Chapter 12: The Account That Betrayed Us

Kane's silence answered me.

For several seconds, neither of us moved inside the sealed archive. The old ledger lay open between us, its pages yellowed with age, the ink faded but still clear enough to destroy everything Kane had built.

The payment had come from a Calder family account.

Not Vera's family.

Not some unknown criminal.

His family.

I looked at Kane again. "How long did they know?"

His jaw tightened. "I don't know."

"Then find out."

I closed the ledger and pushed it toward him. "Because if your family knew I was Elias Wren's daughter and helped erase me from the registry, then this was never just about Vera."

Kane stared at the ledger as though it had become something poisonous.

"Evelyn, I swear to you, I never knew about this."

I almost laughed.

"You keep saying you didn't know."

My voice came out quieter than I expected.

"You didn't know I was pregnant. You didn't know Vera was lying. You didn't know who I was. You didn't know what your family was doing."

I met his eyes.

"But somehow, every time you didn't know something, I was the one who paid for it."

Kane flinched.

For once, he had no defense.

The archive door suddenly opened.

Councilwoman Mara stood there with two guards behind her. Her expression was grim.

"Alpha Kane, we need that ledger."

Kane didn't move.

"Why?"

Mara looked directly at him.

"Because we found another record."

My stomach tightened.

"What record?" I asked.

She hesitated before answering.

"A transfer authorization from seventeen years ago. The same Calder account paid for a second registry alteration."

Kane's face went pale.

"Seventeen years ago?"

"Yes." Mara's eyes shifted to me. "The first alteration erased Evelyn Wren's identity. The second one created a different lineage record for Vera Wren."

Silence filled the archive.

I slowly understood.

Vera hadn't simply lied about being Elias's daughter.

Someone had built the lie for her.

Someone with access to Greenridge's records, money, and influence.

Someone from Kane's family.

Kane stepped toward Mara. "Who authorized it?"

Mara placed another document on the table.

"Your father's signature is on the authorization."

Kane froze.

His father had been the previous Alpha of Greenridge.

The same man who had raised Kane to believe that power was something a family protected at any cost.

I stared at the signature.

A strange calm settled over me.

Everything suddenly made sense.

Why Vera had been protected for years.

Why her records had always been accepted without question.

Why the council had been so willing to believe she belonged to the Wren bloodline.

And perhaps most importantly, why Kane had been so quick to sacrifice me.

He had grown up inside the same system that had erased me.

Kane picked up the document with trembling fingers.

"My father knew."

"It appears so," Mara said.

"Why?"

Mara shook her head. "That's what we need to determine."

I turned toward the archive exit.

"I'm leaving."

Kane immediately looked at me.

"Evelyn, wait."

"For what?"

"Let me fix this."

I closed my eyes.

Once, those words would have meant everything to me.

Now they meant almost nothing.

"You can't fix seventeen years, Kane."

I finally looked back at him.

"And you can't fix what you chose to do to me."

His eyes reddened.

"I know."

"No," I said softly. "You don't."

I walked away before he could answer.

Outside the archive, the cold night air hit my face.

For the first time since discovering the truth about my bloodline, I wasn't thinking about the Luna title, the Wren estate, or even Vera.

I was thinking about the one question that mattered.

Why had Kane's father erased me?

And what had he been protecting by doing it?