The hidden door haunts me.
Three nights in a row, I lie awake and stare at the ceiling, imagining what lies beneath the library. Documents? Weapons? Bodies? The pack has been ruling Shadowfang for generations. Every family has secrets.
The Nightstar massacre happened twenty years ago. My birth family—if the journal I haven't found yet is correct—was wiped out in a single night. Fire. Blood. Silence.
No one talks about it.
No one mentions the name Nightstar in Shadowfang territory.
That's not an accident.
Sunday morning, I wake before dawn.
Kael didn't come to bed again. His pillow is cold. The sheets on his side are still tucked in, untouched. I've stopped checking.
I dress in dark clothes—nothing that would show dust or catch on stone. My hair goes into a tight braid. No jewelry that might jingle. No shoes that might click.
I look like a thief.
Good.
The pack house is asleep. Even the servants don't stir until six. I move through the halls like the ghost I used to be, silent and unseen.
The library is dark.
I don't turn on the lights. I navigate by memory, by touch, by the faint grey glow filtering through the high windows. My fingers find the fake book. Pack Law and Tradition. The spine gives way.
The staircase yawns open.
This time, I'm prepared.
I have a small flashlight—borrowed from the kitchen drawer. A hairpin—stolen from Sera's old room. A knife—hidden in my boot, because I'm not stupid enough to go into darkness unarmed.
The stairs feel longer than I remember. The air grows colder, damper. My breath fogs in front of me.
Twenty steps. Thirty. Forty.
The door.
I kneel, shining the light on the lock. Old iron. Rusted. The hairpin slides in easier than I expected. I twist. Feel the tumblers shift. Twist again.
Click.
The door swings open.
The room beyond is not what I expected.
It's a study. Small, cramped, smelling of paper and decay. A desk dominates the center, piled with documents. Shelves line the walls, stuffed with ledgers and folders and things that crumble when I breathe too hard.
No bodies. No weapons. Just paper.
I start with the desk.
The top layer is recent—pack budgets, patrol schedules, correspondence with allied territories. Nothing suspicious. But beneath that, hidden under a false bottom I almost missed—
A folder.
Leather. Old. The word NIGHTSTAR embossed on the cover.
My hands shake as I open it.
Inside: reports. Dated twenty years ago. Witness statements from wolves who survived the massacre—if you can call it surviving. Most are missing limbs. All are missing their minds.
The fire started at midnight, one report reads. No warning. No smoke. Just flames rising from the center of the stronghold. The Nightstar Alpha fought until his fur caught fire. His mate died beside him, covering their children.
I stop breathing.
Their children.
The report lists the survivors: four sons, aged twelve to eighteen. One daughter, infant, presumed dead.
Presumed dead.
But I'm not dead. I'm sitting in a hidden room in an enemy pack's library, reading about the night my family burned.
The order did this. Aldric's masters. The same people who would eventually frame me for murder and watch me die.
They've been hunting me my whole life.
And I didn't even know.
I hear footsteps on the stairs.
The sound freezes my blood. Not heavy—not a guard. Deliberate. Careful. Someone who doesn't want to be heard.
I shove the folder into my jacket. Click off the flashlight. Press myself against the wall behind the door.
The footsteps stop at the bottom of the stairs.
A pause.
Then the door swings open.
Beta Aldric stands in the doorway.
He doesn't have a flashlight. He doesn't need one. His eyes are silver in the darkness, reflecting the faint light from above like a wolf's.
Because he is a wolf.
Of course. I knew that. But in this moment, in this dark, he looks like something else. Something older. Something hungry.
"I wondered when you'd find this place," he says.
My heart slams against my ribs. He knew. He knew I was here. He let me come.
"How long?" I ask.
"Since the first night you pressed against the bookcase." He steps into the room. Closer. Too close. "You're not as quiet as you think, Luna."
I grip the knife in my boot. "What do you want?"
"To talk.
"Talk, then."
He stops a few feet away. In the darkness, I can't read his expression. But I hear the smile in his voice.
"You've been asking questions. Visiting the library. Watching the guards. Mapping the house." He tilts his head. "The old Elena never did any of that."
"The old Elena is gone."
"Yes." He says it like a fact. Like he's known it all along. "I noticed the change the moment you walked down that aisle. The way you moved. The way you looked at Kael." A pause. "The way you looked at me."
I say nothing.
"You know something," he continues. "Something you shouldn't. Something that's made you stop trusting the people who should be your allies." He steps closer. "I want to know what it is."
I could lie. I could pretend I don't understand. But Aldric is smarter than that. He's been playing this game for fifty years.
He's not the enemy I can fool.
"The order," I say.
His smile vanishes.
"Where did you hear that name?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes."
I take a risk. "I know you work for them. I know they're the ones who killed the Nightstar family. I know they're the reason I was born into a pack that wasn't mine."
The silence stretches.
When Aldric speaks again, his voice is different. Softer. Almost human.
"You don't know the half of it."
"Then tell me."
He laughs. A dry, broken sound. "Tell you? Child, I've spent twenty years trying to forget."
He sits on the edge of the desk.
Not the posture of an enemy. The posture of a man who's tired. Who's carried something heavy for too long.
"I was there," he says. "The night of the massacre. Not as an attacker—as a witness." He looks at his hands. "I was a young wolf then. Ambitious. Stupid. I thought the order was offering me power."
"What were they offering?"
"A place at the table." He meets my eyes. "The Nightstar family was too strong. Too pure. They threatened the balance. The order decided they had to fall."
"And you let them."
"I didn't let them. I helped them." His voice cracks. "I opened the gate, Elena. I let the killers in. I watched your mother die, and I did nothing."
The room spins
He opened the gate.
The man standing in front of me—the man who would eventually frame me for murder—is the reason my family is dead.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because I've been waiting for you." He stands. "The order thought you died in the fire. But I knew. I saw you—a servant carrying you out the back, wrapped in a blanket. I could have told them. I could have finished the job."
"But you didn't."
"No." He looks at me, and for the first time, I see something human in his grey eyes. "I couldn't. You were a baby. Innocent. And I had already done enough evil."
"So you hid me."
"I hid you. Placed you with a family far from here. The Vances. They were told you were an orphan. They never knew the truth." He pauses. "Neither did you. Until now."
I should feel something. Gratitude, maybe. Or rage. Instead, I feel cold.
"You still work for them."
"I pretend to. It's the only way to stay close. To know what they're planning." He steps toward me. "I've been protecting you from the shadows for twenty years, Elena. Every threat. Every assassin. Every time they got close, I steered them away."
"The execution—"
"I couldn't stop it." His voice breaks. "By then, I'd lost influence. They'd made their decision. I tried to visit you in the cell, but Kael barred me. I tried to speak at the trial, but they silenced me."
The trial.
My first life. The one he doesn't know I remember.
"You're telling me you're on my side."
"I'm telling you I've been on your side since the night your parents died.
I study his face. Searching for the lie. For the manipulation.
I don't find it.
"Then help me now," I say. "Tell me everything. The order. Their leaders. Their plans."
He nods slowly. "Not here. Not tonight. But soon." He moves toward the door. "Be careful, Elena. The walls have ears. And some of those ears belong to people who would kill you without hesitation."
He leaves.
I stand in the darkness, holding the Nightstar folder against my chest, and wonder if I've just found an ally.
Or walked into a trap.