Chapter 36: Greaves’ Plots Exposed
The palace had begun to feel like a beast breathing through clenched teeth.
Every corridor carried echoes that weren’t there the day before. Footsteps that stopped when you listened, doors that closed a fraction too softly, conversations that died the moment a shadow moved. The air itself tasted different: thinner, sharper, laced with the metallic promise of violence held just out of sight. Seren noticed it most in the silences. The kind of quiet that wasn’t peaceful but watchful.
She had barely slept.
The tower chamber felt too large and too small at once. The fire had burned down to embers; the furs on the bed still held the heat of three bodies that had pressed against hers until dawn. She sat now at the small writing desk, quill unmoving above blank parchment, staring at the window where false dawn bled grey across the glass. The bond thrummed low and steady; Aeron’s iron calm from the war room, Kael’s coiled fury from the training ground, and Theron’s restless calculation from wherever he had gone to chase leads in the lower passages.
They were hunting.
She was waiting.
Suddenly, there was a knock on the door
Seren’s head lifted.
The door opened before she could answer.
Commander Draven stepped inside alone. His silver hair was disheveled, cloak damp with mist from the outer walls, eyes bloodshot from a night without rest. He carried a leather satchel slung across his chest and a sealed wooden box the length of his forearm. Both looked heavy.
He closed the door behind him with deliberate care, the latch clicking like a cocked crossbow.
Commander Draven was not born in the palace. He was born in the ash-choked border village of Blackthorn Hollow, a place so far north that the sun barely lingered in winter and the wolves howled closer than the church bells. His mother was human, a herbalist who treated both pack and village alike. His father was a low-ranking wolf enforcer for the old Northern Pack, before Magnus took it and sent him south to collect tribute and keep the border quiet.
During his young age, he learned the palace’s secret passages the way other boys learned their mother’s lullabies. He learned which nobles could be trusted with secrets and which ones sold them. He learned that loyalty was not blind obedience, it was calculated survival.
He was taken as part of the royal guards by Torren at the age of seventeen. By twenty-two he was Torren’s second-in-command.
By twenty-five, Torren was dead. He was poisoned at a border feast, and Draven became commander.
No ceremony. No fanfare. The king simply summoned him, looked him over, and said:
"You kept the palace breathing when others would have let it choke. Keep it breathing."
Draven has kept the palace breathing since then.
He crossed to where Seren sat in fews strides.
"They’re moving faster than we thought," he said without preamble.
Seren rose, the chair scraping softly against the marble floor.
Draven crossed to the table and set the satchel down first. He opened it with practiced efficiency. Inside lay a stack of folded parchments, some yellowed and brittle, others crisp and recent, bound with black cord. Beside them, a small iron key, a torn scrap of grey cloak still bearing the faint scent of pine and river mud, and three wax seals broken from letters, each bearing the same indistinct imprint: a wolf head half-shrouded in cloud.
He placed the wooden box beside the satchel.
"This was delivered to me at the fourth watch," he said. "By a dying courier. Northern rider. Took an arrow through the lung trying to reach the eastern gate. He lived long enough to hand it over and whisper one name."
Draven opened the box.
Inside, nestled in black velvet, lay a single dagger.
Northern made, curved blade, frost-etched steel, hilt wrapped in black leather and bound with silver wire. The pommel was carved into a snarling wolf head, eyes set with chips of ice-blue sapphire that caught the dying firelight and threw it back cold.
Draven lifted it carefully by the blade and turned it so Seren could read the inscription along the fuller.
Etched in fine, precise script:
*Greaves sends regards.*
Seren’s breath caught.
Draven set the dagger down.
"The courier’s last words were: ’Tell the commander... Greaves opened the gate. Tell him before they silence the rest.’"
He untied the black cord around the parchments and spread the top three across the table like cards in a losing hand.
The first was a ledger page—stolen from the steward’s own records. Dates. Times. Names.
Every murdered servant appeared.
Mara. Rowan. Lira. Elliot. Eleven others.
Each entry marked with a tiny red-ink cross beside their last assigned duty: *royal wing, eastern tower, council antechamber, heirs’ study.*
And beside each cross, another mark: a small, precise symbol that looked like a broken crown.
Draven tapped the second parchment.
A coded letter—Elowen’s elegant hand, deciphered in Draven’s own tight script beneath it.
