Cassian's POV
The heavy oak doors of our private quarters clicked shut, and I immediately felt the mask of the calm Alpha slipping from my face.
I didn't even wait for Caleb to take off his cloak before I rounded on him. Just as he entered, the air in our living area became thick with the scent of jasmine and ozone he had brought back from the greenhouse. It was the scent of our mate, mixed with the electric charge of his lies.
"She knows, Caleb," I hissed, my voice low and dangerous. "She asked you your name. I felt the spike of her heart through the bond all the way from here. You hesitated."
Caleb threw his cloak onto the leather sofa and ran a hand through his hair, looking frustrated. He didn't look at me. He walked over to the window that looked out over the dark valley of Silverfang.
"I had to tell her something, Cassian. She was looking at me like she could see right through my skin. I couldn't just stand there like a statue."
"You told her you were Caleb," I said, stepping into his space. "But last night, I was the one who held her. I was the one who promised her we would protect her. Now she thinks we are a single person who changes personalities like the weather. Or worse, she thinks we are playing a game with her heart."
"We are playing a game, brother," Caleb snapped, finally turning to face me. His golden eyes were bright with a mixture of guilt and obsession.
"We are playing a game with our father, with the council, and with those damn cameras in the walls. If we both visit her, the sensors will pick up two different Alpha signatures in her room. If we switch, the system sees one consistent presence. It's the only way to keep the data from flagging her as a high-value target."
I walked over to the small bar and poured a glass of amber liquid, but I didn't drink it. My hands were shaking. I was addicted to her. I was addicted to the way her skin felt under my fingers and the way she looked at me when she thought I was her only hope. But this deception was starting to feel like a poison.
"I hate it," I admitted, my voice dropping to a whisper. "I hate watching Kevin shove her in the mud while I stand there like a ghost. I hate that you give her gifts while I have to be the one to stay away so the sensors don't get suspicious. We are dividing our souls, Caleb, and she is the one getting caught in the middle."
Caleb walked over and placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. We were identical in almost every way, but in this light, he looked older, more burdened by the weight of our father's expectations.
"We have no choice," Caleb said firmly. "Father is already talking about the Purity Act. He is looking for any reason to get rid of the Omegas who aren't shifting. If the sensors show that a Wolfless Omega like Helen is biologically bounded to us, the future Alphas of this pack, they won't just exile her. They will dissect her to see how a Null could capture our wolves."
I closed my eyes, the image of Helen on a cold metal table flashing through my mind. The laboratory was always there, hiding behind the trees and the stones of our home. We weren't just a pack; we were a project. And the project didn't allow for anomalies like Helen.
"So we keep doing it?" I asked. "We keep switching? We keep lying to the woman who is supposed to be our other half?"
"We have to," Caleb insisted. "We keep the switching schedule strict. One of us in the light, one of us in the dark. We blur the lines so the spies can't tell where one Alpha ends and the other begins. If we confuse the humans in the observation deck, we buy Helen time."
I finally took a sip of the drink, but it tasted like ash. I thought about Helen's face in the greenhouse. She was smart. She was noticing the different hands, the different scents, and the different ways we moved. She was an Omega, but she had the intuition of a queen. We were underestimating her, and that was going to be our undoing.
"She's going to hate us when she finds out the truth," I said.
"She'll be alive to hate us," Caleb countered. "That's the only thing that matters right now."
I nodded slowly, though my gut was screaming at me that this was a mistake.
We spent the next hour going over the patrol schedules and the blind spots in the garden. We talked about the "Satellite Moon" and how its frequencies were becoming more aggressive, forcing the younger wolves to shift earlier and more violently.
Everything was escalating, and Helen was the calm center of a storm that was about to break.
Caleb eventually went to his own room to rest, leaving me alone in the main area. I sat down at the small desk where we kept the technical readouts of the pack house security. I wasn't a scientist, but I had learned how to read the basic data streams that the laboratory sent to our father's terminal.
I scrolled through the logs, looking for any mention of Helen's sector. My heart stopped when I saw a highlighted file marked with her servant ID number. I opened it, expecting to see a report on her laundry output or her movements through the halls. Instead, I found a series of graphs. They weren't tracking her location. They were tracking her biology.
There were lines representing her body temperature, her hormone levels, and her respiratory rate. But there was one line that was glowing bright red. It was her heart rate.
I leaned in closer to the screen, my blood turning to ice. The graph showed a steady, low rhythm for most of the day. But at exactly midnight, the line spiked into a frantic, jagged pattern. It happened every single night we visited her. It happened in the basement. It happened in the greenhouse.
I realized with a jolt of pure horror that the sensors weren't just looking for Alpha signatures. They were programmed to recognize the physiological reaction of a mate bond. Every time we touched her, every time we kissed her, her heart reacted in a way that was unique to fated mates.
The laboratory wasn't just watching us. They were using Helen's own heart to track our every move. They knew exactly when we were with her. They knew how she felt about us. The "Switching" didn't matter if her body was shouting the truth to the people behind the screens.
I stared at the red line, the pulses of her heart appearing like a silent scream on the monitor. We thought we were being clever. We thought we were the hunters playing a game of shadows. But the trap had already been set, and we had walked right into it, led by our own hearts.
The sensors were recording every beat of her love for us, and they were using it as evidence for her death.