to my private wing."
Elena's heart stopped.
The private wing. His study, his chambers — the one place in the entire palace she needed access to — and he was handing it to her without being asked.
"Alpha, I don't think I've earned—"
"I didn't ask if you'd earned it." His voice dropped, calm and even, the kind of calm that carried more weight than shouting. "I said report to the housekeeper."
He turned and walked away, footsteps silent despite his size, vanishing around the corner like smoke.
Elena stood there a full minute, forcing her breathing to slow.
*He suspects something.*
That should have terrified her more than it did. Instead, underneath the fear, something else stirred — hot and unfamiliar, curling low in her chest every time his eyes had locked onto hers. She pushed it down. She didn't have room for anything except the mission.
***
The housekeeper, a stern grey-haired woman named Odette, didn't ask questions when Elena relayed the Alpha's instructions.
She simply raised an eyebrow, muttered something about lucky new girls, and handed over a fresh uniform and a key ring.
"Private wing rules," Odette said, walking briskly while Elena struggled to keep pace. "Never enter the study while the Alpha is in council. Never touch the papers on his desk. Never — and I mean never — go near the west chamber."
"What's in the west chamber?"
Odette's eyes flicked toward her, sharp and assessing. "Questions like that are how girls get sent home."
Elena said nothing more.
By nightfall she'd learned the private wing well enough to walk it blind — a skill kept sharp from training, when her instructor used to blindfold her and throw knives at her ankles if she stumbled.
She waited until the palace fell silent, until she was certain Kael had retired beyond the locked door at the end of the hall, then she moved.
The study door wasn't locked.
That alone should have warned her.
She slipped inside, silent as breath, scanning the room in seconds — desk, shelves, a fireplace burned down to embers. If anything here could tell her how to get close enough to end this quickly, it would be on that desk.
She reached for the top drawer.
"I wouldn't."
Elena's whole body went rigid.
Kael sat in the armchair by the dead fireplace, so still and shrouded in shadow she hadn't seen him at all. He hadn't moved. He hadn't made a sound. He'd simply waited — for her, specifically, in a room he'd conveniently left unlocked.
"I was looking for—"
"Don't." He rose slowly, and for the first time since she'd met him, something dangerous crept into his voice. "Don't lie to me again, Elena Marsh."
He crossed the room until he stood in front of her, close enough that firelight caught in his grey eyes, close enough that her wolf — silent, starved of power for years — stirred awake inside her chest for the first time in her life.
"I know exactly who sent you," Kael said quietly. "What I don't know yet is why I haven't killed you already."
