Behind Closed Gates [Edited]

Chapter Fifteen

Thalia stood on the back porch of the pack house and stared out at the quiet garden. She could see glimpses of wolves patrolling in the forest beyond, their noses to the ground and ears pricked for the smallest of sounds. It seemed the shadows had more of a life than she did, she thought grimly.

Her brother's words rung in her ear – to try and reach out to her deadly mate, the Wolfsbane, and murderer of so many of her own werewolf kin.

Fiddling with the necklace she'd adorned after leaving the meeting, she let out a sigh; not a deep sigh to make the staff gossip, or an obvious one to alert anyone watching how internally exhausted she was keeping up the façade of being the perfect princess, and walking carefully on the eggshells of her father's laws.

What she was about to do was utterly stupid and reckless. The idea of breaking the rules, daring to rebel, sent fear ricocheting down her spine and a warmth in her belly she was familiar with in her youth when her royal duties weren't placed on her shoulders – freedom.

She had her ways of monitoring her mate and enemy. Most of it was from reports that came through, noting him and his unit killing off werewolves that strayed too far into the open. Last she heard of him and his hunters was a raid a few months ago that took down a werewolf involved in a scandalous night club who was becoming too loud in his seat – so Elijah knocked him down.

But the raid was only a few miles from the pack house she was staying in now. Maybe, just maybe, if luck was finally on her side, there were more than just her own patrols out in the shadows.

Her necklace she quickly tied around her neck was simple, elegant, and minimalist. It was a dainty steel circle on a matching chain, completely uninteresting to anyone that glanced at her décolletage, but the story behind it wasn't so simple.

A few months after she first met her mate, when she and Elliot had been on that journey and were ambushed by the Wolfsbane and his unit, she walked into her study one afternoon to find the parcel on her desk, his scent still clinging to the fingerprints on the edges of the box.

Inside, was the necklace, and a note.

Only fair you should have a way of reaching me as well.

She'd been terrified at the notion a hunter had been in her suite, at her desk. She could smell his light fingers over her pens, her confidential documents. The cunning murderer had also sat in her favourite chair.

Thalia had burned the note, of course, but the necklace she kept, because Elijah was right – if he could work her way into her personal study, it was only fair she had a way of doing the same.

If he could get under her skin, she wasn't going to pass on the opportunity to do the same thing to him.

Standing on the porch of the pack house, she twisted the necklace's steel disk left and right, like she was fidgeting with nerves. Thalia knew that rumours would spread that she was anxious about something, that the cool, steel, emotionless princess was secretly worrying, crumbling, but for what her brother needed she would allow the rumours to attempt to tarnish her reputation.

They would fade within the week, as all rumours did. She remained focused on what mattered, always being the face of the burden that was her family and crown.

The necklace acted as a reflector, bouncing the sun's warm rays off the disk and into the shadows beyond, piercing the darkness teaming with patrols. Thalia knew people watched her, she had been stared at since she was a baby, but while werewolves watched her for security and awe, she knew her enemies watched closer still.

If there was a hunter watching now, they would see the light dancing into their eyes, into their secret system of communicating, bouncing off shards of steel in the forest that alerted nearby hunter cabins that someone wanted to talk, someone needed to send a message.