Chapter 3 Before the Howl
Alaric POV
He had been watching her all night.
Not the way the other men in the room watched things, with hunger or calculation or boredom. Alaric watched Selene the way a soldier watches a border. Constant. Quiet. Already knowing what was coming across it.
She was in a midnight blue dress that her mother had chosen and her father had admired and neither of them had any idea was the last beautiful thing she would ever wear in this house.
Alaric's jaw tightened.
He took a slow breath and made himself look away.
The hall was exactly as he'd known it would be. Full. Loud. Distracted. Lord Matthias had done his job well, gathered half the southern nobility under one roof on the night of the full moon like an offering laid out on a table. The man had no idea he was the one being hunted.
Alaric almost felt something about that.
Almost.
He shifted his weight against the doorframe and let his gaze move through the room the way he'd been trained to. Exit points. Guard rotations. The cluster of lords near the east window who had stopped pretending to make conversation twenty minutes ago and were now simply waiting.
Everything was in place.
His eyes drifted back to Selene despite himself.
She was watching her father with that look she got. That sharp, quiet look that meant she was filing everything away and would think about it later when she was alone. She had been doing that since she was old enough to sit at a dinner table. Taking inventory of things adults thought were invisible to children.
She was going to be extraordinary one day.
The thought moved through him and settled somewhere he didn't examine.
Across the room, she looked up. Found him in the shadow of the doorway the way she always somehow did, like she had a compass that pointed at him and couldn't be turned off.
He held her gaze. Kept his face still. Gave her nothing.
She looked away first.
Good.
The toast happened. He watched the room drink to the king and catalogued the ones who hesitated. Confirmed what he already knew. The pieces were exactly where they needed to be.
He checked the window.
The forest beyond the torchlight had gone dark and quiet in the way that only happened when something large was moving through it. Something coordinated. Something that had been given a time.
His pulse didn't change.
He watched Selene stand up from the table and take her little sister's hand, the two of them slipping away from the feast toward the inner corridor. Moving away from the hall. Away from the doors.
He had not planned for that.
His eyes tracked them until they disappeared through the archway.
The forest outside went completely silent.
Every bird. Every insect. Every small breathing thing.
Alaric straightened slowly from the wall. His expression didn't change. His hands were loose at his sides. Around him the feast laughed and drank and had no idea the world was about to split open.
He counted down from ten inside his head.
He got to three.
The howl came.
