Kael's POV
Nova sits across from him in the interrogation room and lies through her teeth.
Except she is not lying. That is the problem.
Kael has been doing this for four hours. He sits in a chair, studying her across the metal table. The room is bare except for them. No windows. No distractions. Just him and the girl who smells like winter and makes his wolf lose its mind.
"Tell me about your grandmother," he says again.
"I already told you. She found me when I was a baby. She named me Nova. She raised me in a human town. She died two years ago." Nova's hands are shaking. Her voice is steady but her scent is flooding the room with genuine fear. "I worked at a diner. I had a life. I was normal."
"You were never normal."
"I know that now," she snaps. There is anger underneath the fear. Good. Anger is honest. "But I was. Until yesterday I was just a girl who nobody noticed. I was boring. I was alone. And now I am here in a cage and you keep asking me the same questions and I keep giving you the same answers because those are the only answers I have."
Kael watches her face. Her violet eyes are wet but she refuses to cry in front of him. Her jaw is clenched. She is terrified but she is fighting it with everything she has.
His wolf recognizes this strength. It respects it.
Kael forces himself to stay cold. To stay distant. To remember that this girl is a walking weapon and he has no idea what she will do if she learns what she truly is.
"Your grandmother. What was her name?"
"Margaret Wilde. She was kind and she loved me and she is dead." Nova's voice breaks slightly. "I miss her every day. Is that what you wanted to hear?"
He uses a touch of Alpha command, letting his authority bleed into his voice. "Tell me if you are lying."
Nova's entire body tenses. Her pupils dilate. For a moment she looks like she might attack him. Then the command settles over her like a net and she relaxes against her will.
"I am not lying," she says, her voice hollow. "Everything I told you is the truth. I do not know what I am. I do not know where I came from. I do not know anything except that my life was normal and now it is not and I am terrified."
Kael releases the command. Nova gasps like she has been underwater and finally surfaced.
He stands up. There is no point pushing harder. Her fear is genuine. Her confusion is real. But something is wrong. Something about her power, about her existence, does not add up.
"Willow will take a blood sample," he says coldly. "Do not resist."
"What kind of blood sample? Why?" Nova stands up too, backing away. "What are you going to do with it?"
"Find out what you are."
Willow enters through the side door. She is young and kind and gives Nova a gentle smile that makes the girl's terror lessen slightly. Nova cooperates with the blood draw even though her hands are still shaking. Willow takes the vial and promises to return soon.
Kael leaves Nova in the interrogation room and walks to his office.
He sits at his desk and tries to focus on reports. Pack territory disputes. Supply lines. A rouge wolf sighting three territories over. Nothing that matters. Nothing that makes sense because his entire brain is occupied with one question.
What is she?
His wolf has known from the moment they saw her. It has been trying to tell him with every breath, every heartbeat. But his human mind refuses to accept what his animal half is screaming. She is his mate. But she is also a walking mystery and mysteries are dangerous.
An hour passes.
Kael is staring out the window at his territory when Willow knocks on his office door. Her expression has changed. She looks pale. Scared.
"The results," she says quietly.
Kael takes the papers from her hands. Blood work. Genetic markers. DNA analysis. All the scientific language that proves what his wolf already knew.
Silvercrest.
The word hits him like a bullet.
He reads it again. Then again. The markers are undeniable. The bloodline is clear. Nova Wilde carries the genetic signature of the Silvercrest royal pack. The pack that was supposed to be extinct. The pack that was slaughtered thirty years ago.
The pack his father helped destroy.
Kael feels like the ground is shifting beneath him. His wolf is going insane inside his chest, snarling and pacing and clawing at his ribs. She is his mate. She is Silvercrest. She is the daughter of the family that his father spent his deathbed confessing guilt over.
"This cannot be right," Willow says. "The Silvercrest are gone. We all know they are gone."
"They are not gone," Kael says quietly. "They are her."
Willow's eyes widen with understanding. "Kael, if the Council finds out about this, they will execute her on sight. The whole reason the Silvercrest were killed was because their power could not be controlled. If she learns what she is capable of, if she learns what her bloodline can do..."
"I know." Kael sets the papers down on his desk. His hands are shaking which almost never happens. "Get out. Tell no one about this. Not even Finn."
Willow leaves. Kael sits alone in his office and tries to process a world that has just tilted sideways.
His father helped murder her family.
His wolf claims her as mate.
The Council will kill her if they know she exists.
And somehow, impossibly, he has to keep her alive. Not because she is a threat that needs studying. Not because she is a prisoner he can use. But because she is his and his wolf will rip him apart from the inside if he lets anything happen to her.
Kael stands up and walks down to the cells.
Nova is pacing like a caged animal when he arrives. She spins around when she sees him. Her violet eyes are red from crying but there is defiance in them still. That strength. That refusal to break.
Kael enters her cell and closes the door behind him.
"I know what you are," he says quietly.
Nova takes a step backward. "What do you mean?"
"Your bloodline. Your power. Everything that makes you different." He moves closer. "You are Silvercrest. Royal blood. The last heir to a pack that was murdered thirty years ago."
Nova's face goes completely white. She grabs the edge of the cot to keep from falling. "What are you talking about? My grandmother said I was human. She said I was abandoned. She did not say anything about being Silvercrest or royal or any of this."
"Because she probably did not know." Kael feels his wolf pushing at his human control, wanting to claim her, wanting to protect her, wanting to burn the world down to keep her safe. "Your family had the power to command any wolf to obey. The Council decided that was too dangerous. They decided it was better to eliminate the entire bloodline than risk them becoming a threat."
"You are saying they murdered my entire family."
"Yes."
The word hangs between them like a blade.
Nova sinks down onto the cot. Her whole body is shaking. "Why would they do that?"
"Because your family was too powerful to control." Kael sits next to her even though he should not. Even though touching her will make his wolf worse. "And if the Council discovers you exist, they will kill you. They will hunt you down and they will show no mercy. You are the living proof that the Silvercrest bloodline cannot be erased."
Nova looks at him with those violet eyes full of fear and confusion and something else. Something that recognizes him.
"What do you want from me," she whispers.
"I want to keep you alive," Kael says. And he realizes as he says it that it is true. Not for strategy. Not for pack politics. But because she is his and the thought of losing her is something his mind cannot accept. "I want to train you. I want to help you master what you are. And I want to make sure that when the Council comes looking for you, you are strong enough to survive them."
"And if I refuse?"
"You cannot hide. The power will grow. Eventually you will hurt yourself or someone else." He meets her eyes. "I am the only Alpha powerful enough to hold you. The only one strong enough to protect you from the Council. And the only one whose pack will not try to use you as a weapon."
Nova stares at him for a long moment. Then she asks the question that breaks something inside him.
"Why do you care? My family was supposedly a threat. Is not that what you just told me? That the Council wanted to destroy us?"
Kael has no good answer. He cannot tell her the truth. Cannot tell her that his father was part of the massacre. Cannot tell her that his wolf recognizes her as his mate and that every instinct he has is screaming at him to claim her and keep her and never let her go.
So instead he tells her the only thing he can.
"Because you are under my protection now. And I protect what is mine."