Chapter 67

Amelia

It broke just after dawn.

The footage wasn’t new. It was grainy and clipped at the beginning and end, pulled from a hallway security camera weeks ago. In it, Richard and I stood a little too close. My hand was on his arm. His head tipped down as if he were about to say something just for me. We didn’t touch beyond that. We didn’t kiss. We didn’t even speak.

But David’s team didn’t need audio. They had the angle, the lighting, the suggestion, and that was enough to ignite the story they had likely been waiting to tell for weeks.

The first headline read: Alpha King Entangled in Scandalous Hallway Encounter with Political Intern.

The rest came like floodwaters.

Seduction or Strategy?

The Rise of the Orphan Queen.

She Has No Wolf, But She Has the King.

Every major Pack-affiliated outlet picked it up. The images ran on the hour. Analysts filled panels, pointing at the way my hand touched his sleeve, the tilt of his body, the tension of silence. Social media erupted in theories, half-truths, and sexual innuendo disguised as analysis.

My name trended. His did too. People argued about whether I was cunning or clueless, manipulative or misguided. Someone layered my last speech with suggestive music, slowing down every blink and hand gesture. Another clip overdubbed fake moans, turning a still frame into a punchline.

And that was just the first two hours.

By midmorning, petitions had started to circulate. Packs who had previously remained neutral began releasing statements. Some claimed to be “evaluating their support pending clarification.” Others called for an official investigation into the role I had been playing in the House.

One particularly traditional Alpha claimed I had “deliberately positioned myself as a distraction to destabilize the campaign from within,” and used the hashtag #RemoveHer to trend.

Inside the House, everything came undone.

PR called an emergency meeting before breakfast. Nathan looked as though he hadn’t seen his bed in days. Every communications staffer was on high alert, phones buzzing and fingers flying across keyboards. Someone cried in the hallway and was ushered away. The strategy room was filled with printouts, scrawled flow charts, and whiteboards covered in half-erased talking points. The communications director drank her fourth cup of something dark and bitter while fielding calls from five outlets at once.

The atmosphere was panic disguised as productivity.

I sat at the end of the long glass table, back straight, arms crossed. Someone tossed a prep folder in front of me, and my face stared up at me from the glossy cover, paused mid-turn. I looked younger than I remembered. Less sure. Or maybe more dangerous. It depended on who was looking.

"We need a joint statement, fast."

"No, we don’t. That implies something to respond to."

"What if she goes on camera? Solo. Calm. Remorseful. But not guilty."

"Should we lean into it? Play up the connection? If we own it, it kills the story."

It was as if I weren’t in the room.

Richard stood near the far wall, arms folded, his posture unreadable. He hadn’t said a word since I entered. And despite the dozens of voices fighting to fill the space, all I could hear was the silence between us.

I waited. I waited through the spiral of their worry, their projections, their chaotic strategizing, listening as voices overlapped with frantic energy and none of it felt real. I kept my eyes on the table, but my ears were trained for a different sound entirely. I waited for him to speak, to say anything. To step forward like he said he would. To offer clarity. To do what he had promised just yesterday in the hallway when he said he would be behind me fully.

But he stayed still. Silent. I wondered if he ever meant it. Or if it had only been true in the quiet of that hallway, in the privacy of lowered voices and impossible things. I waited for him to say, this is not her fault.

But he said nothing.

So I did.

"We lean in," I said, my voice tight and low. "We keep to the same course. No apologies. No explanations. We stay the line. We keep working. Let them exhaust themselves."

The room slowed. A few people nodded. Others looked to Nathan. Nathan looked to Richard, he gave no reaction.

The meeting ended soon after. No one asked me how I was doing, not really. A few offered half-hearted nods or avoided my eyes altogether. I left the room without saying another word.

I didn’t see Richard the rest of the day.

No one told me where he was.

No one had to.

That night, after the House settled into a soft hush and most of the staff retreated to their quarters, I found myself walking. I didn’t plan to. I just moved. One hallway turned into another, one staircase led into the next. And before I knew it, I was at the northern ramparts of the House.

The guards let me through without comment. I think they saw something in my expression that warned against questions.

The wind was sharp up here, stronger than I remembered. It pulled at my sleeves and sent my hair sweeping across my face, but I didn’t fix it. I just walked the perimeter, letting my boots find familiar grooves in the weathered stone.

The House looked different from this height. Smaller. Distant. Like a place I had once believed in. The city beyond glowed faintly, amber and silver under the stars. It should have comforted me, that kind of beauty. But it didn’t.

I stopped at the parapet near the edge of the northern guard tower and leaned into the stone. It was cold beneath my hands. I stayed like that for a long time, letting the night air soak through my coat, letting the silence grow louder.

I thought about the girl I had been when I arrived. Fresh-faced. Obsessed with preparation. Hungry to serve. I remembered thinking that if I worked hard enough, studied long enough, proved myself sincerely, it would be enough. That merit could outweigh blood.

Then I remembered standing at the podium. Not just recently, but all the times before. When my voice trembled. When it didn’t. When I started to find something solid in myself and believed—maybe, just maybe—I was building something here.

And then I thought about the look on his face in that meeting.

Blank.

Still.

Distant.

I didn’t cry because of the footage. Or the hashtags. Or the mocking headlines. I didn’t cry because they turned me into a caricature, a symbol of scandal for a story I never agreed to be in.

I cried because when it cracked something open in me, when it mattered most, he watched me bleed and chose silence.

I had spoken in defense of him when it would have been safer to say nothing.

I had held my head high in the rotunda when the rumors started.

I had chosen to believe that when it was my turn to falter, he would steady me.

But I had stood alone in that room.

And now I stood alone on the walls.

The stars above blurred slightly in my vision, but I didn’t wipe my eyes.

Let the wind see me cry. It was more honest than the House had ever been.