_Rowena’s POV_

Kasper knocked on my office door at nine in the mornin.

“There’s a hunting ground two hours north,” he said, without preamble. “Private land. The family has access. Spring season opens this week.”

I looked up from the account records. “Good morning to you too, Kasper.”

“Good morning. There’s a hunting ground.....”

“I heard you.”

“You’ve been in this office for three days straight,” he said. “Celeste’s lawyers have the account work.

You’re reviewing things they’ve already reviewed.”

“I’m cross-referencing.....”

“You’re not sleeping properly and you’re finding reasons not to stop.” He crossed his arms. “Your grandfather asked me to mention the hunting ground.”

I looked at him. “He asked you to come up here and bother me.”

“He asked me to mention it. The bothering is my own contribution.” He tilted his head slightly. “Bring the sisters-in-law. Make a day of it. The accounts will still be wrong when you get back.”

I opened my mouth to say no.

Kyra shifted. Gently, the way she did when she thought I was about to make a decision she disagreed with and was choosing diplomacy over insistence.

“You need air,” she said. “Actual air. Not the air from that window.”

I closed my mouth instantly.

“Two hours north?” I asked.

Kasper’s expression didn’t change but something behind it settled. “Road’s clear. Weather’s good. I’ll drive.”

Miriam packed a bag in seven minutes, which told me she had been hoping for exactly this. Victoria appeared at the car before I did, already.

Lena came last, unhurried, with a jacket and a thermos.

We drove north through the city’s outskirts, the density of buildings thinning, the green increasing, the quality of light changing as the trees closed in on either side of the road.

I sat in the front beside Kasper and watched it happen and felt something in my chest ease in increments.

The hunting ground was everything Kasper had described and nothing I had expected, wide open land with a pine forest running along the east edge, a stream cutting through the lower field.

We walked the lower trail first, the four of us moving at an easy pace while Kasper ranged ahead and did whatever Kasper did when he was nominally off-duty, which appeared to involve assessing every terrain feature for defensive utility.

“Alpha Alaric was at the eastern summit last month,” Victoria said, somewhere around the first bend of the trail.

“Was he,” I said.

“Handled the whole Greywood boundary dispute in a single afternoon.” She paused. “Pierre was there too, apparently. He said Alaric resolved something in twenty minutes that had been running for six months.”

Miriam made a sound of agreement. “He’s effective. You can say that about him.”

“Effective is an understatement,” Vicky said. “He’s — I mean. He’s also very.....” She stopped, apparently deciding to just say it. “He’s extremely fine, Ro. Objectively. I don’t know how that man walks into rooms full of Alphas and every single one of them just, accepts it. It’s the composure. And the height doesn’t hurt.”

Lena said, from three steps behind us: “He’s not hard to look at.”

Which from Lena was basically a declaration.

Miriam laughed. “Every woman at the summit apparently had the same reaction. And he just, didn’t notice. Or didn’t engage, at least.”

“He never does,” Vickey added. “That’s the thing. No one’s ever seen him show genuine interest in anyone. Not in years.” She tilted her head slightly. “Do you think he just doesn’t want anyone? Or is it that no one’s quite......”

“I think we should look at the stream,” I said.

Vickey looked at me sideways.

“The stream,” I said again, pleasantly.

She let it go. But the small smile she exchanged with Miriam behind my back was not as subtle as she believed it to be.

I walked ahead a few steps and let the conversation drift behind me, and looked at the tree line instead and breathed through whatever was happening in my chest that I was choosing not to examine.

Kyra said nothing. Which was almost more irritating than if she’d said something.

We reached the high point of the trail around midday, where the trees opened up and you could see the full length of the valley below. Kasper had set up a simple camp, blanket, food from the cooler he’d carried up without complaint, and the thermos Lena had brought now supplemented by two others he’d apparently packed himself.

We sat and ate and talked about small things, and for a while I let myself just be in it.

Then I looked out at the valley and thought about my father.

It came the way it always did, a slow pressure behind the sternum, the particular loss that never fully resolved itself, only became more familiar over time. He had loved land like this. He had taken us north every spring when I was small, all of us, he and my mother and my brothers, and he had walked trails like this one and pointed out the things worth noticing.

And then one morning they had all been in a car on a mountain road and the car had come off the road, and the official account said ice and driver error, and my mother had accepted it because she needed something to accept and that was what she was given, and I had been too consumed by grief to ask the questions I should have asked.

I was asking them now.

The car had gone off the road on a clear morning in early spring. The ice explanation had come from a single witness report. The driver, a man who had served our family for twelve years, had survived the initial impact and died in the hospital two days later before giving a formal statement.

My father had three enemies I knew of by name. Two were dead. One was not.

And Alice had been managing Ashthorne family finances for a portion of those years.

“You think she’s connected?” Kyra asked quietly.

“I think I’ve been assuming it was an accident because that was easier than the alternative,” I said. “And I think I’m done assuming.”

I pulled out my phone and sent Kasper a message: When we’re back. I need to talk to you about the accident. My father’s car. I want the original report pulled.

His response came in under a minute: Already started. Figured you’d get here eventually.

I looked at the phone for a moment and sighed.