Chapter 5 What Fathers Don't Say

Rowan's POV

I caught my father at the front gate with his bag already on his shoulder.

He was leaving without saying goodbye. I had been watching from the east wing window and saw him cross the courtyard, and I ran. Not fast enough to look desperate. Fast enough to catch him before he reached the car.

"Dad."

He turned, and his face did the thing it always does when he is surprised. Open for one second. Then managed. "Rowan. I was going to call you from the road"

"I need two minutes." I pulled the photograph from my jacket and held it out.

He looked at it.

The color left his face so fast it was like watching a light switch off.

He took it from my hand slowly. Turned it over. Read the date stamp on the back. His jaw moved,d but nothing came out.

"That's Mom," I said. "Last Tuesday. In a forest I don't recognize, with a man I have never seen, in clothes she doesn't own." I kept my voice level. I had practiced this. "I need you to tell me what that is."

He looked up at me. "It's old. The date is wrong, it's a misdating, the stamp system on those cameras"

"Your hands are shaking," I said.

He stopped.

Looked at his hands. Then back at me.

My father is not a good liar. He never has been. He lies with his whole body, shoulders up, jaw tight, hands doing things they don't normally do. My mother used to say you always know when he's hiding something because he goes very still right after he moves too much.

He went very still.

"Rowan." His voice dropped. "Things are happening that are bigger than what I can explain to you right now. What I need you to do is trust me and focus on the contract"

"Where is she?"

"Home. She is home."

"I have called her fourteen times since I arrived. She has not picked up once."

"She is probably"

"Dad." I stepped closer. "Stop. Please just stop and tell me the truth."

He looked at me for a long moment. Something moved behind his eyes. Something that looked close to breaking. Then he straightened his shoulder, picked up his bag, and became the diplomat again. Smooth. Sealed. Unreachable.

"I will call you tonight," he said. "Everything is fine. Focus on the contract."

He walked to the car.

I stood at the gate and watched him leave and felt something harden in my chest. Not hurt. Past hurt. The cold, quiet thing that comes after hurt when you realize the person who was supposed to protect you chose something else instead.

He knew.

Whatever this was, whatever that photograph meant, he already knew.

I was still standing in the corridor two minutes later when I heard footsteps.

I turned the corner and walked almost directly into a wall of people.

Three of them. Two older men in dark academy coats that meant senior pack rank, walking side by side like they owned every inch of the floor. And between them, slightly ahead, moving the way he always moved, like the space already belonged to him before he entered it.

Caspian.

We were close. Closer than we had been in class or at dinner. Close enough that I could see his eyes properly for the first time without a table or a room of people between us.

Silver. Genuinely silver. Not grey. Not light blue. Silver, the way metal is silver, with depth behind it.

He saw me at the same moment I saw him.

Something crossed his face. Fast. A flicker of something unguarded that he shut down so quickly I almost missed it. Almost.

One of the senior pack members looked at me the way you look at something you found in a place it should not be. Slow. Deliberate. Dismissive in the particular way that is designed to make you feel it.

He took a step toward me.

Caspian said, "She is under estate protection. Move."

Quiet. No heat in it. The kind of voice that does not need to be loud because it has never had to be.

The man stopped. Looked at Caspian. Then looked at me one more time with an expression that promised this conversation was not over.

Then he moved.

Both of them moved.

Caspian did not look at me again. He walked past like I was part of the wall, and I stood there and watched all three of them turn the corner and disappear.

My hands were shaking.

I noticed it the same way I noticed my father's hands. From the outside. Like it was happening to someone else, and I was just observing it.

But my father's hands shook because he was afraid of the truth.

Mine were shaking for a completely different reason, and I refused to look at that reason directly because I had enough problems already, and adding Caspian Drell to the list was not something I could afford.

He said move, and they moved.

He did not make a speech. He did not explain. He said four words, and two senior pack members with thirty years on him stepped aside without argument.

And then he walked away without looking back, as if it cost him nothing.

Like I was nothing.

Which was fine. Which was exactly what I needed him to be.

I went back to my room and called my mother's number one more time.

It rang twice.

Then someone picked up.

Not my mother.

A man. The same voice from last night. Low and careful.

"Miss Calloway," he said. "I told you not to show anyone that photograph."

My whole body went cold. "How do you know I"

"Your father called someone the moment he reached his car. Which means you have approximately four hours before the people who arranged this contract know that you know something is wrong." A pause. "I need you to listen very carefully. Do not go to the Caspian. Do not go to any pack authority. And do not, under any circumstances, go to the records room on the third floor of the east academic block tonight."

I gripped the phone. "Why not?"

"Because that is where they are keeping the file that explains what your mother actually is." His voice dropped lower. "And what you actually are. And once you read it, there is no version of this where you walk away from Velthorpe quietly."

The line went dead.

I sat on the edge of my bed.

Looked at my door.

Thought about what he said.

Don't go to the records room.

He said it like a warning.

But warnings, I have learned, have two directions. They can keep you safe. Or they can keep you away from something someone else does not want you to find.

I put on my shoes.