“We went to your ball together. I can tell you who I met there and danced with, your packmates. Please, Your Grace, I didn’t come here to cause trouble.”

Her sincerity has me believing her, even if my skepticism doesn’t. “I don’t want anything to do with her. I sent her home for a reason.”

“Look, whatever my pack alpha told you was a lie.”

Immediately I grab the door and flip the lock. “My enforcers will escort you back to the border—”

“Your Grace,please!She’s withyourchild!”

That has me freezing in place, my hand fisted tightly around the door. “Don’t.”

Delilah sighs. “I don’t know what my alpha told you, but it’s not true. Whatever happened to get Raine sent back isn’t her fault. She’s innocent. I’ve known her my entire life. Those letters she wrote to you were real. Whatever she said in them is how she truly feels.”

For some reason, her words send me into a blind rage.

Obviously you can’t know everything about a person, no matter how much you may think you do. People hide, lie, steal, and cheat all the time and no one is the wiser, not even the person they are mated to.

The same can be said for Raine and I. Her being my fated mate was a fluke accident, but one she took full advantage of.

Pushing away from the door, I storm over to my desk, grab the bottom drawer, and rip it open, the lock holding it closed breaking instantly. I dig through the files on top of the pile anddown to where I hid the package I wanted to forget about the moment it’d been handed to me.

Without a word, I slap it onto the desk and glare at Delilah.

She stares at it with a frown, slowly coming over to my desk to look. Her fingers carefully lift the package, peeling back the seam to find the letter I stuffed in there poking up. She slides it out with slow precision, and unfolds it and smooths the creases.

Her eyes move across the page as she reads, and while she does so, I dump the rest of the package out onto my desk. That damn test clatters onto the wood loudly, face down. I don’t need to flip it over to see what’s on the other side of it, though.

Not when that image has haunted me for fucking weeks.

“This…she didn’t write this.” She slowly lowers the note.

“Yes she did. It’s the same handwriting as the other ones she’s sent me. Unless you’re telling me they were all forged.”

Delilah shakes her head. “No…I remember her writing them. I was there for some of them when we snuck to the human town next to us to mail them.”

“Then you were just as fooled as I was, because none of it was real.” I gesture to the letter in her hand. “Your alpha hand-delivered that to me. Why would he do that if it wasn’t true?”

She shakes her head. “Because he hates her. He’s hated her since we were kids. It’s…a long story. But there’s a reason. He wanted to punish her because he found out she was pregnant. He originally sent her here to spy on you to get information forsomething, I’m not really sure, but when he found out she was pregnant and refused to spy, he was livid. You can’t trust what he says, Your Grace.”

All of this seems too far-fetched in my opinion.

Why would an alpha inmyown territory feel the need to spy on me when he could just as well request an audience? Why send an amateur to do the work for him? If Raine had been sent to spy, she’d done a piss-poor job at it.

All we’d done was fuck until we couldn’t talk anymore.

“What would be the point in tarnishing her name? Surely having my heir would elevate your entire pack’s status, if that were the case?”

“He never wanted that. He’s always been the type of alpha to rule over not just us but other packs. I don’t want to make any speculations because I really don’t know, but that’s my guess as to why he sent her to spy: to dig up dirt on you.”

“Then why bother coming to me and hand-delivering this?”

She frowns. “He knew you’d come for her eventually. Weren’t you at all suspicious when she suddenly stopped sending letters?”

My lips press together tightly. Of course I had been, but I’d been too caught up in trying to fend off my damn pack elders from arranging a marriage for me before I could properly present my fated mate to them.

In the end, I ended up exactly where I’d been trying not to be, so all of that work and stress had been for nothing.

“So, if all of this is as true as you claim it to be.” I wave my hand at the letter and test. “Then why isn’t she here telling me this herself? Surely since you managed to break yourself out, then you would’ve tried to help her escape as well?”