Chapter 9: Veil Three

Rhys's POV

I read the note on the last report six times before Willa took the box out of my hands.

STOP. She's married. Let her be.

I knew that blue ink, and I knew those loops.

I had seen them on every Christmas card and every pack roster for six years.

"I didn't write that," I said.

"I know you didn't," Willa said, and for the first time since the dock she wasn't angry.

She took the box and went back to our son.

I stood in my study with my shirt hanging open and listened to her car pull out of the drive.

Then I called Bram and told him to find out where every detective on those reports had sent their last invoice.

I'd paid every one of them myself, and I had never once read who signed for the files.

At midnight I went down to the Hall alone.

The braziers were out, and the stone held the cold.

The veils hung at the far end with their iron numbers, and I walked straight to them.

Six years, and I had never once come down here without a pack around me.

My wolf didn't like it.

He had never liked this room since that night, and he didn't say why.

I stopped in front of the third veil.

Gray cloth, a black iron three.

I put my hand on it, and my wolf went through me in one long hard shudder.

I took a breath, and I smelled juniper and old smoke.

That night the whole Hall had been thick with it.

Every mate washed in the rite's juniper soap before the veils, so the wolf would choose by instinct and not by perfume.

The elder had told me at dusk, in the old words.

Your mate stands behind the third veil, Alpha. Go to her when the lights go out.

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