Chapter Seven

They took me back to the Rose Garden.

I had no intention of staying.

I looked around the estate I’d lived in for seven years and found it stranger than any enemy encampment I’d infiltrated.

I was leaving. Tonight.

I wasn’t waiting around for some “potential traitor” to be cleared. There was no point.

I pulled out the hidden communicator and pressed the simple button. The device beeped, telling me everything was in place.

I didn’t have much to take. I just headed downstairs.

The moment I stepped into the living room, the lights came on.

“Heloise.”

Chaya was on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket. Two fully armed guards stood behind her. I stopped. My hand went instinctively to my dagger—

It wasn’t there anymore.

She spoke first, smiling sweetly. “Did I scare you? I told them to come in early. I mean, I’m going to be the mistress here soon. I was curious about the place you’ve lived for seven years.”

I didn’t respond. The way the guards were holding their weapons had nothing to do with polite conversation.

Chaya acted like she didn’t notice the gunpowder in the air. She took a few steps closer.

“Owen said you’d be temporarily kept here while they looked into everything.”

She paused, sighed.

“But you know as well as I do—there won’t be any ‘result.’” She tilted her head. “You really… don’t have anything you want to say?”

I stayed silent.

Chaya watched me for a couple seconds, then smiled again.

“Of course. Even if you did, no one would believe you.”

She drew something from her pocket—a thin syringe. The clear liquid glinted in the light.

“Don’t be nervous.” Her grip on the needle was practiced, like she’d done this many times. “It’s just a heavy dose of sedative. You’ll drift off, and then your heart will slow to a stop.”

Her voice was soft, gentle.

“Seven years of service to Coyote. Leaving like this is more dignified than being executed on the spot. Believe me, this is the kindest ending I can give you.”

The two guards had taken their positions, eyes flat and cold.

I watched the distance, waited until she stepped in, then moved—jerking my arm sideways, twisting her wrist back, wrenching the syringe from her hand.

The guards drew their guns almost at the same time.

I was faster by half a second.

I shoved Chaya forward. She staggered into the nearest guard. I kicked his gun out of his hand and spun toward the other, grabbed his wrist and snapped it hard at the throat.

The crack of cartilage was soft.

One guard collapsed by the coffee table, the other went down by the sofa, gun skidding across the floor.

Not a word was spoken.

Chaya sat dazed on the floor for two seconds.

Then she screamed.

“Help—!” Her voice ripped through the night. “Help! Someone—”

The courtyard outside erupted. Patrol wolves and guards converged on the house at speed. Footsteps, clatter of metal, the crackle of radios—noise crashed together.

Chaya looked up at me, naked malice in her eyes for one heartbeat, before she swapped it out for terror and wounded innocence. She pressed herself into the corner, arms around her head, crying so hard she could barely breathe.

“She’s gone crazy! Heloise is crazy—”

The door burst open with a kick. Several wolf guards flooded in, taking in the corpses and the syringe still in my hand.

“Drop it!” someone roared.

Not just any guard.

Owen.

I slowly loosened my fingers. The syringe clinked to the floor.

He came in with the squad. His eyes went straight to Chaya. He rushed to her, gathering her into his arms.

“Are you okay?” His voice was low, tight.

Chaya’s tears flowed instantly. “It was her! She tried to kill me! She said it was my fault she was under suspicion—” she sobbed, shrinking away, arm and torn gown sleeve perfectly on display.

“She just snapped!” she cried. “She said I stole her Alpha— stole her place— she wanted me to die with her—”

The guards looked at me like I was the words “dangerous Omega” given form.

“Alpha.” One of them reported at once. “When we arrived, both guards were dead. Fatal wounds to the throat and carotid. She—”

The syringe lay near the coffee table, half the liquid left. A medic glanced at it and said under his breath, “That dose is enough to stop an Omega’s heart in minutes.”

No one asked who had brought it into the house. No one asked why I would be holding it.

They’d already written the story.

The loyal war wolf, suspected of treason, had mentally broken and tried to kill the future mistress, killing two guards in the process.

Dimitri arrived too. His eyes swept over the scene, cool and measuring. He sighed lightly.

“Omegas can be… heavy-handed when they break.”

Chaya shook her head frantically, tears dropping. “Don’t blame her… please don’t… it must be all the things people said to her…”

Her “don’t blame her” neatly planted the idea that blame—and death—were exactly what I deserved.

Owen finally looked at me.

I was on my knees, hands cuffed behind my back, the rough weave of the carpet hiding the hard floor beneath. My throat tasted like rust. I tried to make a sound, another attempt to explain, but all that came out was a harsh croak.

The room held its breath.

In the end, Owen spoke.

“From now on,” he said, voice reading out a sentence, “Heloise Valerian is to be treated as an unstable, dangerous Omega.”

My fingers twitched.

“In consideration of her father’s life-saving favor, she is spared execution.” His voice did not soften. “But she is to be exiled from the Northern Continent immediately. She is never to set foot on Coyote land again.”

No appeal. No argument. No mercy.

My throat tore with pain. No words came. I stared at him as he calmly ripped out seven years at the root.

“Take her away.”

He spared me one last look.

Cold as iron.

Two wolves yanked me to my feet, dragging me out. I staggered and took a fist to the gut.

“Ng—”

Air exploded out of my lungs. I folded, knees slamming the floor again.

“Careful,” someone said, purely for show. “Don’t break her. Dangerous or not, she’s got to make it to the border.”

They laughed—easy, used to violence.

They dragged me through the Rose Garden.

The wolves shifted halfway, gaining speed. Chains cut into my wrists, my shoulders wrenched in their grip. My boots scraped stone and snow, leaving a blurred trail.

The castle lights shrank behind us. Forest shadows thickened ahead. Snow crept up into my field of view.

“We’re here.”

Someone let go. I stumbled forward, falling hard onto rough, frozen ground.

“One step past here,” the lead guard said, standing on the far side of the boundary stone, looking down at me, voice deliberately detached, “and you’re out of our territory, Heloise.”

Owen stood behind him, wrapped in his usual coat, collar turned up, expression a block of ice. Snow fell into his hair, melting and vanishing.

“Don’t come back,” he said. “It’s better for you. And for Coyote.”

I stared up at him, a rasp tearing out of my throat—too torn to tell if it was a laugh.

The wind swallowed whatever sound it was.

“Let’s go, Alpha?” someone said.

Owen turned and walked away. His boots left deep prints in the snow, quickly filled in by the falling flakes.

The border fell silent again. The wind tore at my hair and clothes. I knelt alone on our side of the stone, cold down to the bone.

I don’t know how long I stayed like that. Just when the last scrap of my stubbornness was about to be blown away with the snow, I heard an engine.

“Get in.”

The familiar rough voice cut through the wind.

I looked up as my father climbed out of the vehicle. He grabbed the back of my coat like he had when he first tossed me into a fighter jet as a teenager and stuffed me into the car.

The door shut and only then did I see the other person inside.

Norton.