Page 134 of Claimed By the Rival Alpha

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After that strange meeting, Night and I headed to the commons.

We were determined to get more of our questions answered.

Tavi had opted to look through the Redwolfs’ belongings to find some link to the missing account.

I knew being alpha would be hard, but I would never have thought I’d have to deal with a financial mystery. And of course it all goes back to Troy.

It was so like Troy to be the bane of my existence even when he was nowhere to be found. I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever be free of his chokehold on my life.

The commons had shops on either side of a wide walking path.

People were selling all sorts of jewelry, clothes, salves, sauces, groceries, drinks, street foods, and toys.

It was a bustling place, and a few wolves played music for money.

I’d rarely gone to the commons because I felt exposed, but my mom went all the time.

She said her favorite thing about the market was haggling down the prices.

I grinned as I recalled how she’d gush about talking down the price of a dress or a new pan.

But the memory also angered me. Ross had made it sound like the monarchical system was a thing of the past, but Mom and I never had much money.

People had treated us much like the “peasants” Ross had talked about.

I shook my head and focused on the task at hand. Let the past be the past for now. We needed answers.

The Kings’ bank was in a red brick building at the end of the long strip of shops. People crowded the inside, either withdrawing or depositing money into their accounts. But when the doors shut behind Night and me, the chatter stopped immediately.

I didn’t have time to be offended or embarrassed by the attention—what we had to do was too important. I took advantage of the quiet to announce, “I want to speak to the owner.”

There was a pause, and then one of the tellers spoke up. “I-I’ll go get him, Alpha Hunter,” she squeaked, scurrying off to do so. We waited for just a few seconds, and then the teller returned. “He said he’ll see you now in his office, Alpha.”

“Great.” Night and I followed the teller to the back.

The owner’s office had a window that overlooked the tree line.

A scent of vanilla wafted from the candles burning on his desk, giving the room a relaxing vibe.

The shelves to the right of his desk held binders of the pack’s financial information, and on the left of his desk were some dried snacks and candies.

I wondered if they were for him or the people who came into his office.

The owner, a scrawny man in his early seventies, sat behind his rectangular oak desk. The nameplate revealed him to be Jefferson Boyle. The top of his head was bald, while white hair puffed out at the sides. He wore a black blazer over his eggshell-blue button-down shirt and black slacks.

“Greetings, Alpha Hunter and Night Shepherd,” he said, bowing to me before sitting again. “To what do I owe the honor of seeing the two of you?”

“Hundreds of thousands of dollars have gone missing over the last seven years,” I said as Night handed over the ledgers. “We know they’ve gone into a tax account, but no one—not even the council—knows anything about it. We’re hoping you could give us more information about it.”

Jefferson took a few moments to skim through the ledgers. He set the papers down and reached into one of his desk drawers for a large black binder. “Let me double-check something.” The binder was labeled “Pack Accounting.” He opened it, flipped through the binder, then nodded to himself.

“It’s just as I thought,” he said, flicking the binder closed again. “We don’t have an account with that name.”

“What? How do you explain all of these transfers, then?” Night asked.

“Well, I see in these ledgers that these transfers were indeed labeled for some kind of tax account. But Alpha Gregor told me to officially mark them down as ‘community expenses.’”

“What is that?” I asked.

“As you’ve seen, we keep multiple accounts, and one of those accounts is called ‘Community.’ It’s used for events and parties within the pack. Alpha Gregor had me mark down the withdrawals as being for the community.”

“But there weren’t any events around the time of these transactions,” I said.

He nodded. “I’m aware, but it is not the place of a banker to question what his customer is doing with his money. Especially not the alpha himself.”

I understood what he wasn’t saying: if Jefferson had tried to question the alpha about what he did with his money, he definitely would have faced consequences. Maybe even deadly consequences.

“Were you concerned about the missing money?” I asked.

“Not particularly.” Jefferson’s dispassionate face and monotonous voice showed exactly how little he cared about it. “As long as the pack thrived and there was plenty of money in the accounts we needed, I had no reason to be concerned.”

“I understand.” That didn’t mean I was happy about it, but I sympathized with his logic.

