Chapter 230

Iris

The apartment is pitch black, save for the thin strips of light coming in from beneath the curtains where the city lights can’t be fully blocked out. I can barely make out Arthur’s silhouette beside me as we crouch in the shadows of our closet, waiting.

When Miles told us about his dream—that Leonard was “in the walls” and coming to kill us—we didn’t waste time questioning it. We’ve learned to trust his visions. Instead, we immediately began searching the apartment for listening devices or cameras.

It didn’t take long to find them. There were bugs in our phones, in Miles’ toys, and most disturbing of all, the nanny cams we’d installed to keep an eye on Miles had been hacked. Someone—Leonard, presumably—had been watching and listening to everything for months.

The realization made my skin crawl. How many private moments had he witnessed? How many conversations had he listened in on? How many times had he watched us sleep?

We didn’t remove the devices, though. That would have tipped him off. Instead, we played along. We put Miles back to bed, making a show of comforting him after his “nightmare.” Then we returned to our bedroom and had a fake conversation about staying in Ordan after all.

We even threw in a few jabs about Silas for good measure, making it seem like we were going to fight to reclaim Arthur’s position.

Then we got ready for bed as usual. Brushed our teeth. Changed into our pajamas. Turned out the lights. All the while knowing that Leonard was watching, listening, waiting for our guard to drop so he could enter our home.

As soon as the lights were out and the apartment was dark, Arthur disabled the night vision feature on the nanny cams via the app on his phone. In the pitch blackness, we quietly slipped out of bed and arranged pillows and bundles of clothes to look like our sleeping forms.

Then we mind linked Emi and Ezra, giving them the signal to contact the police and have the building surrounded. The police are waiting now, ready to burst in at a moment’s notice. Leonard just needs to incriminate himself first.

And now we wait. Crouched in our closet, hidden from view. Emi is in the bathroom, hiding behind the door.

The minutes tick by slowly, and nothing happens. For a time, I think Miles might have been mistaken.

Then, finally, we hear the faint sound of a key turning in a lock. The soft creak of the front door opening. Footsteps, so light they’re barely audible, moving through our apartment.

Leonard is here.

Just as Miles said he would be. Just as we’ve been waiting for.

The footsteps pause—he’s checking on Miles first, I realize with a surge of anger, but Ezra is posted in Miles’ closet so I know he’ll be safe—then continue toward our bedroom. The door opens slowly, silently. I hold my breath as a shadow crosses the threshold.

Leonard moves like a predator. He approaches the bed where he thinks we’re sleeping, something glinting in his hand. A gun, I realize with a chill. He’s going to shoot us in our sleep.

Arthur tenses beside me, ready to move. We wait until Leonard is standing over the bed, his weapon raised, before Arthur flips the switch on the remote in his hand.

Instantly, the bedroom is flooded with light. Leonard freezes, momentarily blinded, as Arthur and I emerge from our hiding place.

“Drop it,” Arthur growls, his own gun—a shotgun he purchased years ago specifically for home protection—aimed directly at Leonard’s chest.

Leonard recovers quickly, his shock giving way to rage as he realizes he’s been caught. But before he can react, the bedroom door bursts open again, and Emi rushes in. With all the ease of a well-trained security officer, she disarms Leonard and has him pinned to the ground before he can even think to resist.

“Alpha President,” she says, “the police are on their way up.”

“Good,” Arthur replies, lowering his gun slightly but not putting it away. “Search him.”

Emi begins patting Leonard down, pulling various items from his pockets—a knife, a phone, a set of keys that must include the copy he made of our apartment key.

And then she finds something that makes my blood run cold. A small glass vial filled with a greenish liquid.

“What is that?” Arthur demands.

Leonard smirks up at us from the floor, not bothering to struggle against Emi’s iron grip. “Why don’t you ask your mate? She should recognize it.”

“It’s kiwi juice,” I choke out. “The same thing he tried to kill me with at the party.”

It all makes sense now. That night, when I went into anaphylactic shock, wasn’t an accident after all. Leonard had deliberately tried to kill me. He’d played innocent, and we had believed him like fools, but it had been him all along.

“That’s right,” Leonard sneers. “A bullet for my son tonight, but for you, I wanted something… slower. More painful. I wanted to watch you die, choking and gasping, your face turning red, your eyes bulging. I wanted to be the last thing you saw as you died.”

Arthur lunges forward with a guttural snarl, but Ezra, who has just entered the room, holds him back. “Don’t,” Ezra says firmly. “He’s not worth it.”

“Why?” I ask Leonard, trying to understand the depth of his hatred. “What did I ever do to you?”

Leonard’s eyes turn into slits. “You exist,” he spits. “You, with your worthless existence. At first, I thought you were a mere human, a bug to squash beneath my shoe, only to find that you are even worse than human: wolfless. You’re nothing but a burden, a weakness my son has to carry. I would have gladly watched you choke out, would have looked you in the eyes and enjoyed seeing your face turn red and your eyes pop. I hate you more than anything, you useless, pathetic wolfless bitch.”

His words should hurt, I suppose, but instead they just make me sad. Sad for the emptiness that must exist inside of him to foster such hatred. Sad for Arthur, who had to grow up with this man as a father. Sad for Miles, who will now have to know that his grandfather wanted to kill his parents.

“Hate me all you want,” I say, “but you failed. Again. And now you’re going to spend the rest of your life in prison.”

As if on cue, there’s a commotion from the hallway, and several police officers burst into the room with their guns drawn.

“Alpha President,” one of them addresses Arthur, possibly not knowing yet about the Alpha Swap. “Are you alright?”

“We’re fine,” Arthur nods. “But this man just confessed to attempted murder and was planning to kidnap our son.”

The officers move in, taking Leonard from Emi and handcuffing him properly. As they read him his rights, he stares at me with hatred, but I don’t look away. I’m not afraid of him anymore. His power over us is gone.

Once Leonard is escorted out of the apartment, the officers begin taking our statements. It’s a long, tedious process, made worse by the late hour and the emotional toll of the night. I find myself repeating the same details over and over—yes, Leonard had a key, likely one that he copied during his last visit; yes, he admitted to trying to poison me months ago; yes, he was planning to kill us and take Miles.

After a long and arduous process that runs all through the night, the officers finally finish with their questions and begin to pack up. They take the listening devices as evidence, along with Leonard’s weapons and the vial of kiwi juice.

They assure us that Leonard will be held without bail pending his arraignment, and that they’ll increase patrols around our building for the next few days.

But as the last of the officers file out, another commotion catches our attention. We step into the hallway to see that an officer has just detained someone else: a woman.

And upon closer inspection, I see now that it’s Wendy.