Chapter 16 The Still Betrayal

• Ava's POV
• Sitting in the little study room, the packhouse felt unnaturally silent as Blackthorn's letter weight pressed on my thoughts. We trusted whomever was behind this. someone near. The sensation that the adversary was much closer than we had thought would not go away from us—it was not hiding far outside our boundaries.
• Jackson had hardly slept, his thoughts fixed on the letter and its ramifications. Leading the pack, looking after our kids, and now this secret treachery was draining him. I could see it in the rigid set of his jaw that never seemed to soften and in the way his shoulders stiffened every time someone talked to him.