Chapter 24. Don't Provoke Me

Daniel POV

The pale light of dawn was just beginning to creep over the eastern ridge when I finally drove up to Margaret’s house. The world still felt wrapped in sleep: dew-slick grass, a thin curl of mist hanging low in the fields, birds too drowsy even to sing. My heart pounded so loudly I swore the sound echoed against the windshield. I forced myself to exhale slowly, trying to calm the surge of adrenaline. This wasn’t the kind of nerves that come before a breakup—no, it was something darker. I wasn’t worried about her heartbreak. I was afraid of what Margaret might do or say—what she might reveal to Alpha that could make him turn on Elizabeth with even fiercer suspicion and contempt.

I sat behind the wheel for a moment longer, forcing my mind back to why I’d come. Margaret had always been wilful, stubborn in the way only someone desperate to protect her own secrets could be. If she raised too much of a fuss—if she called my father’s attention to Elizabeth’s existence