Chapter 250

Elijah

Three days.

Three fucking days since Lena had stolen the stone and escaped into the night. Three days of search parties combing the woods, guards patrolling the perimeter, and not a single fucking trace of her to be found. It was like she’d vanished into thin air.

The house was locked down tight now. I’d personally vetted every staff member, every guard. Anyone with even the slightest connection to Lena had been questioned, although none of them seemed to know anything useful. Security had been doubled, with guards stationed at every entrance and patrols circling the property day and night.

Agnes and Thea were safe, at least. That was something. Thea had been told that Lena had to leave suddenly due to a family emergency, and while she was devastated, she hadn’t asked too many questions. Agnes… well, Agnes was another matter entirely.

But right now, I couldn’t focus on that. Because James was dead.

I stared down at his body laid out on the cold metal table in the morgue. My Beta. My friend. The man who had stood by my side for over a decade, who had been my right hand in everything.

Gone.

“Are you certain there were no signs of foul play?” I asked the coroner for what must have been the tenth time. “No marks, no evidence of a struggle?”

The coroner sighed, clearly tired of my questions. “As I’ve told you, Alpha Elijah, the autopsy was conclusive. He suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage—a burst blood vessel in his brain. It’s rare in someone his age and with his overall health, but not unheard of. Sometimes these things just… happen.”

I clenched my jaw. “He was perfectly healthy,” I insisted. “He passed his physical with flying colors just last month. How does a healthy thirty-five-year-old man just drop dead from a burst blood vessel?”

The coroner shrugged, although not unsympathetically. “It was a tragic accident, Alpha. That’s all I can tell you.”

A tragic accident. Right.

I remembered the young maid’s words, the terror in her eyes as she’d told us about Lena’s threats: “She told me she had special powers that could make a person’s mind snap and their body break with a single look.”

A brain hemorrhage would certainly qualify as a mind “snapping.” And James had been alone with her, trying to keep an eye on her as I’d instructed. Had she looked at him, used whatever power she had, and caused his brain to hemorrhage?

Was Lena a witch? It was the most logical explanation.

What I did know was that James hadn’t just died of natural causes. Lena had killed him. I was sure of it. And she had the stone, which meant my stepmother-in-law was one step closer to creating her army.

“I’ll need to make arrangements for the funeral,” I said hollowly.

The coroner nodded. “Of course. We’ll release the body to you tomorrow, once the paperwork is complete.”

I took one last look at James and felt my wolf howl with pain and anger. We had been through so much together. He had stood by me when I took over as Alpha, had supported me through the tumultuous years with Olivia, had protected Thea, had become a steadfast friend for all of us. And now he was gone.

I would need a new Beta soon. An Alpha was strongest with a Beta at his side. But who could I possibly trust now? Lena’s betrayal had shaken me to my core. If I could invite a snake into my home, hand my daughter over to her care, and never suspect a thing, how could I trust my judgment enough to choose a new Beta?

James had been my best friend. My confidant. My ally in all things. How was I supposed to just… replace him?

The drive home from the morgue was a blur. My mind kept cycling through the same thoughts: James was dead. Lena had killed him. She had the stone. My stepmother-in-law was planning something catastrophic. We needed to get the stone back. I needed a new Beta. Round and round.

When I finally pulled into our driveway, the house looked quiet, but that was nothing new these days. The guards nodded solemnly to me as I passed. News of James’ death had hit the entire pack hard, but especially the security team. He had been their leader, after all.

I found Agnes in our bedroom, standing by the window with her arms wrapped around herself. She was staring out at the garden, but I could tell she wasn’t really seeing it. The sun was setting, casting a golden glow over her face, but it couldn’t hide the pallor of her skin or the dark circles under her eyes. She hadn’t been sleeping well. Neither of us had.

She didn’t turn when I entered, but I knew she sensed me. Our bond had been especially active since Lena’s betrayal, as if our wolves were desperate to maintain a strong connection with each other when everything else felt so uncertain.

I crossed the room silently and wrapped my arms around her from behind, pulling her back against my chest. She was warm—always so warm, my little fire elemental. I pressed a kiss to the side of her neck, then to her shoulder, inhaling her scent. She finally had a real one now that her wolf was back, and although I couldn’t possibly name it with a gun to my head, it was the sweetest thing I’d ever smelled.

Agnes leaned back into me with a sigh. “How was it?”

“About as expected,” I replied, resting my chin on her shoulder. “The coroner still thinks it was a brain hemorrhage. A ‘tragic accident.’”

She snorted. “Right. Because healthy men in their thirties just die of brain hemorrhages all the time.”

“Exactly what I said.”

We lapsed into silence, both lost in our own thoughts but connected through the bond. Through it, I could feel the complicated tangle of emotions she was experiencing, but above them all was the sting of Lena’s betrayal.

“It’s not your fault,” I murmured against her skin. “None of us suspected her.”

Agnes shrugged slightly. “I should have. My father warned me, and I ignored him.”

“Your father has never given you any reason to trust his word over someone who had been nothing but loyal and kind to us and our daughter for months.”

She turned in my arms to face me. “But that’s just it—she wasn’t loyal or kind. It was all an act. Every moment, every conversation, every smile… all of it was a lie.”

I cupped her face in my hands, hating to see her in such pain. Agnes didn’t give her trust easily, not after everything she’d been through during her life. She’d reluctantly let Lena in, and had eventually begun to see her as a true friend, and Lena had used that trust to infiltrate our home, threaten our staff, and ultimately steal the one thing that might prevent a catastrophe.

Through our bond, I could feel Agnes’s agony. It went beyond the betrayal itself—it was an old wound reopened, a reminder that people she cared about could hurt her.

It brought back the pain of her family casting her out, of everyone she knew leaving her desperate and alone when she needed them the most.

“All will be well,” I said softly, pressing my forehead against hers. “We’ll find her. We’ll get the stone back. And we’ll make sure your stepmother never gets what she wants.”

Agnes sighed, clearly unconvinced, but didn’t argue further. She looked exhausted, both physically and emotionally. We both needed a break, a chance to clear our heads before the drudge of funeral preparations began.

“You know what might help us both feel better?” I suggested. “A run. In wolf form. Just the two of us.”

For the first time in days, Agnes’s eyes lit up, even if only a little.