Beneath the Alpha’s Nose, Chapter 5

The estate’s asleep, or it’s doing a really good impression.

I edge down the corridor toward my father’s study, the air thick with shadows that could hide almost anything, the smallest noise a threat. I remind myself of who I am now—I’m Ari—and it’s got to be second nature if I want to get out of here alive. The binding across my chest feels tighter with every shallow breath.

Every shadow feels like a test: can I move as the wolf does, quiet and unseen, without letting her take over? She’s in my pulse tonight—wild, impatient—but I need her discipline, not her teeth.

Footpads echo behind me—a guard in wolf form on rounds. I slip into an alcove, press my back flat against the cold stone, and hold my breath so hard my lungs ache. The guard comes close. I catch the tang of his last meal and am reminded of my own scent. He slows right by me, close enough to grab, his nose twitching as he scents the air. My only chance is that the home always smells of me and my family’s scents.

My heart’s so loud he must hear it.

The moment drags on, long enough that I lose count of the seconds. If he scents fear, I’m done. Not Ariana in trouble, but a wolf betraying her pack. They’d call me rogue. They’d call me traitor. I press myself so flat I can almost imagine being air instead of flesh.

Then he’s moving again. He takes a left where the corridor splits, not right toward the study, before I allow myself a ragged breath out and back in. I wait until the echoes die, and then I’m out again, moving heel-to-toe, silent and sure, just like my uncle drilled into me out in the wilds beyond the estate.

Another set of steps. Servant’s pace this time, softer, steady. I duck behind a tapestry, this one depicting a pack hunt. It’s old and the threads are rough against my skin. Through a slit, I watch her go, arms loaded with clean linen, shuffling slow.

Wait.

Wait.

When the hall’s empty again, I’m moving.

The study door’s solid wood, glossy beneath my touch. I pause, ear against it. Nothing, not even breath from the other side. If my father was in there, I’d know it by now. Satisfied, I try the handle. Locked, exactly as I expected. I slip the key from my boot, feeling the metal cool and familiar in my fingers. It hadn’t been hard to slip it out of my mother’s room when I had bid her goodnight. She usually had a few glasses of wine at dinner, but I had made sure to give her few extra, reminding her of how hard she had been working lately.

I slip the key in and turn it and the lock gives with a click that, in the silence, feels like a shot. I slip inside. The door closes at my back, louder than I’d like it, but that couldn’t be helped. Not now.

Eliza Delacroix made the room at the end of the west wing his study on purpose, angled to look over both the courtyard and the training yards. Out there, he can watch his pack without ever leaving the polished wood and leather of his private space.

Moonlight cuts through half-drawn blinds, striping the desk with silver. The scent in here is pure Delacroix: cedar, leather, ink, parchment, and beneath them all, my lupine senses can still smell the metallic tang of blood-oath contracts. Father always said that without blood, an oath was empty. Blood binds the pack tighter than chains.

Books line the shelves, thick with family history. Daggers in a case, the hilts flashing with the Delacroix emblem. I toy with the idea of taking one, but the sigil might very well give me away.

Everything here is a piece of the old stories, the burdens Eliza Delacroix has carried and forced the rest of us to carry, too.

Until tonight. I won’t be carrying those burdens any longer.

At the desk, I try to walk like he does, square-shouldered and certain. The drawer’s are unlocked; that’s always the case. He trusts the people he lets into this room, and if someone breaks in without him, he trusts he will track them down and make them pay.

Not this time, I hope.

I start with the right drawer, sliding it open, slow and steady. A row of letters, ledgers, and numbers sorted by territory. My hands flick through, hunting for the seal. Nothing. Next is the left drawer: maps, pacts, old agreements, but no seal.

I slide out the bottom draw and find a few bottles of pine oil. Father, like most men in the region, liked to use it as a cologne. I stuff them into my bag. They’ll be useful to mask my feminine scent if nothing else.

Still no seal… Where could it be? Did he take it with him? I feel my heart skip in a beat of panic, quick and sharp.

No. There are two seals: one he keeps with him and one he leaves in the study. He’d never keep both together. I survey the room with my eyes. There—the smaller cabinet wedged between shelves. Of course. The records.

No lock, just silent hinges. Folders, precise, lined up like soldiers. I dig. There’s a compartment beneath. My hands shake, but I manage it—the seal and wax, right where they should be.

I pull the letter my uncle wrote from my satchel. Ari, orphaned, worth a chance, the kind of favor that families like ours trade in shadowy back rooms and with pressed hands. All for Silverpaw Academy, and for me.

I light the wax, watch it melt in the dish. My fingers tremble, hesitation sharp. I wonder if Father’s signature shook when he traded me away to Banes.

Leila’s pendant presses against my chest, and memory floods in: the stories only whispered about missing girls and Lena’s pain. The other option isn’t a locked room—it’s a slow, certain loss, day by day.

I drip the wax.

Outside a floorboard squeals right at the corridor junction, louder than a shout. Startled, I hit the inkwell. Black arcs across the desk, wild and fast, bleeding toward my letter.

I grab the letter, snatching it away. Ink spatters the floor. I scoop up blotting paper, dabbing and dabbing, while listening for the footfalls I heard before. They stop just outside.

I go still, mid-motion. Don’t breathe.

Had someone heard me?

The footsteps linger, then I hear the rattle of a key against the lock.

There’s no time to waste. I crouch and set the letter on the wooden floor, dipping the Delacroix crest deep in the dark red wax and quickly examine my handywork. It’s not the best impression, but it will have to do.

There’s nothing to hide behind. The window’s the best shot I have. The latch squeaks a little, but I force it, pulling in cool air thick with pine, water, everything wild and endless out beyond the walls. My legs swing over the sill just as I hear the door latch release.

I make my way around the ledge, away from the window. From here I can see it all. Training yards, forbidden to me. The gardens where I ran with Mother and Leila. The outbuildings, the boundaries of a home that’s both haven and prison. It almost looks peaceful.

Doubt hits, tight and cold. Is this really survival? Walking away from everything and everyone I know, on nothing but a hope and a lie and a forged letter?

The pendant warms at my throat. Leila’s faith. This isn’t betrayal, not really. It’s what’s left to me. It’s how I live. Becoming Ari is how I have any chance at someday becoming the real Ariana, free from Isaac Banes and from the cage my father built.

“What is this mess?” I hear my father say from the still-open window.

The wolf in me aches to run, but the girl hesitates, giving the only place I’ve ever called home one last look. Then I drop down to the ground, toward the dark and the future. Every step is a step away from Ariana Delacroix, and toward Ari—the self I’m choosing, the self who survives, no matter what’s waiting out there.

I wonder which part of me will survive longer—the animal that escapes or the girl who still looks back.

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