Page 136 of Claimed By the Rival Alpha

NIGHT

By the morning of the third day after the ultrasound, Bryn and I were falling into a routine: she’d wake up, I’d rub her back while she was sick in the bathroom, and afterward, I’d bring her tea and plain toast for breakfast. It never felt like enough food to me, but Bryn assured me it was all she could stomach in the morning.

Glenda also came by often to check on her.

“How are you, love?” I asked my mate, setting the plate and the tea on her bedside table.

A pale, exhausted face looked back at me. Her silence was more than enough of an answer.

“That great, huh?” I pressed a kiss to her forehead and sat next to her on the bed. “I wanted to talk to you about something, and then I’ll leave you alone to get some more rest.”

She reached for the tea and took a little sip, wincing when she burned her lip. “What is it?”

“Do you want to keep living here when the baby comes, or do you want to have a new cabin for the three of us? In addition to the one we have on Warg territory?”

Her eyebrows rose, and she completely forgot about the tea. “What brought this on?”

“Well, it’s just that I know this place has a lot of bad memories for you—for good fucking reason.

And I know you still have nightmares about what happened with Troy.

I don’t care if we live here or get a new cabin.

What I want is for you to be comfortable in your own home without dealing with trauma every day. ”

“But…would you really leave the alpha cabin? I thought you’d want to live here after you won the alpha challenge.”

I shrugged. “Actually, I’ve always kinda wanted to burn this place to the ground.”

She gasped and laughed. “Night! We can’t do that.”

“I know, I know. Destroying the cabin would be a waste of resources and a destruction of history, and all those other reasons Mom gave me to keep the building intact.” Bryn giggled and lightly smacked my chest. The sound of her laughter made my body feel lighter.

“Anyway, it’s only a building, Bryn. I just want you to feel comfortable and safe in a place that’s your own.

If you decide you want to move, we can use the building for something else.

It could be the official meeting room for the council or elders or for pack meetings. Whatever we want.”

Her fingers, hot from the mug of tea, caressed my cheek. I leaned into her touch, my wolf purring in delight.

“I’ll think about it, Night. Thanks for sharing your feelings with me.”

I turned my head to kiss the palm of her hand and enjoyed the goosebumps that trailed up her forearm.

“Remember, I’ll be happy with whatever you decide.

” I kissed her lips, then got to my feet.

If I didn’t leave now, I’d be tempted to crawl back into bed with her, and I had things I needed to do.

“I have to go out for a while to see how things are going with Dom and Tavi, but I’ll check in with you after lunch, okay? ”

“Okay.”

“I love you, Bryn.”

“Love you, Night.” She blew me a kiss on my way out.

I resumed the search that Tavi had started into the Redwolfs’ stuff. She hadn’t found anything useful during her search, and we had combed through everything we could find. It was worse than looking for a needle in a haystack because at least a needle would stab you when you found it.

I flipped through more documents and found a recorded log of all the wolves that had disappeared or were killed, banished, or imprisoned over the past twenty years.

I doubted the account number would be here, but Bryn had asked whether the council knew who was still loyal to the Redwolfs.

Finding that account number was important, of course, but these records could point me to someone who might know more about what the Redwolfs were doing with it.

Tavi arrived a short while later. She came into the office, nodded at me, and immediately took up a spot on the floor. I told her I was looking into the records instead of searching for the account number and why.

When I finished explaining, Tavi nodded. “Cool. Hopefully, that’ll give us a better lead than what we have now. I’ll keep looking for the account number.”

“Thanks, Tav.”

I’d been alpha of the Wargs for over a decade now, but I hadn’t had to banish or kill more than fifty people in that time.

I could remember the names and faces of all of them.

I doubted Troy or Gregor could say the same.

Troy, for one, hadn’t been alpha for a year, but he’d gotten rid of over fifty people; Gregor’s number was in the hundreds.

The Redwolfs were far more likely to kill their enemies.

Troy rarely bothered to give reasons for his punishments, but Gregor’s reasons ranged from a very reasonable “stole large sums of money” to “committed assault” to “refused to work when commanded” to “looked at another man’s woman with lust.” The punishments were usually a lot worse than the crime itself.

The kidnappings were the most interesting to me because they seemed to follow a pattern.

