The Alpha's study was colder than Sayori expected. Not from lack of fire — the hearth crackled — but from something in the air. Tense. Waiting.
She stepped inside, wet hem dragging, the parchment trembling faintly in her hand.
Fenris didn't speak.
He looked up from behind his desk, eyes glowing red in the dim light, black hair shadowing the sides of his face like storm clouds. The Alpha of the North. The man whose silence could shatter bones.
Sayori swallowed.
"I found this… in the East Wing," she said, voice quiet but steady.
She walked closer, each step echoing against stone, until she reached the edge of his desk. He took the parchment without touching her, unfolded it, and stared.
His brow furrowed.
A simple map. But not of the castle — of his wing. A red circle marked near the northernmost tower. Scrawled in unfamiliar script:
"Silver root. Duskfall hour."
Fenris's eyes sharpened.
"Who did this belong to?" he asked.
"Kaelen," Sayori replied. "It was hidden beneath the floorboard, beneath his cot."
His jaw tensed. A vein rose subtly at his temple.
"He caught me," she added, her voice softening. "He… smiled."
A muscle in the Alpha's cheek twitched.
"And said?"
"That I wouldn't understand what I saw. That… you wouldn't believe me anyway."
For a heartbeat, Fenris was utterly still.
Then he rose.
Not violently, but with the kind of grace that came just before a storm hit. The flicker of candlelight caught the glint in his crimson eyes. Sayori instinctively stepped back, but he didn't move toward her.
He studied the parchment again.
"This ink is alchemized," he murmured. "It disappears to magical eyes. Only a human would see it."
Sayori froze. That detail changed everything.
His voice grew lower. "You've been watching, haven't you?"
She nodded once. "You told me to."
"And you listened."
Sayori felt a tremble at the back of her knees — not from fear, exactly, but from the weight of this moment. Of being heard.
"You could have kept it," Fenris said. "Hidden it. Said nothing."
She lowered her gaze. "But I didn't."
"No," he said, after a pause. "You didn't."
He stepped closer — slow, deliberate. She didn't flinch this time. He reached out, gently, and touched her wrist where bruises still bloomed like violets from the day before.
"I should have stopped it sooner," he said.
Sayori blinked. Words caught in her throat. "It's not your fault."
"I'm the Alpha. Everything in this land is my fault."
Silence.
Then, more softly: "You've done more for me tonight than most ever have."
He let go of her wrist and returned to his desk, folding the parchment again, slipping it into the inside pocket of his coat.
"From now on," he said, "you'll stay close to Thalen. You'll tell only me what you see. And if Kaelen so much as breathes the wrong way near you—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
He didn't have to.
Sayori gave a small, almost imperceptible nod. Her voice, when it came, was barely above a whisper.
"You… you gave me a name."
He looked at her. "Sayori."
She nodded. "Why?"
"Because you were never just a number," Fenris said, "no matter how the world treated you."
A strange warmth bloomed in her chest. Not joy. Not safety. But a seed of something new. Trust, perhaps.
Maybe even belonging.
"Go," he said. "Sleep. But tomorrow, we begin something different."
Sayori bowed — unsteady, awkward, but deeply sincere — and left with quiet steps, the door closing gently behind her.
And in the firelit silence that remained, the cursed Alpha of the North stood alone, holding the memory of a fragile voice that had dared to speak when no one else would.