Page 7 of Alpha Charmed

Except she’s not uninterested. I’ve heard the way her heartbeat races when I enter a room. The way her gaze finds me before she realizes she’s looking. The way she goes very still whenever we’re forced into proximity.

She’s not uninterested. She’s terrified.

And I’ve never pushed, because fear deserves patience, not pressure. Because wanting someone isn’t the same as having the right to them. Because she’s the coven leader and I’m the head of the Protection Network and our positions are complicated enough without adding personal entanglement.

But tonight she invited me in.

Tonight, for the first time, the door is open.

“Mathilda left me a letter.” Anouk sets the papers on the workstation between us. Not handing them to me—placing them in neutral space. A compromise between sharing and surrendering control. “Her daughter gave it to me at the funeral.”

I pick up the letter. The handwriting is shaky, urgent—nothing like the neat script I remember from Mathilda’s formal correspondence. This was written by someone afraid. Someone running out of time.

My chest tightens. The wolf, Mathilda wrote. Not “Alpha Sternwolf.” Not “the Protection Network head.” The wolf.

“She was going to tell you something.” I set the letter down. “According to this, it was information she should have shared years ago.”

“I don’t know what the information was. She died. The official cause was magical exhaustion.” Anouk’s voice is flat, controlled, revealing nothing.

“You don’t believe that any more than I do.”

“She was the healthiest elder on the council. Her magic was strong. Stable.” A pause. Her expression flickers—grief, maybe, or fear—before she locks it away. “Unlike mine, lately.”

The admission costs her. I see it in the way her spine stiffens, the way her fingers curl against the workstation surface, the way she won’t quite meet my gaze. The great Anouk Darkwater, coven leader, admitting weakness.

To me.

I don’t comment on it. She’d hate that. Instead, I file the information away—confirmation of what I already suspected—and move forward.

“She contacted me too.” I pull out my own letter—delivered by a skittish familiar I didn’t recognize, two days before Mathilda died. “Requested a meeting. Said she had information the Protection Network needed. About ‘old threats returning.’”

Anouk takes the letter. Reads it with the focused attention of someone looking for clues. “Old threats. Dreams that feel like memories.” She sets it beside her own. “She was remembering things. Dangerous things.”

“And someone killed her before she could share them.”

“Yes.” Her gaze lifts to meet mine. Dark eyes, sharp. “The question is who. And why.”

“The Preservers.” I don’t phrase it as a question.

Her eyebrows rise fractionally. “You’ve heard of them.”

“Iskra mentioned them before she was captured. So did Valesh.” Two Preserver agents exposed in the past year. Two cells dismantled. And both of them mentioned a ritual called ‘the Severing’ before they stopped talking entirely. “My pack elders react strangely when certain old topics come up. Grief without explanation. Memories that don’t quite make sense.”

Anouk processes this. I see her mind working—connecting dots, building patterns, that formidable intelligence analyzing data at speeds that have always impressed me.

“Someone on the council is a Preserver agent.” She says it quietly, as if speaking it aloud makes it more dangerous. “Someone who’s been in place for a long time. Long enough to anticipate Mathilda’s movements. Long enough to silence her before she could talk.”

“Do you have a suspect?”

She hesitates. The pause is telling. “Nothing I can prove.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Another pause. Then: “Elder Cordelia Ashworth.”

I nod. “My network can look into her background. Quietly. Financial records, travel history, contacts outside Mistvale.” I keep my voice neutral, professional. An offer between colleagues.

Anouk’s expression closes. “That won’t be necessary.”