“Hope you weren’t busy!” she chirped, sweeping into the living room.
She stopped in the middle of the space and looked around at the feathers covering every surface. Her dark brown hair was perfectly styled, her makeup flawless, her expression one of barely concealed disgust as she took in the chaos.
“What happened here? Did you two fight?” She looked between me and Lina with unmistakable hope in her eyes.
I rolled my eyes and closed the door, then followed her inside. Isabella had been a pain in my ass since she’d arrived weeks ago. She showed up at random times, appeared at meetings she had no business attending, found excuses to be wherever I happenedto be. I’d tolerated most of it because she hadn’t made any overt moves, hadn’t crossed any lines that would justify me throwing her out of pack territory.
But I’d made it very clear that I was not interested and never would be. I was mated. Married. In love with my wife. There was nothing Isabella could offer that would ever tempt me away from Lina.
That didn’t seem to have discouraged her in the slightest.
“No, we didn’t fight,” I said flatly. “And we were in the middle of things, so we’d appreciate it if you leave.”
Amusement flared through the bond as Lina swallowed a snort. My mate really hated Isabella’s guts. Rightfully so.
Isabella’s face fell into an expression of wounded innocence. “Oh. I just wanted to check on Lina, see if everything is okay.” She turned to my mate with a look that was pure false sympathy. “I walked past earlier and noticed the guards are still here. I know it must be so hard to be locked up all the time. Must feel like a prison, honestly. So I brought you more chocolate cake.”
She set a box down on the coffee table with a flourish.
Lina stared at it with barely concealed hostility. “How sweet of you.”
Fuck that cake. I knew Lina was thinking the same thing.
“So,” Isabella turned back to me, her blue eyes wide and innocent. “I was helping some guards earlier and I heard about the incident. Have you caught her yet?”
Everything in me went still.
I froze. My heart stopped. My blood ran cold.
No. She wouldn’t. I’d ordered every single one of my men to keep this quiet. The information was classified, restricted to only the highest levels of pack leadership. There was no way she could know. There was no way one of my guards would have told her.
It couldn’t be what I thought it was.
“Catch who?” Lina asked, her voice confused.
Isabella’s smile widened, and I knew. I fucking knew what she was about to do and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“It’s time for you to go,” I said, stepping forward.
But Isabella was already talking, already turning to Lina with that fake sympathetic expression, already dropping the bomb that was going to destroy everything.
“Mary Thorne. Whoever that is. A dangerous criminal, it seems.” Isabella’s voice was casual, almost bored. “Apparently, she escaped from her house arrest around a month ago and took the beta’s baby with her. But you knew that already, don’t you, Lina?”
Holy fuck.
9
— • —
Lina
My chest felt like it was caving in.
Mary. Fucking Mary Thorne had escaped. The woman who had physically attacked me, who had tried to trap Knox with a fake pregnancy, who had helped her father orchestrate rogue attacks against our own pack. She’d been under house arrest, supposedly contained and not a threat anymore. What a fucking joke.
She’d been free for amonth. An entire goddamn month while I sat in this house like a sitting duck, completely unaware of who was actually hunting me.
The rage that surged through me was so intense I could barely breathe around it. Every threatening message, every dead animal, every note promising to hurt my children suddenly made perfect sense. Mary blamed me for her downfall, she’dtaken Cole’s baby and disappeared into the night. And now, she was out there somewhere, planning god knows what, and Knox had kept it from me.
