Luna POV
My father's funeral was on a Thursday.
It rained.
Of course, it rained.
I stood at the edge of the grave in my black dress with water soaking through my shoes and told myself I was not going to cry in front of strangers. I had already done my crying. Three days of it, alone in my apartment, until my eyes were raw and my throat hurt and there was nothing left.
Today I was going to hold it together.
I was doing fine. I was absolutely fine.
Then they lowered the casket, and my whole chest cracked open again like it was brand new.
The funeral was small. That surprised me.
My father was a warm man. A social man. He knew everyone, and everyone liked him. I had expected a crowd. Instead, there were maybe forty people scattered across the wet grass, a tight, quiet group that felt less like a memorial and more like a meeting.
And they kept looking at me.
Not the soft, sorry looks people give at funerals. Not the poor girl, she lost her dad's eyes, I had been getting from my neighbors and coworkers all week. These were different. Assessing. Careful. Like people trying to figure out what something is worth before they decide what to do with it.
An older man with silver hair and cold gray eyes stared at me from across the grave for so long that I finally stared back. He did not look away. He just tilted his head slightly, like I was a puzzle he was close to solving. It made my skin crawl.
I leaned slightly toward Eli Caden's younger brother, who had appeared at my door that morning with coffee and a quiet I'll drive you that I did not have the energy to refuse. He was easier than Caden. Warmer. The kind of person who fills silence with something soft instead of something heavy.
"Who is that man?" I whispered. "The one with the gray eyes."
Eli glanced up. His easy expression did not change, but something flickered behind his eyes. "Alpha Dorian. Old family friend."
"He keeps staring at me."
"People are just paying their respects," Eli said. His voice was smooth. Too smooth.
He was lying.
I did not know how I knew that. I just did.
I caught the first whisper during the prayer.
Two women stood just behind my left shoulder. They thought I could not hear them. They were wrong.
"silver line, the last one."
"Does she even know?"
"Marcus kept it hidden for years."
I turned around. They both went immediately silent, faces arranged into sad funeral expressions so fast it would have been almost impressive if it did not make me feel sick.
"Sorry," one of them murmured. "So sorry for your loss."
I turned back to the grave.
Silver line. The girl doesn't know.
Know what?
I ran the words around in my head for the rest of the service, turning them over and over, trying to find an edge I could pull. They felt important. They felt like the corner of something very large that had been hidden under a very heavy rug.
My father had secrets.
The thought landed hard and strange. My dad was the most open person I knew. He told bad jokes. He called every Thursday. He drew little wolves on birthday cards.
But someone had killed him. And strangers were whispering things about me over his grave.
Who was my father, really?
Caden stayed close the whole service.
Not next to me, never right next to me, never close enough to touch. He stood about two feet back and to my right like a shadow that had decided to be slightly more solid than usual. I could feel him there without looking. That sounds strange. It was strange. Like standing near a fireplace, you do not have to look at the fire to know it is there. You just feel the heat.
I did not look at him if I could help it.
I was grieving. I was confused. I was running on almost no sleep, bad coffee, and three days of crying. The absolute last thing I needed was whatever my stupid heart did every time I looked at Caden Wolfe.
I looked at him anyway.
He was staring at the casket. His jaw was tight. His eyes were dry, but the grief on his face was real. I could see it in the set of his shoulders, the way he was absolutely still in a way that felt like control, not calm. He had loved my father. That was real. Whatever else Caden was or was not, that part was real.
As if he felt me watching, he turned his head.
Our eyes met.
I looked away first. I always looked away first.
When the service ended and the casket was fully lowered, I walked to the edge of the grave alone. Everyone else had drifted back toward the cars. The rain had softened to a mist. I looked down at the wet dirt and thought about Sunday pancakes and Thursday phone calls and wolf drawings on birthday cards, and I let myself feel all of it for thirty seconds.
Then I felt a hand on my shoulder.
Warm. Heavy. Steady.
Heat moved through me so fast and so completely that I actually forgot to breathe for a moment. From just a hand on my shoulder through a layer of fabric. That was all it took. That was how pathetic I was.
I stepped away quickly, moving forward on the pretense of tossing the small white flower I was holding down onto the casket.
"Sorry." Caden's voice was low behind me. "I should not have"
"It's fine," I said. Fast. Too fast. "You're fine. I'm fine."
A pause.
"Luna."
"I said I'm fine, Caden."
Another pause. Longer.
"Okay," he said quietly.
I heard him step back. I kept my eyes on the grave until I was sure my face was under control again, and I told myself the heat I still felt on my shoulder was just from the cold making me oversensitive.
I was a terrible liar. Even to myself.
People filtered out slowly. Eli found me near the path and walked me toward the car without asking questions, which I appreciated more than I could say. Caden moved ahead of us, talking quietly with a few of the older men, including gray-eyed Alpha Dorian, who shook Caden's hand and then looked past him, straight at me one more time before he left.
I was so tired of being looked at like a secret.
I was almost to the car when someone called my name.
"Miss Reyes."
I turned. A small man in a damp gray suit was walking quickly toward me across the wet grass. He had a briefcase under one arm and an apologetic look on his face, like a man about to deliver bad news who really wished someone else had been assigned the job.
"I'm Gerald Park," he said. "I handled your father's estate. We spoke briefly on Monday."
"I remember," I said. "The will reading is tomorrow morning."
"Yes." He paused. He glanced around with a quick, careful look and then back at me. "There is still a reading tomorrow, yes. But I needed to speak with you today. Privately. Before tomorrow."
I felt Eli stop walking behind me.
"Why?" I asked.
Gerald Park opened his briefcase and took out a sealed envelope. The paper was old, slightly yellowed at the edges, like it had been sitting somewhere for years. My name was written on the front in my father's handwriting.
My throat closed.
"Your father came to me eight years ago," Gerald said quietly. "He gave me this and told me to keep it separate from his official will. He said I would know when to give it to you." He paused. "When I heard how he died, the circumstances I knew."
The circumstances.
"There are two wills," I said slowly.
"Yes." Gerald held the envelope out toward me. "The official one, which we will read tomorrow, handles his property and finances in the expected way." He hesitated. "This one is different. This one is about you, Miss Reyes. About who you are. About what your father never told you."
The envelope was light in my hands. My father's handwriting is on the front. My name in his careful, familiar letters.
Luna. My girl. My secret keeper.
"He said one more thing," Gerald added. He looked almost nervous. "He said that if you were reading this, then you were in danger. And that the one person you could trust his exact words is the one person you would least want to rely on."
I looked up.
Across the wet grass, twenty feet away, Caden Wolfe stood watching me.
He had not moved toward the car. He had not looked away. His eyes were on my face with an intensity that made the air feel thin, and for the first time since the hospital hallway, his expression was not careful or closed.
It was afraid.
Caden Wolfe, the most powerful, untouchable man I had ever known, was looking at me like he was terrified of what I was about to find out.
My fingers tightened around the envelope.
My father had secrets.
And one of them was me.
Luna tears the envelope open alone in the car. Inside is a single handwritten letter and a photograph. The letter's first line reads: "By the time you read this, they already know what you are. And so does Caden. I made him promise to protect you, but I never told him the whole truth either. Luna, my love, you are not like other wolves. You never were. And the people who killed me will come for you next." Luna flips to the photograph. It is her father, young, maybe thirty, standing beside a woman Luna has never seen before. A woman with silver eyes and white hair. A woman who looks exactly like Luna.