Vezra.
Vezra assesses everything. She's good at her job. Has been loyal for decades. I trust her.
She has access to every code, patrol schedules, vulnerabilities in House Draven's defenses I have left her to look after.
The maintenance worker is still talking, but her words reach me through water. Through the roar of blood in my ears and the slow, grinding shift of everything I thought I understood rearranging itself into a horrifying shape.
Vezra in the corridor, her gaze lingering on Maeve a beat too long. Updating access logs she shouldn’t have needed to update. Knowing every supply route, every access point, every shadow in this compound where a killer could hide.
I trusted her. And she used that trust to murder my enforcers one by one while I searched everywhere except where she stood.
Traitor. Vezra is the traitor.
“Take this female to the recovery wing.” I straighten, addressing one of the junior medics. “Make sure she's comfortable. Guard her door.”
If Vezra learns I know who she is, the maintenance worker will be a target.
Then the realization hits, and cold floods through me. Maeve's words from days ago surface:She doesn't like me. Most of your staff ignore me. She was cataloguing.And I dismissed it. Told her Vezra assesses everything, that it was her job, that I trusted her. But Vezra wasn't assessing a new variable in the compound's routine. She was measuring a threat. Reading the weakness I was too blind to see I was broadcasting every time I looked at Maeve, every time I brought her food, every time I walked her through restricted corridors instead of sending a guard.
Vezra knows. Has known longer than I have. And if she's willing to poison enforcers who have served House Draven for years, she won't hesitate to eliminate the female she's identified as my vulnerability.
I'm moving before the thought finishes forming, my stride eating the distance to the door. I turn to Veth, one hand already on the panel.
“Monitor Kash's condition. Send updates to my personal comm.” Mywords come out clipped, harder than I intend.
The medical bay doors close behind me, and I am bolting down corridors bathed in emergency red, through the checkpoints that separate the working sections from my private wing.
The closer I get to my quarters, the more my heightened senses betray me. Her scent threads through the recycled air, that particular sweetness I could track across the entire compound. I marked her last night, but she has marked me in return. Her warmth lives in spaces I have allowed no one else to occupy, soaked into walls and fabric and the very air I breathe. My Chosen. The word rises unbidden, and I don't push it away.
She is my Chosen.
Footsteps sound behind me. Familiar rhythm, familiar weight. I turn to face my brother.
Samai stands in the corridor's crimson glow, his lighter coloring washed to shades of blood and shadow. His expression carries none of the mockery I have grown accustomed to. The male watching me now wears gravity poorly, the weight of it sitting wrong on features built for sardonic humor.
“Why are you here?” I wince at the harshness of my words.
“Hello to you too, brother.” He rearranges his features into an intensity I haven't seen in a long while. “I came here to warn you about Father before.” Samai's mouth twists into an expression that falls short of a smile. “Her arousal was thick enough to tastethrough the door. I didn't want to interrupt what you were doing in there.”
Fear coils through my chest, tangled with a sharper edge. She is the first softness I've allowed myself. And my father will take her from me. Not because she's a threat, but because she matters. Because I let her matter and he knows. Of course he knows. Sharp anger rises beneath the fear, hot and useless, because there is no enemy I can kill to fix this. The enemy is my own blood.
And that is another reason my father knows. Anyone who can detect scent as strong as I will have known how she felt about me. Her desire hung around her like a flashing light.
The instinct to bare fangs at my brother rises before I can suppress it. Samai notices the shift in my posture and raises his hands, palms out.
“Easy. I'm not your enemy.” His silver eyes, lighter than mine but carrying the same predator intelligence, search my face. “I came to tell you that Father will summon you. You know he's going to demand you send her away. He's going to frame it as protection for the House.”
My mother's face surfaces in my memory: dark eyes, warm smile, the gentle hands that held me through childhood nightmares before she became the subject of them. She chose betrayal over us. Chose to sell Syndicate secrets rather than remain in a marriage that had become a cage. The Council made examples of traitors, and my father made my brother and me watch so we would understand the cost of caring.
“The human will not betray me.”
“Maybe not.” Samai shrugs, the casual gesture at odds with the tension in his frame. “Maybe she'll be exactly what she appears to be: a medic with a debt to pay and a brother to save and no political ambitions beyond survival. Or maybe Father's right, and you've already compromised yourself past the point ofrecovery. Either way, he'll act before she can become a weapon against you.”
Samai's tone flattens. “House Sethrak's succession crisis has him on edge. The old lord nearly lost his head to his own heir last season. Father's been watching that situation. Taking notes.”
“I'll handle Father.”
“Will you?” Samai holds my gaze for a long moment, then shakes his head. “I hope you're right, brother. Because if you're wrong, your human will pay the price.”