“Can you tell us who took out the money?” Night asked. “Was it Troy or someone else?”

“Well, I’m not here every day. Sometimes my job calls me to the market to help with disputes, so I can’t say whether it was him one hundred percent of the time…

but yes, it was usually Troy. He would come in with a leather satchel, the money would be placed inside it, and then he would leave to do whatever he did with it. ”

Dammit. A human bank account was looking more and more possible. “Well, do you have any idea if there’s a way to find this missing account?”

“Every pack bank has a different eight-digit identification number with two or three letters at the beginning or end. All our accounts are labeled KP, for ‘Kings Pack.’ Please correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. Shepherd, but I imagine the Wargs’ accounts are labeled WP, correct?”

He nodded. “That’s right.”

“If you can find the code related to the account’s identification, I can tell you into which pack bank he deposited the money.”

“What if he used a human bank?” I asked.

“Oh, I can’t imagine Troy or Alpha Gregor using a human bank,” Jefferson dismissed. “But if there are only numbers and no letters in the account code, that would tell you he dealt with a human bank. If that’s the case, only a human banker could tell you where it was deposited.”

Night and I shared a look. We were getting answers to some questions, but the main one was still a mystery.

I tried not to let my frustration and defeat show when we thanked Jefferson and headed out.

My head felt heavy with everything we’d learned, yet we still hadn’t gotten to the bottom of it.

We knew Troy had been making the withdrawals in cash, and we knew Gregor had actively covered it up for Troy.

What we didn’t know was why or where the money was located.

This headache would follow us to our next destination—meeting with Dr. Stan to see how the baby was doing.

“I feel like we’re in a dream,” I said as we walked away from the commons. “Like we’re chasing something that’s getting farther and farther away from us. What do you think about all of this?”

“I feel the same,” Night said with a sigh.

“It’s frustrating that Troy and Gregor would do all of this just for more power, but I can’t be surprised.

We both know how power-hungry my father was, and he raised Troy to be the same way.

Unfortunately, they were smart enough to cover their tracks so we can’t quickly find the information we need. ”

“What about this portal stuff? Do you think any part of the story could be true?”

He shook his head decisively. “There’s no way. I’m forced to admit that the Redwolfs believed it possible, but it can’t be real. I can’t even wrap my head around bird and dragon shifters. How would a man my size shift into a bird?”

The mental image that his question elicited had me chuckling, but my good humor only lasted a few seconds before the seriousness of our situation crept back in. “Do you think Violet might have more information about this? Gregor might have discussed the legend with her at some point.”

“That’s not a bad idea, but I’ve tried to avoid talking about Gregor after Troy gave her the alpha wound. I didn’t want to stress her out while she was healing.”

I shuddered, the shock of seeing her blood splattered across the floor after Troy bit her still fresh in my mind. Night pulled me close to his side, which helped a little.

“I won’t make you bring this up to her,” I said. “We can find another way to get more information.”

He nodded. “How are you feeling? Are you up to seeing Doc?”

“Yes. I mean, I’m a little on edge from talking and thinking about Troy, and I’m a little nervous about being examined. But I’m eager to learn more about our baby.”

He kissed the top of my head. “Don’t worry. I’ll be with you the entire time.”

I smiled. “I know. It would be much harder if I had to do this on my own.”

He smiled back, and for a few seconds, I felt a little less like I was in the middle of a wild goose chase and more like a woman going to the doctor for a mundane checkup. Something normal and not drastically important for the pack’s safety and well-being.

We met Dr. Stan inside the infirmary, and he led us to an exam room. He directed me to sit on an examination table before leaving to grab some equipment. I shifted from side to side as I sat.

The infirmary walls were white-painted wood.

It smelled sterile and antiseptic, making my nose itch and putting me on edge.

I had never sat inside a doctor’s office like this.

I was used to going home with scrapes and bruises from my bullies, but I’d never been injured to the point that a pack doctor needed to see me.

Night’s hand was warm and reassuring on my shoulder, and a wave of calm stole over me. “Don’t worry, I’m here,” he reminded me.

I put my hand over his and leaned against him. “Thank you. I needed that.”