Garrick’s POV
I spent the better part of the morning thinking about the sight of that dead guard, wishing I could scrub the entire day clean with it.
How close everything had come to falling apart right inside my own home!
I was leaning against the edge of my desk, rubbing my thumb against the bridge of my nose, when the doors banged open.
Ronan practically flew into the room, his face flushed and his arms moving wildly, and he slammed the doors behind him with enough force to rattle the glass in the windows.
“THIS IS INSANE!” Ronan barked, marching straight up to my desk without bothering to greet me or wait for me to look at him.
A dead guard in her room!
Do you have any idea what this looks like?”
I let out a slow breath and pushed off the desk, walking around to sit in my chair.
“Good morning to you too, Ronan.”
Ronan threw his hands into the air, pacing back and forth in front of my desk like a caged beast.
“I turn my back for a few hours to deal with a collapsed wall, and I come back to find out that a guard was ripped to shreds in the guest wing. By a beast that was supposed to be locked away! What happened out there? Did Lady Cynthia do this? Did the girl do this? Did you?”
“How are you more worked up about this than I am? Sit down, Ronan,” I said calmly, opening a leather ledger on my desk to make it look like I was busy.
Ronan stopped and slammed both palms onto the wood, leaning across the desk until we were nose-to-nose.
“I need answers, Garrick. I just passed Lady Cynthia and she looked angry. What in the hell is going on?”
“Cynthia showed up unannounced,” I replied, keeping my voice steady and slow.
“She had a disagreement with Selah. I am guessing that the guard tried to step in, things got out of hand, and the beast broke loose from the lower keep and attacked him.”
“Got out of hand?” Ronan stared at me, his eyes wide with disbelief.
“A man’s throat was torn out, Garrick. That is a disaster! Why was the beast even near her room? How did it get out? Did she summon it?”
“Nobody summoned anything,” I muttered, turning a page in the ledger without reading a single word on it.
“The locks on the lower keep were old. It escaped.”
Ronan shook his head.
“I don’t believe that. We changed those locks only months ago. You’re lying to me, or you’re lying to yourself.”
“I am telling you what happened,” I said, looking up to meet his eyes.
“Have you cleared the area?”
“Yes. The situation is under control for now. I’ve gotten some guards to move the body, the floor has been cleaned too.”
“Good.” I kept my eyes on the ledger, feeling Ronan staring at me.
“The situation is under control… For now.” Ronan repeated, tapping his finger against the desk.
“Lady Cynthia is going back to her father, I’m sure. Do you know what her father is going to do when she tells him you pushed her aside for a silent girl you bought from the market? He’s going to call the Luphiran Council.”
I didn’t say anything to that.
“The Council will say she’s a curse. They’ll say she’s using black magic to turn your own beasts against your guards! And it doesn’t matter what the Oracle did or didn’t do. If the Luphiran Council finds out that a guard is dead because of the Oracle, just three days after her arrival, they are going to do nothing short of lynch her. You cannot protect her forever.”
“What?” Ronan stopped cold.
“Her name is Selah,” I repeated, my voice dropping a dangerous octave lower.
“Stop calling her ‘the Oracle’ like she’s a monster or some object. She isn’t some witch to be feared. She’s just a person.”
I watched as the frantic energy drained out of Ronan all at once and replaced by a deep, weary concern.
He pulled out the wooden chair across from my desk, dragged it back, and sat down with a long sigh, rubbing his face with both hands and letting out a breath that sounded like a tire losing air.
“Alright, then,” Ronan said quietly, dropping his hands to his lap.
“Selah. Her name is Selah. But that doesn’t change the mess we’re in, Garrick.”
The silence in the office grew deeper.
Ronan leaned back in his chair, and I felt him watching me closely again.
It made me feel naked, exposed.
“So,” Ronan asked softly, “what are you going to do now?”
I didn’t answer right away.
I leaned back into my chair and looked out the window behind him.
The sky was clear, but everything inside me felt cloudy and thick.
None of Ronan’s warnings about the council or Cynthia’s father were actually what was keeping my head in a vise.
I could deal with both Cynthia and her idiot of a father.
My mind kept looping back to two specific moments from yesterday, running them over and over like a stone caught in a wheel.
First was the image of Cynthia standing over Selah, her nails digging into Selah’s arm, leaving raw red marks on her skin.
I had sworn to protect her.
I had told her, looked her right in the eyes and promised her that she was safe inside my walls.
Yet within twenty-four hours, she had been cornered in her own bedroom, terrified and bleeding, while my own guards stood by and did nothing until a wild beast intervened.
I had failed her before we had even properly started.
And the second one was the touch.
When my wolf had taken over at the wall, when the blood-lust had filled my eyes and turned everything red, I had been completely lost to the beast inside me, just like I had been for years whenever the rage took hold.
And then she had touched my chest.
She hadn’t used magic or drawn a weapon.
She had just placed her warm hand over my racing heart, and the wolf had instantly quieted down.
Nothing had worked for me like that in years.
Not training, willpower or medicine.
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“Garrick?” Ronan’s voice broke through my thoughts.
“You’re slipping away again.”
I brought my focus back to him, resting my elbows on the desk and lacing my fingers together.
“This can’t happen again, Ronan.”
“Which part?” Ronan asked.
He wasn’t teasing me anymore, he could see the state I was in.
“Lady Cynthia? Or the guard?”
“All of it,” I said flatly.
“Not the attack and not the loss of control either.”
Ronan gave me a sympathetic look.
“You can’t control Lady Cynthia, Garrick. She’s hurt, and she’s proud. And as for your wolf…” He paused, choosing his words with unusual care.
“You know you’ve been carrying that around since what happened with your brother. And you know as well as I do that the Beast has been getting harder to chain up every single month.”
“It was different yesterday,” I said roughly, looking down at my hands.
“And since Selah arrived… my grip on the wolf has been different. It’s getting better when she’s near, but at the same time, it’s wilder when she’s threatened.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face, feeling the rough stubble on my jaw.
I hated feeling out of control.
I was the Alpha, the person who was supposed to be the wall that stood between my people and chaos, yet right now, I felt like I was standing on thin ice over a freezing river.
“Whatever is happening between us,” I admitted, “it isn’t something I can keep managing on instinct alone. Every time I act on impulse, it doesn’t end well.”
“Then stop acting on impulse,” Ronan advised gently.
“You brought her here to keep her safe from the Shadowwalkers and the rest of them, right? So if you treat her like a secret or hide her away in dark corridors, people are going to assume the worst. They are going to think she’s a threat because you’re acting like she’s a threat.”
“I moved her to my quarters this morning,” I told him.
Ronan raised an eyebrow, but there was no mockery in his eyes this time.
“That’s fair, I guess. You can keep her close where you can watch her yourself. But no more guards following her around, please.”
“Well, that might fix the safety problem,” I said, staring at the stain on the rug.
“It might also fix the rest.”
“Your wolf?” Ronan asked, and I nodded slowly.
Ronan stood up from his chair, pulling his shirt straight.
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“The only thing that’s worked so far.” I replied.