Chapter 10 The Sterling Archives

To find out who Eira Crawford was, Killian would have to go home first.

And going home was never simple.

Sterling Manor didn’t sit on the mountain. It owned the mountain—three hundred years of pine forest, a private road, and stone walls that had never once changed hands. People had tried. Their names were on tombstones now.

Three black SUVs cleared the checkpoints without slowing and rolled to a stop before the main house.

Killian stepped out. Night wind caught his dark hair; he shoved it back, silver-gray eyes cold under the estate lights.

He’d barely crossed the courtyard when a metallic crash rang out from the workshop.

"Killian! If you still claim me as your sister, get in here and pretend you understand processors!"

He didn’t break stride. "Love you. Not that much."

"Liar." Lila stuck her head out, screwdriver jammed in her hair, solder ash on one cheek. "I’m your only sister."

"That’s not a selling point. That’s biology."

She rolled her eyes and dragged out a half-finished prototype, wires spilling from its open chest like torn veins.

"My son’s dying," she announced.

"Your board’s fried." He barely glanced at it. "Chip ceiling."

Lila’s face fell. "I hate it when you’re right."

"You hate it because I’m always right."

She flipped him off but followed anyway. "Tell me Sterling Group has better chips."

"We don’t."

"Tell me you bought out some lab with a breakthrough."

"Also no."

"Then why do you look like you already found the answer?"

Killian stopped. He didn’t answer that.

"Where’s Marnie?"

Lila blinked, then narrowed her eyes and scanned him head to toe. "You didn’t come home to see Mom and Dad. You didn’t come back for dinner either." A beat. "You drove two hours for Aunt Marnie."

He just looked at her.

"Fine." She jerked her chin up, annoyed. "She hijacked my lab cart two hours ago—said she needed to haul some old foundation archives. I want it back. That thing’s irreplaceable."

They stopped at the end of the east wing. The old library.

Behind the heavy oak door sat three hundred years of Pack records—alliances, debts, marriage contracts, territorial disputes, blood feuds.

Lila studied his face. "You’ve got that look. Like you just found a loaded gun and you’re deciding who gets the first bullet."

"Dramatic."

"But accurate."

He pushed the door open.

The room smelled of old leather, cold stone, and dying embers. Territorial maps hung on one wall; locked cabinets of foundation records and council archives lined the other.

Marnie Sterling stood at the long table—tailored forest-green silk, silver hair pinned up, pearl earrings catching the light. Not some idle relative living off the estate.

She ran the Sterling Foundation. Grants, charitable placements, political connections, social favors—and the quiet things that never touched paper. Most of it went through her hands.

She heard the door and looked up. "If this is about the foundation audit, I already told finance to stop whining."

"It’s not." He crossed the room without raising his voice. "It’s about Eira Crawford."

The second the name dropped, something flickered across Marnie’s face. Just a flicker. But Killian saw it.

Even Lila, mid-reach for a file on the table, went still. She didn’t know Eira Crawford. But she knew anyone who could drive her brother two hours home in the dark to corner their aunt wasn’t a random name on a list.

The temperature in the library seemed to drop a few degrees.

"Vanessa said you were the one who placed her at Sterling Group." He set it out flat. "Miles ran her file. No hiring process. No interview. No department referral. No payroll trail. The only thing he could track was a paper authorization out of your office."

Marnie wasn’t Sterling Group’s HR director. She never touched day-to-day hiring. A regular employee should never have crossed her desk—and definitely shouldn’t have left nothing but a paper trail behind.

"So why," Killian said, voice dropping, "would a woman with no legitimate hiring record end up in Sterling Group’s most invisible admin seat—through your hand?"

Marnie set the folder down slowly.

"Beatrice Thorne came to me."

Lila’s head snapped up. "Thorne? As in Alaric Thorne?"

Marnie glanced at her. "Yes."

"The Sovereign Processor Initiative Alaric Thorne?"

"Yes."

The library went silent.

The Sovereign Processor Initiative. A classified federal project built to break the country’s dependency on foreign chip architecture. When its lead researcher, Alaric Thorne, died a few years back, the outside world assumed it had been shelved.

Lately the whispers had turned. Research circles, investment networks—the project wasn’t dead. It was rumored to be nearing federal procurement evaluation.

And now Eira Crawford’s name sat tied to the Thornes.

"Beatrice had just lost her husband," Marnie went on. "She was watching Alaric’s life’s work fall apart from the inside. When she came to me, she looked like she hadn’t slept in a month. She said she had a student who just needed a quiet job to get by." She met Killian’s eyes. "I’d known Beatrice thirty years. That was the first time she ever asked me for anything. So I didn’t ask questions. I placed the girl and let it be."

"You didn’t wonder why Beatrice Thorne would bury one of her students in my admin pool?"

"I assumed she had her reasons. Grieving women usually do." Marnie’s fingers tightened on the folder’s edge. Something shifted in her face—real worry, not guilt. "Did the girl do something wrong?"

"No. She resigned."

Killian let it drop. Not because he was satisfied—because Marnie had told him everything she knew. Whatever was left to find wasn’t in this room.

That night, Sterling Manor went quiet. Killian didn’t.

He turned over. Sleep wasn’t coming. A widow’s grieving favor. An erased history. A dead federal chip project suddenly breathing again. And a Stanford engineer buried in a job that did nothing, married to a man who’d let her vanish out of it in thirty days. None of the pieces touched—and that was exactly what wouldn’t let him sleep.

1:17 a.m. Miles picked up on the second ring. "Alpha Killian?"

"Run a full background on Eira Crawford. And on Sebastian Hale."

A pause. "Standard intel, or Pack-level?"

"Pack-level."

Miles sat straight up. That word changed everything.

"Marriage registration. Financial agreements. Mate bond filing. Bite-mark records. Medical authorizations. Joint accounts. Omega welfare audits." Killian’s voice didn’t slow. "First draft on my desk before morning."

Miles almost asked why. A midnight Pack-level check on a married Omega and her husband didn’t sound like Killian at all. He swallowed it. "Understood, Alpha Killian."

The call ended. Killian dialed again.

Vanessa’s phone buzzed her half-awake. One look at the screen and she was fully awake. "Alpha Killian?"

His voice stayed flat.

"Nine a.m. Send Eira Crawford to my office."