Chapter 7

Eve's POV

Nobody offered to help me with my bags.

I carried both bags down the stairs myself and out through the side door, and the gravel crunched under my shoes, and the car Ella had arranged was already waiting at the bottom of the drive, the driver standing beside it with his hands folded and his eyes forward, the way she always instructed them to.

I sat in the back with my bags at my feet and watched the silver gate of Silverleaf Manor shrink in the rear window until the hedge line swallowed it completely.

Liar.

I kept turning that over in my head the whole ride back.

Not because it hurt. Because I genuinely didn't know what he meant by it.

Liar about what, exactly.

About Renault?

About why I was leaving?

About the whole thing?

I pressed my forehead against the cold car window and watched the road.

I told myself I was overthinking it.

Victor was back to take over as Silverleaf's Alpha.

That meant the pack, the politics, the upcoming Alpha King election, and a hundred other things that had nothing to do with me.

I was one small inconvenient piece of a much larger situation and now I was removing myself from his immediate vicinity, which was what he wanted, so there was no reason for him to keep pulling at this particular thread.

I told myself that.

I told myself that twice.

It didn't quite take.

I'd had a good instinct for trouble since I was small, the kind that didn't announce itself with logic, just sat in the base of your sternum and waited to be proven right.

And something about Victor, about the particular way he'd looked at me before I'd turned away, had woken that instinct up.

I didn't know what he wanted.

I didn't have an answer.

I kept not having one all the way to the Obsidian gate.

I'll think about it later, I decided.

Renault wasn't home, but Aldric was waiting in the entrance hall.

Aldric had been the estate's head steward for as long, a tall, thin wolf with silver-streaked hair and the particular brand of courtesy that managed to feel like an insult every single time.

I'd crossed paths with him enough over the past year to know exactly where I stood in his estimation, which was somewhere between inconvenient and invisible.

He looked at my bags. Then at me.

"The Alpha informed us of the arrangement," he said, which was the most neutral way he could have possibly said it.

"Great," I said.

He turned and said something to a woman nearby, too quiet for me to catch, and then he was already walking away, back straight, not another word.

The woman came forward.

She was round-faced and warm-looking, with laugh lines that suggested she used them often. I didn't recognize her.

"I'm Pearl,I'll take you up."

She said, and she reached for the heavier bag before I could protest.

"You'll be in the Alpha's room, same as before. But there's something else he asked us to set up."

She glanced back at me.

"A music room. West wing, end of the corridor. He had the old sitting room cleared out and a piano brought in earlier this week. Said you'd know what to do with it."

I didn't say anything for a moment.

"He also asked me to make sure you had everything you needed to settle in."

Pearl added, and her voice dropped just slightly, easy and unhurried, the tone of someone who understood what it cost to walk into a place where you didn't quite belong.

"This house can feel like a lot at first," she said. "It did for me too, when I started. You get used to it, mostly."

She paused on the landing, one hand on the banister.

"I'm usually in the east wing mornings, and the kitchen corridor after lunch. If you ever need anything, I'm happy to help."

I looked at the back of her head as we climbed the stairs.

She wasn't performing warmth. She was just offering it, plainly, the way you offer someone an umbrella when it's raining, no ceremony about it.

"Okay," I said.

My voice came out quieter than I intended.

"Thank you, Pearl."

"Of course," she said, like it was nothing, like it was just the obvious thing to do.

It was at the end of the west wing corridor, a solid door with a brass handle, the kind that felt like it had some history to it.

Pearl pushed it open and stepped back to let me look.

A upright piano against the far wall, dark wood, recently polished.

A deep armchair in the corner, the kind that looked like it had been chosen for actual comfort rather than appearance, upholstered in dark green velvet with a reading lamp angled over it just right.

The floor was wide-plank hardwood, dark and warm, with a thick wool rug laid out in front of the piano.

Someone had put fresh flowers on the windowsill, white ones, simple, and the late afternoon light was coming through the glass at exactly the angle that made the whole room look like it was glowing from the inside.

It was quiet in a way the rest of the house wasn't.

I stood in the doorway for a moment and just looked at it.

I hadn't expected this.

That was the honest answer.

I'd expected a cleared-out room with something functional in it, a keyboard maybe, or nothing at all, just the gesture of the idea without the follow-through.

Not this.

Not the lamp at exactly the right angle and the flowers on the sill and the good chair.

I didn't know which one was more unsettling.

Renault being thoughtful out of nowhere had a way of throwing me off balance more than his cold days did.

At least the cold I knew how to navigate.