_Rowena’s POV_

Kasper’s knock came in around seven in the morning, I was already awake because I’d been awake since five, working through the last of Celeste’s files on my phone. The room was still dark around me except for the screen light’s reflection.

When I heard his knock I knew instinctively it wasn’t a routine check. Kasper’s knock had a particular rhythm when he was carrying something.

Call me weird for even noticing that.

“Come in,” I said softly and sat up straight.

He entered, closed the door behind him, and sat in the chair without being invited, which confirmed my suspicions.

“Theodore sent a message last night,” he began without greeting. “To Pierre, he said he wanted to turn himself in.”

I looked at him seriously, a frown creasing my brows.

I didn’t say anything immediately, I just let it sit there for a moment while I worked out what I actually thought about it, because my first reaction and my considered reaction were often two different things and I had learned from my wolf to always wait for the second one before speaking.

“When again?” I asked after a while of silence.

“Last night. Pierre brought it to Alaric straight away, they’ve already responded, Alaric sent conditions for a meeting. Theodore has until this morning to confirm.”

I looked out the window and held back a smile as memories came flooding in. The curtains were still drawn and the room was dim. The last conversations with Theodore flooded back in and I knew just why he did this.

He was a smart man.

“And has he confirmed?”

“Not yet when I left them. But Alaric thinks he will.”

I absorbed that and nodded.

I turned his name over carefully in my mind, the way I had been turning it over since the beginning of all this. It wasn’t a simple name just like he wasn’t a simple man. I had watched him closely in that facility, more closely than he probably realized, because Virella demanded attention in every room she entered and Theodore used that, letting her pull focus while he operated in the shadows…

He had stopped her from hitting me more than once at that time, I couldn’t tell why he did that, but I knew for a fact it wasn’t because he pitied me.

He had told her to leave the fire and get out instead of standing there watching it spread. That was also something I read a simple meaning to.

Nevertheless, he had built the facility, it was his money, his shell company, and his name three layers deep in the funding. He had let me be taken there and kept there and he had known exactly what was happening to me in that gym. Those men who did that to me were his men, he had not stopped them at that time.

Both of those things were true simultaneously. That was what made him complicated.

“Does Alaric think it’s genuine?” I asked.

Kasper considered how to answer that. “He’s being careful,” he said. “But he’s moving forward with it.” He sighed heavily. “Which means he thinks there’s enough of a chance to take it seriously.”

That was Kasper’s way of saying yes without saying yes. I appreciated the precision of it.

I shifted against the pillows carefully, minding my ribs. “I want to be in the room when he comes in.”

Kasper didn’t hesitate and replied. “Alaric already said you would be.”

I smiled thinly, Alaric always considered me. He never tries to overshadow me simply because of my condition or his love for me.

And I had not been expecting him to just agree. I had already started preparing a short argument for why it made sense to let me be present,or why I had more direct knowledge of Theodore’s behavior than anyone else in the group. I had it ready but turns out I didn’t need it.

“He said that already?” I asked, feigning surprise.

“Before I even came up here,” Kasper replied with a thin smile, his face already told me he wasn’t surprised by Alaric’s words

I said nothing to that and just relaxed. Since I’d be there, I had to reserve my energy for whatever was going to happen.

After Kasper left I lay there and went back through every interaction I’d had with Theodore in that facility. I did it methodically, starting from the beginning, moving forward, and looking for the things I might have filed away without fully examining at the time.

The first time Virella hit me and Theodore caught her wrist, the look on his face hadn’t been protective exactly. It was more like someone managing a situation they had already decided they didn’t entirely want to be in.

The way he sometimes looked at me when Virella was talking. It was not with guilt, but with something adjacent to it.

“Theodore Ashford.” I said out loud, letting the name echo in the room for a few minutes.

The day Virella set that fire, Theo hadn’t argued with her about leaving me there, but he had moved fast instead. Much faster than necessary if he genuinely didn’t care what happened to me.

None of it made him innocent, but all of it made it clear that he wasn’t a wicked soul like Virella.

And I knew exactly why he was in a rush to leave. It was because if they left early, Alaric would find me early. The man was strategic and smart, he wanted me found.

But why?

Can’t be because he wanted to turn himself in. That was too good to believe.

And then there was what Virella had said to me in that room, during one of her longer visits when she wanted an audience for her own cleverness. Theodore is hard to control, Kaelen is easier. She had said it like it was a minor frustration, a hard problem she was working around.

She had said it like Theodore was already becoming an inconvenience, which in a way he was.

If there were cracks between them, which there were because I had seen them myself, then something had definitely widened those cracks enough that he had picked up his phone and sent that message to his estranged brother.

Something had definitely happened between him and Virella, I couldn’t wait to find out what.

Things were getting more interesting.