*Greaves—ensure no loose tongues remain. The eastern postern will be open at the new moon. Bring the girl. Magnus will reward loyalty. The Eastern Pack will reward silence.*
The third was a list of payments—gold amounts, dates, recipients.
Greaves’s signature appeared beside every line.
Payments to northern scouts.
Payments to eastern guards wearing Sera’s colours.
Payments to three council scribes who had access to the private correspondence.
And one final line, underlined twice:
*Payment upon delivery of the changing one. Alive.*
Seren stared at the words until they blurred.
Her fingers trembled when she touched the parchment.
"They weren’t random," she whispered.
Draven’s voice was flat, exhausted, carrying the weight of a man who had seen too many bodies in one night.
"No. They were targeted. Every servant killed had been inside the royal chambers in the days before their death. Everyone had seen something, like your mark beginning to glow, the princes speaking of the change, a ritual candle left burning too long, a whispered conversation about what you were becoming. Greaves identified them. His men, or hired blades wearing northern cloaks silenced them. The murders were designed to eliminate witnesses. Loose ends. Anyone who might have spoken before the court could be convinced the bond was blasphemy."
He leaned both hands on the table, knuckles white.
"This is not madness. This is conspiracy. Greaves has been working with agents of rival packs; northern scouts, eastern operatives, possibly even disgruntled council scribes. They want the kingdom destabilized during the succession crisis. They want the triumvirate fractured, the packs doubting, the border lords ready to turn. And they want you..." He looked straight at Seren. "...either dead or delivered to Magnus before the change completes."
Seren’s heart beat too loud in her ears.
"If I’m delivered alive," she said slowly, "Magnus can use me to prove that a human can become a wolf. And that he can break the old laws. A proof he’s stronger than Silvermoor."
Draven nodded once.
"And if you’re dead," he added, "the princes lose their mate. The bond breaks them. The court sees weakness. Elowen, or Sera steps into the vacuum. Either way, the kingdom fractures."
Aeron’s voice came from the doorway, he had entered silently behind Draven, coat still unbuttoned from the war room.
"Then we stop the fracture before it spreads."
Kael and Theron followed him inside.
Kael’s face was thunder.
Theron’s face was laced by something colder, sharper.
Aeron crossed to the table and studied the evidence without touching it.
"How many know?" he asked Draven.
"Too many," Draven answered. "The courier’s death was seen. The dagger was delivered openly. Greaves will know we have this by morning, that’s if he doesn’t know already."
Aeron looked at Seren.
"You don’t leave this tower again," he said. "Not until we have Greaves in chains."
Seren shook her head.
"No."
Three pairs of eyes snapped to her.
She met them unflinching.
"If I hide now, they win the narrative. They say I’m afraid. They say I’m guilty. They say the bond is a lie or a curse.
Kael’s growl was immediate.
"You were almost taken two nights ago. You were poisoned in front of the entire court. You think we’re letting you walk into another trap?"
"I think you’re letting fear decide," she said quietly. "And fear is what they want."
Aeron studied her for a long moment.
Then he exhaled, once, quietly.
"We cannot afford to have loose ends, Seren. You stay indoors under fortified guards’ watch. They are getting far more dangerous than we can imagine."
"Exactly Seren, it’s dangerous to get you exposed now." Theron added.
She nodded.
Draven cleared his throat.
"There is one more thing."
He reached into the satchel again.
This time he withdrew a small iron key, identical to the one Tobin had given her days earlier.
"Found on the courier’s body," he said. "Matches the steward’s private strongbox in the lower vaults. The one Greaves keeps locked even from the senior household staff."
Kael’s eyes narrowed.
"We go now," he said.
Aeron nodded.
"Draven, triple the guard on this tower. No one enters without our word. Not even councillors. Not even family."
Draven bowed once.
Then he paused at the door.
"One last warning," he said quietly. "Greaves hasn’t been seen since yesterday afternoon. His chambers are empty. His ledgers are missing. And the eastern postern gate, the one Elowen promised to open, was found unlocked at dawn."
He looked straight at Seren.
"They’re not waiting for the new moon anymore."
He left.
The door closed.
Silence settled, thick, electric.
Aeron looked at his brothers.
Then at Seren.
"We end this tonight," he said.
