Chapter 65: Where Is My Wife?
The morning light broke over the palace of the Moonlight Pack, ushering in its usual crisp and orderly quiet. In the grand kitchens, the fires crackled, filling the air with the scent of fresh bread and boiling herbal teas. It was meant to be an ordinary morning—just the final day of waiting before the King returned from the High Council Summit.
Cara walked briskly down the eastern corridor, balancing a polished silver tray in her hands. On it rested Odesse’s favorite morning tea and a small plate of honeyed pastries. A light, cheerful hum escaped her lips as she approached the heavy oak doors of the royal bedchamber.
She knocked softly with the back of her knuckles. "Your Highness? It is Cara. I’ve brought your morning tea."
Silence answered her.
Cara smiled to herself, thinking Odesse was simply enjoying a deep, well-deserved sleep. Carefully balancing the tray with one arm, she turned the door handle and pushed it open. "Good morning, Your Highness. I know you wanted to rest late, but the elders are—"
Her words died in her throat.
The tray shattered against the stone floor, the porcelain cup smashing into dozens of pieces as hot tea pooled around her feet. Cara didn’t even notice. Her eyes darted wildly around the room. The bed was empty, the heavy velvet blankets thrown to one side as if someone had gotten up in haste. The bathing quarters were completely dark and vacant. On the bedside table, Valex’s letter from the previous night sat exactly where Odesse had left it.
"Your Highness?" Cara’s voice was barely a whisper. She rushed to the balcony, her heart slamming violently against her ribs. No one. She ran back into the bedroom, checking behind the dressing screens, her breathing fast and shallow. "Odesse! Where are you, please?"
Panic, cold and sharp, flooded her veins. Odesse was five months pregnant and nowhere to be found. Cara turned on her heel and bolted out the door, her skirts whipping against her legs as she raced down the hall.
...
Within an hour, the quiet routine of the palace had completely unraveled. The sudden, frantic movement of the royal guards pacing the corridors sent waves of anxiety through the domestic quarters.
In the lower corridors near the laundry rooms, two servant girls stood close to the stone wall, their baskets of linen forgotten at their feet as they whispered frantically.
"I’m telling you, she’s not in the solar either," one girl whispered, her eyes wide as she scanned the hall. "I saw Cara running toward the guard captain’s quarters half an hour ago. She looked like she’d seen a ghost. Her face was completely white."
"But how?" the second girl muttered, gripping her apron. "The perimeter guards didn’t see anyone enter or leave. If the King returns tomorrow and Her Highness isn’t here... the whole palace will be turned to ash. You know how he gets about her."
Upstairs in the grand dining hall, the kitchen staff were supposed to be setting the long tables, but instead, they were huddled near the service doors.
"They’re searching the stables now," a young kitchen boy reported in a hushed, terrified breath. "The Head Guard ordered a full lockdown of the estate. No one goes out, no one comes in."
"Quiet down before someone hears you!" an older cook snapped, though her own hands were shaking as she polished a silver goblet. "Just pray she is found before sunset. If anything has happened to her, we can only imagine what the King would do."
...
"What do you mean she isn’t in her room?!"
A sharp, authoritative voice cut through the murmurs in the main corridor. Miss Faye rushed down the grand staircase.
Miss Faye’s usually perfectly composed hair was slightly disheveled, and her sharp eyes were filled with an uncharacteristic, raw terror. Spotting Cara standing near the guard station, her hands trembling as the second in command, Captain of the Guard, issued rapid orders to his men, Miss Faye called out, "Cara!"
Her voice cracked as she hurried over and grabbed the younger girl by her shoulders. "Cara, look at me. What is happening? The girls are saying the royal bedchamber was left wide open. Where is the Queen?"
Cara looked up at Miss Faye, her eyes swimming with fresh tears and her lower lip quivering uncontrollably. "I don’t know, Miss Faye... I went in to bring her tea, just like always. She’s gone. Her slippers are still there, and her heavy cloaks are still in the wardrobe. She wouldn’t just leave. Not like this. She was so happy last night after the letter arrived..."
Miss Faye felt the air leave her lungs. Turning to the Guard Captain, her voice dropped to a fierce, protective whisper. "Have you checked the gardens? The conservatory? She loves the flowers early in the morning."
"We’ve searched the entire interior three times already, Miss Faye," the Captain replied, his jaw tight and his hand resting tensely on the hilt of his sword. "There is no trace. No scent, no signs of a struggle, nothing. It’s as if she vanished into thin air."
"That is impossible!" Miss Faye snapped, her maternal instincts for Odesse flaring up through her panic. "She is five months with child! She cannot simply vanish from a heavily guarded fortress! Send riders out to the outer borders immediately. Search every corner of the pack lands!"
"We are already deploying the tracking units," the Captain said, turning quickly to signal another squad of heavy-footed guards who sprinted down the hall.
Cara buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking as she wept. Miss Faye immediately pulled the girl into a tight, fierce embrace, staring blankly down the dark corridor. The palace was in absolute chaos; the staff was panicking, the guards were desperate, and worst of all—the clock was ticking. King Valex was less than twenty-four hours away, and no one had an answer to the one question that mattered: Where was the Queen?
