Morgan's POV
The absence of noise wakes me.
I lie in the unfamiliar bed with my eyes still closed, waiting for the pack alarm that doesn't sound, the duty roster that doesn't exist, the suffocating weight of Sarah's perfume that doesn't drift beneath my door.
Safe house. Ricky. Freedom.
The words feel foreign, borrowed from someone else's vocabulary.
I push back the covers and pad downstairs on bare feet, each creak of the floorboards loud enough to make me flinch.
Ricky's door stays closed at the end of the hallway, and I want to keep it that way. She looked exhausted when she finally said goodnight.
The kitchen sits empty in the gray pre-dawn light, and I fill the kettle with hands that tremble only slightly as I set it on the burner.
The folder waits where I left it last night, tucked beneath my bag on the kitchen counter.
A week ago, I would have slept with it under my pillow. But Ricky handed me her real name yesterday, and that kind of vulnerability creates its own contract.
I carry my tea to the table and sit with the manila folder between my palms.
'You're stalling,' my wolf observes, but her voice carries less edge than usual.
"I'm preparing," I correct her, sliding the documents free of their protective sleeve.
Medical reports, toxicology screens, witness statements typed on pack letterhead with signatures I recognize from my childhood.
'Start at the beginning,' my wolf suggests quietly. 'We already know the ending.'
The toxicology report sits on top, and I force myself to read the words.
Cause of death: acute poisoning. Substance identified: wolfsbane derivative, concentrated form. Time of death: approximately forty-five minutes after initial ingestion.
Forty-five minutes. My mother spent forty-five minutes dying while I stood frozen at her birthday party, watching her convulse on the floor.
'The cake you baked,' my wolf says, and the words hold no accusation—only the same exhausted grief that lives in my bones.
"The cake I baked," I repeat aloud, tracing the edge of the report with my fingertip.
"But I didn't add the poison. I remember every ingredient that went into that batter, and none of them came from a black market dealer."
'So someone added it after you finished.'
I was twelve years old, proud of the birthday cake I'd made for my mother, desperate to prove I could contribute to her celebration like a proper daughter.
The kitchen staff let me work alone because I insisted, because I wanted the accomplishment to be entirely mine.
Which meant the cake sat unattended while I washed my hands and changed into my party dress.
"Sarah was in the kitchen that day," I breathe, and the name tastes like poison on my tongue.
"I remember seeing her near the counter when I came back downstairs, but I didn't think anything of it because she was always hovering around pack events."
'And the bottle they found in your room?'
"It was planted." The certainty settles into my chest like a stone finding water. "She must have hidden it there after the party started."
My wolf is quiet for a long moment before speaking again. 'The question isn't how she did it. The question is why.'
I flip through the documents until I find the pack registry from eleven years ago, the one that lists every member of the Silver Moon hierarchy at the time of my mother's death.
Beta Logan's name sits second from the top, directly beneath my father's.
"Her father wanted the Alpha position," I say slowly, piecing together the fragments of a plan I never understood as a child.
"If he eliminated my mother, he would weaken my father emotionally. If he framed me for the murder, he would destroy my father's remaining heir and turn the pack against our bloodline."
'A grieving Alpha with no mate, an unborn son, and a daughter branded as a murderer,' my wolf summarizes with grim accuracy. 'Logan would have positioned himself as the obvious successor, the steadying hand in a crisis of his brother's making.'
"But Logan died a week later." I stare at the death certificate tucked between witness statements, the bland official language that declares cardiac arrest as the cause. "A young, healthy Beta wolf doesn't just drop dead from heart failure."
'No,' my wolf agrees. 'He doesn't.'
I remember the funeral, standing beside my father in the cold autumn air while pack members wept for a man I barely knew.
Alpha Richard's face had been carved from granite, but his hands shook when he accepted condolences, and his voice cracked when he spoke of losing his brother so soon after losing his mate.
"My father didn't kill him," I say with certainty I didn't expect. "He was destroyed by Logan's death. I saw it in the way he carried himself for months afterward."
'Then who?'
The question hangs between us, unanswered and unsettling.
"I don't know." I gather the documents into a neat pile, my movements careful. "But there's more to this story than I understood, and I can't just walk back into that packhouse and lay this folder in front of my father expecting him to believe me."
'He believed Sarah's version for eleven years,' my wolf points out, and the sardonic edge returns to her voice. 'What makes you think you will change his mind?'
"Because I'm not a frightened twelve-year-old anymore." I meet my own reflection in the dark window glass, studying the woman who stares back at me. "I'm going to find proof that Logan and his daughter orchestrated everything, and I'm going to make sure it's undeniable before I present it to anyone."
My wolf's presence shifts, settling into something that feels almost like approval. 'That's the first sensible thing you've said in months.'
"Your sarcasm is really starting to grow on me," I admit, and the corner of my mouth twitches upward. "Do you have a name, or am I going to have to give you one?"
'Oh, now she asks,' my wolf says, and I can practically hear her rolling nonexistent eyes. 'I've been awake for what, a month? And you're just now getting around to introductions. Truly, your social skills astound me.'
"Say it before I decide it doesn't matter."
'Nireya,' she says, and the name carries weight I didn't expect—ancient and wild and utterly hers. 'I settled on it during week two, while you were busy pretending I didn't exist and hoping I'd go away if you ignored me hard enough.'
The warmth that spreads through my chest catches me off guard. "Nireya," I repeat, letting the syllables settle on my tongue. "It suits you."
'Obviously it suits me. I chose it.' A pause, and when she speaks again, the sardonic edge softens into something almost fond. 'Though I appreciate you finally acknowledging that I exist as more than a voice delivering unwanted commentary on your poor life choices.'
"Your commentary is occasionally wanted," I concede. "In very small doses."
'I'll take what I can get.'
The morning light strengthens through the kitchen windows, painting the table gold, and I sit with the folder closed beneath my hands while the truth settles into my understanding like sediment finding the bottom of a glass.
Proving my innocence is one problem. Surviving long enough to present that proof is another entirely.
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