A decade prior and for four years straight, most of the victims were males, and all were between the ages of five and seven.

They had apparently gotten lost in the woods and were expected to have died from “exposure, starvation, accident, or animal attack.” The Kings had sent search parties, but the children’s remains were never found, and the trails went nowhere.

It wasn’t strange to lose pups in the woods; when they were young, they weren’t able to track their way back home, and unfortunately, that often led to them getting turned around.

But to lose dozens of children over a few years without ever finding their bodies was unheard of.

It was strange, too, that this had happened ten years ago. At that time, I had just become alpha.

“I’m going to talk to the council,” I said.

“Yeah?” Tavi looked up, and I noticed that she’d gotten through a lot of documents as well. “Find something?”

“I might have, but I need to ask them more. Do you know where they are now?”

“They’re probably in the meeting room. They handle pack business there for a few hours every day.”

“Good to know. I’ll be back.”

I left her to her search and went for the door. On the way, Bryn’s scent drew my attention to the staircase. She was wrapped tightly in her robe, and the color had returned to her face. The few hours she’d had to herself had done wonders for her, setting my wolf and me at ease.

“Where are you going, love?” I asked.

“I was just about to ask you the same thing.” She finished coming down the stairs.

I smirked. I was on a mission to speak to the council, but some banter with my mate wouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. “I asked first.”

She quirked a brow, a light smile on her lips. “Alright. I was coming down to get more tea and make some toast.”

“I could’ve brought it to you. Or Tavi could have.”

She shook her head. “I’m feeling better, thankfully. Now it’s your turn.”

“I’m heading to the council. I have questions about some of the ledgers…what is it?”

Bryn’s lower lip, pink now that she was feeling better, poked out as she frowned. “On your own? I don’t think so, Night. They might see that as overstepping.”

I started to say that they would listen to me, anyway, but it occurred to me that Bryn was right. I couldn’t just burst in there demanding the Kings’ council to give me answers about something that had happened a long time ago.

“I think you should take Tavi with you,” she said.

I nodded. I was glad Bryn hadn’t suggested going herself, but she must not have felt up to walking around. “I’ll go get Tav—”

“I’m here,” Tavi spoke from behind me. I hadn’t even heard her coming. “Bryn already filled me in.”

I smiled. I wasn’t used to being outside the alpha-beta telepathic connection, but I didn’t mind. Knowing my mate and sister had that connection pleased me to an unreasonable degree. “What if they ask where you are, Bryn?”

She shrugged. “Just tell them I’m reviewing documents. I’ll be doing that, anyway.”

“You’re sure you’re feeling up to that?”

She patted my chest. “I’m fine. Now you two go on. You can fill me in on how it goes later.”

“Okay, love.” I kissed her forehead and then her lips. “See you soon.”

Tavi and I headed out, and I filled her in on what I’d found on the way. She was right.

The five council members were discussing something in the meeting room. Their voices died down as we entered.

“Here without your mate?” Dana asked with a slight smirk. “That’s unusual.”

Tavi crossed her arms. “Your alpha is busy,” she replied, rising to Dana’s taunt. “She sent us in her stead, but you can be sure that if we need a follow-up, we’ll have her with us.”

“A follow-up?” Grant asked. He pushed aside some of the paperwork piled in front of him. “For what?”

“We’ve found some reports of pups who went missing ten years ago,” I said. “Do any of you remember what was happening back then? Why were so many kids going missing during that four-year period?”

There was a brief pause. Tavi and I waited as the council members exchanged looks. I was even happier that Bryn had caught me before I left. They’d have no reason to answer my questions if Bryn or Tavi weren’t with me.

Eventually, Grant nodded. “We remember. It’s devastating to lose a pup, and it was even more so back then. Our trackers never found their bodies.”

“I can imagine. Why did things slow down after four years?”

“Our only explanation is that there was a killer within our territory and possibly within the pack. When things stopped, we believed the killer had died or been killed, but we never found out who it was.”

“If Troy hadn’t been so young, I would have assumed it was him,” Colby admitted.

Tavi frowned. “Yeah, I don’t blame you.”

Troy would have been thirteen or fourteen back then—old enough to be coming into his strength but not capable of kidnapping on such a large scale.

“You mentioned your trackers couldn’t find the children’s remains.”