Chapter 94

Ava

I felt my heart pounding as we approached the cell where Olivia had been kept beneath the Packhouse. The dark corridor smelled faintly of mildew and stale air, but I barely noticed it—my mind was racing too much to focus on anything else.

We had only just arrived back to Moonstone on the ferry, and already we were here. I was tired, but not complaining; finding Olivia was important business, especially when she was running around rampant with no pack tattoo. We had to find her before she caused any trouble; which meant that we had to find her… well, yesterday.

Chris strode ahead of me, his shoulders set in a tense line in the flickering torchlight as he made his way toward the guards stationed outside the cell door.

“I need to take a look inside,” he said gruffly. “See if anything was missed.”

The guards exchanged a wary glance, but didn’t argue with their Alpha. “Of course, Alpha,” one of them said, stepping aside while the other produced a large ring of keys from his pocket and began sorting through them, the metal clinking together as he searched for the right one.

“Tell me again about the night of her escape,” Chris said to the one guard while the other rifled through his keyring.

The guard, a burly, potbellied man of around forty, swallowed and pushed the hood of his cloak back.

“I wasn’t on duty, sir,” he admitted. “But the guard who was swears up and down that something was injected into his neck. Something that made him sleep.”

“You think she stuck a needle through the bars?” Chris asked, gesturing to the small barred window on the cell door.

The guard nodded. “Not that that explains how she got the door unlocked…”

“She may have pickpocketed a guard while she was being taken out for her daily exercise hour,” I mused, tapping my chin. “Have all of the pack’s guards count their keyrings. I’d bet money that someone is missing a key.”

“Yes, Acting Luna,” the guard said, bowing his head respectfully.

As the other guard finally unlocked the heavy door, I drew in a sharp breath. This was it—maybe we would finally find some answers about Olivia’s escape. I still wasn’t sure how she had done it; we knew that she had seemingly drugged the guard on duty that night, but the rest…

Well, the rest was a mystery.

The cell was just as dreary as I had imagined it would be—a cramped space with rough stone walls and a single metal-framed cot jutting out from one side. I wrinkled my nose at the musty scent that hung thick in the air, and for a moment, I would have felt bad for Olivia had she not literally tried to kill me.

“Go ahead and look around,” Chris murmured, waving his hand toward the cell. He turned his attention to the guards, one brow quirked as he began bombarding them with even more questions about Olivia’s time in captivity here—about her exact schedule, right down to her bathroom and feeding times, about her attitude, about the personal items that she brought with her into the cell.

Nodding, I entered the dingy little room and began roaming its perimeter while Chris’s and the guards’ voices faded into the background, running my fingers along the cold stone as I inspected every nook and crevice.

At first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The cell was drab and bare, just like one would expect any prison cell to be. A gray wool blanket lay rumpled on top of the cot, and a single book sat on the floor, and a hairbrush sat on the small table in the corner, right in front of the mirror that was affixed to the wall.

Nothing of note, really.

But then, as I crouched near the far corner, something caught my eye—something strange, out of place.

Leaning in closer, I squinted and noticed that one of the stones in the wall looked a little loose, with the mortar ever so slightly crumbling away from its edges. Carefully, I reached out and prodded at it.

It wobbled beneath my fingertips.

“Hmm,” I muttered. I grasped the loose stone and worked it away from the wall entirely, revealing a hollow little pocket nestled in the wall behind it.

“Chris,” I hissed, turning back toward the doorway. He held up one finger to stop me, his intense gaze still fixated on the guards in the midst of a conversation.

I bit back an impatient grumble and turned toward the little nook again. I leaned closer, squinting to see in the dim light. For some reason, my heart began to pound in my chest, although I wasn’t entirely sure why.

Whatever it was, I certainly wasn’t ready for what happened next.

Slipping my hand into the little hollow space, I patted around its edges and corners, feeling for any sort of object or irregularity. At first, I found nothing—just a small, empty pocket of space carved out of the ancient stone wall.

But then, as I slid my fingers back out, something shimmered across my skin. A faint, ethereal blueish green glow was smeared across my fingertips, like the soft glimmer of moonlight filtering through the trees on a cloudy night.

I gasped and pulled my hand toward myself, blinking in shock at the sight of that subtle, glowing residue that was now coating my fingertips.

Moonstone residue.

“Chris!” I stood full and whipped around to face the door again, my tone brooking no argument this time.

He looked up sharply, the urgency in my tone clearly startling him. “What is it?” he demanded, crossing the room toward me in just a few long strides.

I held up my hand and wiggled my fingers, watching as the glowing particles clung to my skin and glittered like stardust. “Look at this. I found this little pocket behind one of the loose stones… and when I reached inside, my fingers came out covered in this.”

Chris leaned in close, his eyes slowly widening as he studied the glow emanating from my fingertips. “That’s…” He swallowed hard and glanced up at me questioningly.

I nodded solemnly. “Moonstone residue,” I muttered, looking back over at the barely noticeable hole in the wall. “But… how…”

Suddenly, a shiver worked its way through my body as the realization hit me. It all made sense—not Olivia’s escape, necessarily, but… her true reason behind it.

She wasn’t just trying to escape for her own good—she knew she would have been fine here, that she likely would have been able to peacefully live out her days in modest luxury so long as she repented for what she had done.

No, this was far worse than that. Had she truly run off with the moonstone? With Chris’s inheritance?

My stomach sank like a stone then at the implication.

“Your necklace,” I breathed. “Where’s your necklace, Chris? You haven’t been wearing it lately…”

His head whipped around, his green eyes locking with mine in an expression of abject horror. I saw the color drain from his face in an instant.

And then, we were both moving—sprinting through the dungeon corridors and up toward the main Packhouse, our feet moving faster than I ever thought imaginable.

My mind was racing with worry as we tore through the Packhouse halls, toward Chris’s apartment where he claimed to have been keeping the Moonstone. We burst through the doors and made a beeline for the little storage room off the side of his bedroom, where his safe was kept.

The small metal safe was still nestled in the corner of the cluttered space, just where it had always been. But as we approached, only to see the door cracked slightly open and small shards of a broken lock scattered across the carpet, my heart sank into my gut.

With a kick, Chris knocked the safe door fully open and what we were met with was sure to haunt me for a long time to come.

The sacred moonstone—the symbol of our pack’s Alpha bloodline and its inheritance—was gone.