...
The heavy, suffocating silence of a second sleepless night still hung over the royal palace as the first weak rays of dawn began to creep through the windows. The panic from the previous day hadn’t dissolved; it had simply settled into a cold, exhausting dread that pressed down on every soul inside the fortress.
In the small parlor just outside the royal bedchamber, Cara sat on the edge of a velvet settee, her knees pulled tight to her chest. Her eyes were red, swollen, and entirely vacant. She still wore the same dress from the day before, the fabric wrinkled and stained at the hem from where the morning tea had spilled. Every few minutes, a fresh wave of quiet sobs would overtake her, causing her shoulders to shake uncontrollably.
Miss Faye stood by the tall window, staring blankly down at the empty courtyard below. Hearing Cara’s breathing hitch again, the older woman turned slowly and walked over, sitting beside her on the cushions. She didn’t offer empty platitudes or hollow promises that everything would be fine. Instead, she simply wrapped a firm, grounding arm around Cara’s shoulders, pulling the girl into her side.
"I should have stayed with her," Cara choked out, her voice raw and broken. She buried her face in her hands, her fingers trembling. "She told me... she told me that a feeling of evil wouldn’t go away. I laughed it off, Miss Faye. I made a joke about it. If I had just slept on her floor, if I hadn’t left her alone after giving her that letter..."
"Hush, child," Miss Faye murmured softly, her voice tight with the grief she was desperately trying to conceal. She gently stroked Cara’s hair, acting as the anchor the young maid so desperately needed. "You cannot blame yourself for the dark tricks of the world. Odesse knows your heart. We will find her. The tracking units have been out all night, and they are expanding the search to the rocky terrains past the eastern valley."
"But she is five months pregnant," Cara whispered into the quiet room, looking up with absolute terror in her eyes. "She is carrying a child in her womb and she is out there somewhere, completely unprotected. How do we look the King in the eye today?"
Miss Faye didn’t answer. She couldn’t, because just beneath the sound of Cara’s weeping, the distant, unmistakable thunder of approaching hooves began to echo from the valley trail.
The King was back.
The iron gates of the courtyard hadn’t even fully swung open before Valex dismounted, his heavy leather boots hitting the dirt with a resounding thud. Kael was a half-step behind him, his sharp eyes instantly locking onto the tense, rigid postures of the guards lining the threshold.
There were no welcoming banners. There was no bustling preparation for a return feast. The air felt completely stagnant, thick with an underlying terror that made the hairs on the back of Valex’s neck stand up. His wolf immediately grew restless, clawing to the surface as a primal instinct screamed that something in his territory was fundamentally broken.
Valex didn’t wait for Kael to coordinate the horses. He marched straight up the stone steps of the palace, his dark cloak billowing behind his massive frame. His jaw was set, his features hardened from weeks of political exhaustion, but his eyes were entirely focused on reaching the upper levels to see his wife.
As he threw open the grand double doors of the entrance hall, he didn’t find Odesse waiting for him. Instead, standing in the center of the room was the Second-in-Command Guard Captain, a seasoned warrior who appeared frozen, his face entirely drained of color, his helmet held tightly against his ribs.
Valex stopped directly in front of him. The sheer weight of the King’s presence made the vast hall feel microscopic. He looked down at the Second-in-Command, his brow furrowing as he noticed the tight, frantic energy radiating from every guard in the room.
"Where is the Queen?" Valex asked. His voice wasn’t loud, nor was it angry yet. It was just a direct, quiet demand from a husband who had been away for a month.
The Second-in-Command swallowed hard, his knuckles turning white against his helmet. He looked past Valex at Kael, silently begging for help that wasn’t coming, before forcing his eyes back up to meet the King’s lethal gaze.
"Your Highness..." the Captain stammered, his breath catching in his throat as his posture stiffened. "We... we have initiated a full perimeter lockdown since yesterday morning. The tracking units have been deployed across the entire eastern territory, and we have questioned every domestic servant."
Valex’s eyes narrowed, his entire body going rigid as the air in the room turned cold. He stepped an inch closer, his shadow engulfing the Captain.
"I did not ask about the tracking units, Captain," Valex said, his tone dropping into a low, terrifyingly calm whisper that sliced through the silence of the hall. "I asked you where my wife is."
The captain’s lips quivered, and the words tasted like ash as he finally forced them out. "She... she is nowhere to be found, Your Highness." The Second-in-Command Guard Captain’s voice cracked on the last word, his head bowing instantly to avoid the inevitable wrath he knew was coming.
Valex remained motionless, his gaze unblinking. The silence that followed was heavy and suffocating, stripping the oxygen from the grand hall. For a single, agonizing heartbeat, it felt as though the entire palace had stopped breathing. His jaw tightened so intensely that it looked ready to snap, and his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at his sides as his dark eyes locked onto the trembling captain.
"What do you mean," Valex whispered, his voice dangerously low and vibrating with a terrifying, unhinged calm that made every guard in the room instinctively take a half-step back, "she is nowhere to be found?"
