POV: Silas

My mother had left me a key to a room everyone claimed never existed.

I watched a federal technician remove it from the metal case with gloved hands.

The brass key had softened edges. Gray wool tied through its bow matched the blanket in my photograph.

Beside the key lay four objects: a cassette tape, an envelope of negatives, a packet sealed with black wax, and a photograph of my mother holding me beside a motorcycle engine.

The memory I had called a dream became a room.

Celene Blackwood sat on a mechanic’s stool with me against her chest. Her hair was braided, grease marked her wrist, and an old Indian Chief stood behind her.

On the back she had written:

SILAS LIKES THE ENGINE BETTER THAN LULLABIES. HE IS HIS MOTHER’S SON.

I read it twice.

Then I gave it back to the technician before my hands damaged it.

Evelyn remained on the other side of the evidence table. She did not reach for me in front of the team. She waited until I looked at her, then turned her palm upward.

I took it.

The forensic lead opened the wax packet. Inside were copies of purchase orders, blood-matching charts, and twelve handwritten names. Nine matched women already found in North County records. Three did not.

One was marked pregnant.

One was marked transferred.

One had a line drawn through her surname and the word RUN beside it.

My mother had been investigating Sabine before Red Cedar existed under that name.

“The ink needs dating,” Owen said through the video link. “But the vendor forms use a logo retired thirty-four years ago.”

Helena stood near the doorway under Briar’s supervision. “Celene filed a complaint with the Winter Council.”

I looked at her.

“You knew?”

“I knew a complaint existed. I was a junior clerk. It was sealed before I could read it.”

“Who sealed it?”

“Your father and Sabine petitioned jointly. They said public allegations would expose pregnant carriers to hunters.”

“And you believed them.”

“I believed powerful people were protecting women I had no authority to reach.”

“You have used that sentence in several forms.”

Helena accepted the blow without defending herself.

The cassette tape required equipment older than anything in the clinic. Ronan found a player in the facility’s locked communications cabinet. The machine ate the first inch of a blank test tape, so the technician cleaned the mechanism and replaced a cracked belt before loading my mother’s recording.

Evidence moved slowly when handled correctly.

Grief did not.

I walked to the observation window. My reflection floated over the empty restraint chairs. My mother had stood here before I could lift my head, and no strength could travel backward to help her.

Evelyn appeared beside my reflection.

“You are blaming yourself for being twelve days old,” she said.

“I am blaming every Blackwood who never asked why her grave had no permit.”

“Did you know permits existed?”

“I should have checked.”

“When? At ten? At twenty-one, when elders pushed an Alpha ring onto your hand? Nobody gave you reason to suspect it.”

“My mother questioned records.”

“Now you are questioning them. That is inheritance too.”

The words found a place anger had not occupied.

I turned toward her. “What if Sabine is right? What if I resent the answer?”

“You might.”

“That doesn’t frighten you?”

“It frightens me less than you pretending not to.”

I touched the inside of her wrist, where her pulse remained steady beneath my thumb.

“You keep offering me very inconvenient forms of love.”

“Annual review.”

“I may appeal.”

“Denied.”

Her smile was brief but real. I bent and pressed my mouth to her forehead. Desire stirred beneath grief, not as a demand but as proof my body still belonged to the living.

Every minute gave me another version of what I might hear.

An apology. A confession. Proof she had chosen the investigation over her child, or that my father had forced her to leave.

Evelyn stood beside me while the possibilities sharpened themselves.

“Tell me to play it,” I said.

“No.”

The refusal startled me.

“Why?”

“Because if I tell you, you can be angry at me instead of deciding.”

“I am already angry at everyone.”

“Efficient.”

Her thumb moved once across my knuckles.

“You can listen now,” she said. “You can have it preserved and listen privately. You can wait until Maeve is here. None of those choices makes you less brave.”

Maeve was upstairs with Octavia, who remained under medical guard. She had asked me not to start without her if the tape involved our mother.

I checked the time.

She entered the hidden level three minutes later, still wearing clinic scrubs beneath her coat. Her gaze found the photograph before it found me.