The "fluke" in the training yard had left me drained for two days, but the rest of the estate seemed to have developed a collective case of nerves.
I knew my way to the library—it was one of the few places I felt safe, the smell of old paper and leather being far less intimidating than the sharp, predatory scents of the training grounds. But getting there was becoming an exercise in bewilderment.
I walked through the vaulted gallery, the morning sun warming the dark stone. Every time I passed a member of the household staff, the same thing happened. A gardener carrying a basket of winter roses stopped dead. His eyes widened, his nostrils flaring as he caught my scent, and he dropped his head in a deep, reverent bow.
"Good morning, My Lady," he murmured.
"Oh—good morning," I stammered, my face heating up. "But please, you don't have to do that. I'm just... I'm a guest."
He didn't look up until I had scurried past him. It was the fifth time it had happened since breakfast.
"They know," my wolf purred, stretching lazily behind my ribs. She had been insufferably smug since she'd knocked Caleb and Elias to their knees. "They smell the truth. They bow to the power we carry."
We don't carry power, I snapped back. I'm a political pawn, a debt settled in a card game. That wave of energy in the yard was just twenty years of suppressed adrenaline hitting the air at once. A biological glitch.
I didn't believe in destiny. Silas was a High Alpha; his people were likely just terrified of offending him by being rude to the woman he'd brought home. They weren't bowing to me; they were bowing to his property.
I pushed open the heavy mahogany doors of the library. It was a massive, three-story cathedral of books, but it wasn't empty. A woman was perched on a rolling ladder halfway up the fiction section, her arms full of heavy ledgers. She had a messy halo of curls and a smudge of ink on her nose.
When she turned and saw me, she didn't freeze like the others. She nearly fell off the ladder.
"Whoa!" she yelped, the ladder wobbling dangerously.
I lunged forward, my new reflexes snapping into place before I could think. I caught the bottom of the ladder, steadying it with a strength that surprised me. "Careful! Are you okay?"
She scrambled down, clutching a ledger to her chest. She looked to be about my age, but she carried herself with a frantic, nervous energy. She started to bow, then stopped halfway, looking me up and down with intense, bright-eyed curiosity.
"You're her," she whispered. "The one from the training yard. I'm Poppy. I... I handle the archives."
I felt my face heat up. "I'm Seraphina. And that... that was an accident. I didn't mean to hurt them."
"Accident?" Poppy let out a small, breathless laugh, her fear replaced by a sharp curiosity. "The whole pack is talking about it. Caleb looks like he swallowed a lemon, and Elias hasn't stopped writing in his notebook for six hours. You really made an entrance."
She stuck out a hand, then quickly pulled it back, looking sheepish. "Sorry. I'm probably not supposed to be too informal. You being a... guest of the Alpha and all."
"Please," I said, reaching out and taking her hand firmly. "I'd prefer informal. Everyone else is treating me like I'm made of glass or... or like I'm their Luna. It's confusing. I'm just here because of a debt."
Poppy's eyes narrowed slightly as she studied me, her gaze traveling from my face to the way I held myself. "People here don't bow for just anyone, Seraphina. Even 'guests' usually just get a polite nod. But you... you smell like the North Star. Even I can feel it, and I'm just a Beta."
"It's just the new wolf energy," I insisted, pulling my hand away to tuck a lock of hair behind my ear. "Silas is just being... well, he wants me ready for the gala. To settle his business with Julian."
Poppy leaned against the ladder, her ink-smudged nose wrinkling. "Silas Thorne doesn't usually take such a personal interest in 'settling business.' He's fair, but he's about as warm as a glacier. Yet, word is he hasn't slept much. He's been pacing the halls near the North Suite."
My heart did a strange, painful somersault. He paces? I thought of the tension at my door, the way he had looked at my mouth before tearing himself away.
"He's probably just making sure I don't run off before he gets what he's owed," I whispered.
"Maybe," Poppy said, though she didn't sound convinced. She turned and pulled a thick, leather-bound book from a nearby shelf. "If you're going to that gala, you shouldn't just focus on the training. You need to know who you're walking into a room with. Julian isn't the only snake in the grass."
She cleared a space on a nearby table, spreading out the guest list for the Silver-Moon event. "I've been organizing the dossiers. I can show you who is who, if you want. It might help the nerves."
I sat down beside her, grateful for the distraction. For the first time since arriving at Shadow-Crest, I didn't feel like a prisoner or a "dud." I felt like I was finally getting a glimpse of the world I was supposed to navigate.
As Poppy started pointing out names—explaining pack alliances and old grudges—I realized the girl Julian had discarded was slowly being replaced by someone who might actually be able to look him in the eye.
The library was silent save for the soft scratch of Poppy's pen and the rustle of vellum. For an hour, I had been immersed in the politics of the territories, learning the names of the Alphas who had turned a blind eye to Julian's treatment of me for years.
Poppy leaned over the list, pointing to a name near the bottom. "And this one? Alpha Vance. He's a blowhard, but he's terrified of his own shadow. If you look at him too hard, he might actually faint."
I let out a genuine, breathless laugh—a sound so foreign to my own ears that it startled me. "Is he really that bad?"
