The archive was hidden beneath the royal arena beneath a thousand watching wolves, protected by a lock that required two blood samples and a spoken family name. Ivy Gray expected the door to reject her. It opened before Commander Lucan Frost finished the warning.
Inside were recordings, legal files, and a wall of photographs tracking her life from childhood to the previous night. Someone had planned every betrayal with patient precision. At the center of the wall, a red thread connected Ivy Gray to Commander Lucan Frost, then continued toward a sealed photograph neither of them had seen.
He reached it first. The image showed their parents standing together years before either family claimed to have met. On the back, one sentence changed the meaning of every promise between them: Ivy's Omega scent is a spell hiding the strongest royal bloodline in a century.
Footsteps filled the corridor. Commander Lucan Frost reached for his weapon, but Ivy Gray stopped him. Running had brought her here. This time she would make the person hunting them speak.
The archive door opened. The intruder removed a hood, and Ivy Gray's breath caught. The face belonged to someone whose funeral she had attended.
“You finally found the truth,” the stranger said. “Now choose which one of you gets to survive it.”