Who told you to come near me

Mira's POV.

The guards hauled me up off the floor, one on each side, and dragged me stumbling out through the door. As we passed Cyrus, I caught it — the familiar smell of cedar on his skin.

So close, and so far away.

He hadn't let me stay. He had simply… for now, not sent me away.

On the first day Cyrus began investigating the case, the first person he called in for questioning was me.

When the guards brought me to the door of his study, I stood in front of that heavy oak panel, drew a deep breath, and knocked.

"Come in."

I pushed the door open and saw Cyrus seated behind the desk. He wore a dark grey shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, several sheets of parchment covered in dense handwriting spread out in front of him.

A fire burned in the study, and the warmth filled the room — but the moment he lifted his head and saw me, that warmth seemed to be cut off by something.

"Sit." He gestured at the chair across from him, his tone purely official.

I set the cup of tea I was holding down in front of him.

Cyrus glanced down at it. He didn't touch it.

"Cinnamon," I said, my voice lighter than I'd expected. "You used to love this flavor. You wanted a cup every night while you handled pack business. You said it kept you sharp."

His eyes rested on the cup for two seconds. Then he picked it up and took a sip.

I watched his face. His throat moved as he swallowed, and the disgust was finally gone from his eyes.

For that one moment, he looked almost exactly like the Cyrus I knew.

He set the cup down and shifted his gaze to the parchment, clearing his throat a little awkwardly.

"These past seven days — how far did you get?"

He hadn't answered me, but he hadn't pushed the tea away either.

Something in me that had been strung too tight for too long eased, just slightly. "I started with the purchasing records. The poison was wolfsbane. It doesn't grow anywhere on pack land, so it has to come in from the markets outside. I went through every purchase order that entered and left the territory over the past month, and I checked the handler, the time, and the quantity on every single entry. Nothing out of place. There were thirteen servants in the kitchen who handled Cyrus's food. I questioned all thirteen. Two of them had gaps in their timelines, but I cross-checked their movements several times over and both had witnesses."

Cyrus's fingers tapped twice against the parchment. He said nothing.

"I checked the kitchen itself as well," I went on. "The storeroom, the spice shelves, the prep tables — everything you might have touched that day, I went through all of it. Wolfsbane residue, powder, liquid — nothing. Whoever did it cleaned up thoroughly. They didn't leave a trace."

Cyrus finally raised his eyes to me. "You did all of that alone?"

"Yes."

"No one else." I met his gaze. "I didn't trust anyone enough to bring them in. You were unconscious. I had no idea who in this pack could still be trusted."

Cyrus's lips pressed together. He didn't take that up. He turned a page of the parchment, picked up his pen, wrote a few words in the margin, then called the guard in.

"Bring everyone from the kitchen, and everyone who handled a purchase order in the past month, to the side hall. All of them. Have them wait."

"Yes, Alpha."

For most of the rest of the afternoon, Cyrus called them in one by one.

I sat to the side and listened as he asked the questions I had already asked a hundred times — the time, the place, what they had handled, whether they had seen anyone touch the Alpha's plate.

He asked more directly than I had, sharper, sometimes turning the same question over from three different angles — but the servants' answers came out identical to before. No one broke. No one's timeline failed to line up.

When the last of them walked out, the side hall went quiet.

Cyrus leaned back in his chair, fingers pressed to the bridge of his nose. The parchment in front of him had gained only a few lines of notes, circling the same handful of words: nothing unusual, no witnesses, timeline consistent.

No opening. No way in.

Exactly what I had found.

I looked at his profile as he sat there thinking, the firelight catching his face and stretching the shallow shadow beneath his brow long across his skin.

His eyes were closed, his breathing light, one button undone at his collar, revealing the old scar below his collarbone that had never fully faded. I could smell the cedar on him, mixed with a faint warmth of cinnamon carried up from that cup of tea.

Back when I used to sit in this study with him and keep him company through the night, he always leaned back exactly like this, and I would come around behind him and rub his temples, and he would catch my wrist and say, don't.

Without thinking, I stood and came around the desk toward him, my steps light — but I had barely reached his side before his hand came up and closed around my wrist, precise and certain.

Cyrus opened his eyes. The firelight reflected in those grey-blue irises, and my face reflected there too. He looked at me and didn't speak at once, but the grip on my wrist tightened, little by little.

"Who told you to come near me."

Quiet. Cold enough that a shiver went down my back.

I opened my mouth to say something — that he never used to stop me, that I only wanted to see whether he was tired — but every word of it broke apart under that look.

Cyrus sat up and leaned forward slightly, closing the distance between us until I could see the dark stubble coming in along his jaw.

"Mira." He said my name. "I let you stay in this pack because it's what my father and Tonia wanted, and because of the child. Not for anything else. You'd better be clear on that."

I stepped back half a pace, and my lower back hit the edge of the desk.

"I'm letting you near me right now because the investigation requires you present." Cyrus stood, looking down at me, his shadow falling over me entirely. "But don't push it. If you do this again —"

He stopped. His throat moved.

"I could change my mind at any time."

I didn't dare move again.

Cyrus withdrew his hand and put the distance back between us.

He picked up the parchment from the desk, his voice returning to the even tone he used for pack business. "I'm bringing the council of elders into this. They're better suited to an investigation than we are, and they carry more credibility. Until the elders reach a conclusion, you stay in the pack — but you do not approach me alone again."

He glanced up at me and added, "This is the last private questioning."

I lowered my head and looked at my wrist, where his hand had been, still holding a trace of warmth.

"Yes, Alpha."

When I walked out of the study, the snow had stopped.

I stood in the corridor and heard the door close behind me — softly, but shut completely.