"Worse," Poppy giggled, her eyes dancing. "At the last summit, he—"
The air in the room suddenly turned heavy.
The scent of a brewing storm—cedar, cold rain, and raw power—flooded the library, drowning out the smell of old paper. The temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. I didn't need to look up to know who it was. My wolf, who had been dozing, suddenly sat bolt upright, her tail thumping against my mind.
"He is here," she whispered, her voice thick with a sudden, pulsing need. "He is here, and he is angry."
I looked toward the heavy mahogany doors. Silas stood in the entrance, his silhouette cutting a jagged, imposing figure against the light from the hallway. His arms were crossed over his chest, his jaw set so tightly I could see the muscle jumping.
His gold eyes weren't on the books or the list. They were pinned on me. Specifically, they were pinned on the way I was sitting close to Poppy, our shoulders nearly touching.
Poppy froze. The laughter died in her throat, and she scrambled to her feet so fast she nearly knocked the ledger over. "Alpha! I... I was just—Seraphina was interested in the guest dossiers, and I thought—"
"Leave us," Silas growled.
The command wasn't loud, but it vibrated through the floorboards. It was the voice of a man who was barely holding onto his control.
Poppy didn't wait for a second invitation. She scrambled to gather her ledgers, her face pale, her movements frantic. She gave me a quick, wide-eyed look of apology and started to bolt toward the side exit.
"Wait," I said.
The word left my throat before I could think to be afraid. Poppy stopped in her tracks, clutching her ledgers to her chest, her eyes darting between me and the High Alpha as if she were watching a collision in slow motion.
Silas's head snapped toward me, his eyes narrowing into slits of molten gold. "I told her to leave, Seraphina."
"And I told her to stay," I replied. My voice was trembling, but there was a new, resonant depth to it that hadn't been there a week ago.
I felt a familiar heat rising from the base of my spine, the same liquid fire that had erupted in the training yard. My wolf didn't just wake up; she stood up, baring her teeth at the shadow he was trying to cast over me.
Silas took a step forward, his aura flaring in response. It was a wall of physical pressure, a suffocating weight of cedar and cold iron designed to make every wolf in the room submit.
But I didn't buckle.
Instead, a surge of raw, silver-black energy rolled off me. It hit his golden aura with a soundless crack, like lightning striking an oak tree. The air in the library began to hum, and the dust motes in the sunlight danced frantically. I didn't know what I was doing, but I was tired of being handled.
"She was helping me," I said, stepping around the table to face him. I didn't realize that as I moved, the floor beneath my feet seemed to pulse with my rhythm. "Everyone in this house looks at me like I'm a fragile bird or a ghost. They bow and they back away. Poppy is the first person who actually looked at me and talked to me. I won't have you drive her away just because you're in a mood."
Silas stopped dead. He looked down at the floor, where my shadow seemed to be stretching toward his, then back at my face. His nostrils flared, his pupils blown so wide they swallowed the gold of his irises.
"You are testing me," he rasped, his voice a jagged edge. "In front of my staff."
"I am standing my ground," I countered.
The standoff was suffocating. Poppy looked like she wanted to melt into the bookshelves. The power radiating from me was unintentional, a wild, flickering shield that refused to let his dominance crush me. For the first time, Silas looked… startled. Not just angry, but genuinely shocked that the "broken" woman from the Silver-Moon was pushing back against his very nature.
He took another step, entering the fray of my chaotic aura. The closer he got, the more the air seemed to vibrate. He reached out, not to strike, but to grab my wrist.
The moment his skin touched mine, the wild energy snapped. It didn't disappear—it grounded. It flowed into him, and his into me, a circuit closing that made my knees go weak.
"Poppy," Silas said, his gaze never leaving mine. His voice had lost its roar, replaced by a low, dangerous intimacy. "Go. Now. That is not a command for you—it is a necessity for her."
I looked at Poppy and nodded once, a silent release. She didn't need to be told a third time; she vanished through the doors, leaving the two of us alone in a room that felt like it was about to catch fire.
Silas didn't let go of my wrist. He pulled me closer, his thumb stroking the sensitive skin of my pulse point. "You have no idea what you're doing, do you?" he whispered, his face inches from mine. "You're throwing around a power that could level this wing, and you're doing it just because you wanted to keep a conversation going?"
"I'm doing it because I'm tired of being treated like I'm made of glass," I breathed, my heart drumming against his chest. "I'm not the 'dud' anymore, Silas. Stop trying to manage me."
His grip tightened, his eyes searching mine with a hunger so raw it made my breath hitch. "I'm not trying to manage you, Seraphina," he growled, leaning down until his lips were a hair's breadth from my ear. "I'm trying to keep myself from losing control when you look at me like that."
He pulled away abruptly, the loss of his heat making me feel cold and exposed. He wouldn't look at me as he straightened his charcoal coat, his hands trembling slightly.
"Training resumes in an hour," he said, his voice cold and distant once more. "But Caleb and Elias are finished with you. From now on, you deal only with me."
As he walked out, my wolf let out a mournful, frustrated howl. I stood there, clutching the edge of the table, realizing that the "fluke" in the yard hadn't been the only thing waking up. Something between us was growing, and it was far more dangerous than any claw.