Sleep would not come again that night.
Seraphina lay in the vast bed long after the glowing eyes had vanished from the treeline, her gaze fixed on the window, waiting for the shadow to return. The moon had slid behind a bank of clouds, and the forest below was nothing but a black sea, restless in the wind. Every time the branches moved, her breath caught. Every time they stilled, it caught again.
By the time dawn bled gray through the curtains, her eyes were burning and her head ached with questions she could not answer.
She told Kael at breakfast.
He had been reading a stack of correspondence at the head of the long dining table, his dark hair still damp from a morning wash, when she said, "Something was watching me last night."
The parchment in his hands went still.
"Explain," he said.
She told him about the shadow among the trees, the way it had turned its head, the eyes that had found hers across the impossible distance. As she spoke, something changed in his face — the calm mask of the Alpha cracked, and underneath it she saw something she had never seen in him before.
Fear.
"Show me," he said, and rose from the table so abruptly his chair scraped against the stone.
They went to her chamber — his chamber, she corrected herself bitterly — and he threw open the window despite the cold morning air. He leaned out, his eyes scanning the treeline, then the ground far below.
"There," he said quietly, pointing.
Seraphina followed his gaze. On the pale stone of the terrace below the window, half-hidden in shadow, were marks she had not noticed the night before. Long, deep gouges, as though something with claws had raked the stone in passing.
Her blood went cold.
"What was it?" she whispered.
"Not what," Kael said, his voice low and dangerous. "Who." He turned from the window, and his eyes burned with a fury that made her step back. "Rogues. They have been pressing at our borders for weeks."
"Rogues?" The word tasted of old stories, the kind whispered to frighten pups. Wolves without a pack. Wolves without law.
"They want something," Kael said. "And last night, they found it."
"Me?" Her voice came out small.
He did not answer, which was answer enough.
Within the hour, the mansion felt like a fortress preparing for siege. Guards doubled at every door. Warriors in dark leather moved through the corridors with blades at their hips. Seraphina watched from the landing as Kael gave orders in a voice of iron, and she felt the walls of her gilded prison drawing tighter with every command.
"You will not leave this floor without an escort," he told her when he found her on the stairs. "Not the gardens. Not the library. Nowhere."
"You can't—"
"I can," he said, and there was no room in his tone for argument. "And I will."
She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to throw the unfairness of it in his face — that she had been dragged here against her will and now was to be locked away like treasure in a vault. But the memory of those glowing eyes stopped the words in her throat.
That afternoon, defiance won over fear.
Kael was closeted with his commanders, and her guard — a young warrior with kind eyes who looked barely older than Caleb — could not quite bring himself to deny her when she said, with all the authority she could muster, that the Alpha had permitted her the library.
The library was a cathedral of dust and leather, shelves rising to a ceiling lost in shadow. Seraphina moved through the stacks with her heart hammering, unsure what she was even looking for. Proof, perhaps. That she was not losing her mind.
It was Selene who found her there.
"Well," the other woman drawled from the end of the aisle, golden hair gleaming in the lamplight. "The little lamb can read. How unexpected."
Seraphina's fingers tightened on the book she held. "What do you want, Selene?"
"To warn you." Selene drifted closer, her smile sharp as a blade. "Whatever game you think you're playing with Kael, it won't last. I've seen strays like you come and go. The pack always spits out what it can't digest."
"I'm not a stray," Seraphina said quietly. "And I'm not going anywhere."
Selene's eyes narrowed — and then, without warning, she struck. Her hand shot out and tore the book from Seraphina's grasp, sending it skidding across the floor.
"Careful," Selene breathed, leaning in. "In this house, little lambs who wander alone tend to get eaten."
She swept from the library, leaving Seraphina shaking with fury — and with something else. Because in the moment before Selene had turned away, Seraphina had seen it: not just cruelty in those eyes, but satisfaction. As though the rogues at the border were not a threat to Selene at all.
As though she had been expecting them.
Seraphina bent to retrieve the fallen book, her hands trembling. When she straightened, Kael was standing in the doorway.
"What did she say to you?" he demanded.
"Nothing I couldn't handle," Seraphina said, lifting her chin.
For a long moment he only looked at her, and the anger in his face softened into something far more dangerous — something almost like admiration.
"Whatever you saw last night," he said quietly, "it will not touch you. I swear it on my blood."
And Seraphina realized, with a jolt that stole her breath, that the great Alpha Kael Thorne was afraid.
Not of the rogues.
For her.