Chapter 24

Sienna’s POV

Whispers of fallen partnerships with Nightfall began to drift into Nightwind, since we were their closest neighbor.

It started as a rumor, spreading through the pack like a wildfire.

“Did you hear the biggest partnership in Nightfall pulled out? I hear they’re moving to Blackmoon.”

“I heard it was partially because Julian has gone bonkers. He’s not fit to be an Alpha anymore.”

“You saw what he did at the Alpha Ball, right? He should have just been stripped of his title then.”

And then the messages from Julian started.

You’re really going for my greatest successes?

I’ll ruin you, bitch.

You’ll never see me coming.

Your downfall will be so much worse than mine!!

ANSWER ME!!!!

The more messages I got and didn’t answer, the more Julian panicked. Every one of those messages would be used against him in the future, because, gosh, why would this successful Alpha bully poor, little old me?

I refused to feed into Julian’s madness. There was absolutely nothing connecting me to the fallen partnerships of Nightfall, and Lucius had made sure of it. All those partnerships had left on their own accord, thanks to Julian slowly losing his mind.

It wasn’t my fault that Julian couldn’t keep himself together.

My phone beeped with another message, and I knew Julian was very close to his breaking point.

I know exactly how I’m going to take you down.

Strange, because if I was plotting to take someone down, I sure wouldn’t give them any hint I was coming. Julian really had lost his marbles.

His words didn’t scare me, either. Nightwind was guarded, and getting to me wasn’t going to be as easy as it had been before.

Part of me wasn’t even sure he meant what he said. He’d always been one to threaten but never actually come through.

After what happened at the Alpha Ball, he was on thin ice anyway. Attacking me now would only look worse for him.

And oh, I’d press charges the moment that I could. His threats were empty, the evidence against him building with each and every psychotic text.

Even he knew that if something happened to me, the blame would fall straight on him. Nightwind was already in such shambles, what else could he even do?

Nothing, that’s what.

The house was quiet around me, Asher out on another one of his mystery errands, like so many days. I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that he was hiding an obscene amount of secrets from me.

Then again, was it really my business? We were contract mates. I paid him to be here.

I was just a temporary speck in his universe, our time together ticking down.

I shook the negative thoughts off, heading to the office where my parents used to conduct most of their work. Pausing outside the door, I took a deep breath.

I hadn’t spent much time in there since their death. To me, it still smelled of them. Being in there only brought back waves of memories that left me aching.

It was so easy to see them both still in there, leading the pack to its success.

But the office was where all the files of those in the pack were, and right now, I needed to go through them.

Maybe one of them would turn up some kind of clue, a misstep on someones part that would reveal them as a traitor.

That would be too easy though, wouldn’t it? Anyone going undercover with Alaric wouldn’t leave any kind of trail behind - it’s why they’d stayed hidden this long.

The door of the office creaked open, the silence inside haunting me. I could almost feel my parents comforting presence, drawing me towards the huge cabinet of files.

They’d always kept hard copies of everything instead of just electronic. Something about nestling down into the office, surrounded by the scent of my parents, and spending a few hours looking at papers now seemed welcoming.

So that’s exactly what I did. I barricaded myself in there, opened the cabinet of files, and started pulling them out, one by one.

How am I supposed to recognize a traitor? I thought in exasperation.

Every file seemed completely legit, no discrepancies or suspicions standing out to me. A lot of these people I’d grown up with, familiar with them from the start.

They just couldn’t be traitors.

I started at the top of the alphabet, soon coming across a file that made me pause.

Asher Blake.

My thumb rested at the edge of the file, hesitant. Would there be anything in here that I didn’t already know?

Asher really seemed to be a complete mystery. I assumed his file would reflect that too.

I flipped the file open, skimming the page with all the basics on Asher. Height, weight, origin.

Wait - origin.

This file said that Asher was always in the pack, though his parents were unlisted, unknown. He wasn’t born and raised here, that was for sure.

Even weirder, I had no recollection of Asher from ten years ago. I remembered faces very well - and everyone in the pack was someone I could remember from my youngest years as a child.

But Asher, I certainly didn’t remember. He’d just appeared one day and been there ever since.

He had not always been here. If he had been, I’d have a memory of him from earlier in my life. One day, he was just here, stealing the attention of my parents from me.

That bothered me.

The fact that he came in, no recorded history of anywhere else, and connected so closely with my parents…

What did they know?

I flipped through the rest of the file, but there was nothing else. His information was awfully un-descriptive, leaving so much to the imagination.

I set his file aside, glancing through the remaining ones with only half of my attention. What I noticed in all the other files was the fact that everyone had some type of origin.

They’d either moved from another pack or been born and raised in Nightwind.

And then there was Asher again.

A ghost who had apparated out of nowhere.

Someone who clearly had a whole lot of secrets kept from me.

Yet my parents had trusted him — respected him — so deeply that they neglected me because of it.

My parents had always been so loyal to the crown, never dreaming of being any kind of traitor in any way. Their association with Asher was always something that had made me jealous, but now that jealousy began to shift into suspicion.

There was just no way that my parents had been doing something bad.

But this, right here, was the exact kind of thing I’d been looking for. Asher was the only one who had such a lack of origin, and he was already so ridiculously private as it was.

Where did he come from?

I shoved all the files back into their places, leaving the office exactly as I found it. For a moment, I stood in silence in the middle of the room.

“What were you hiding from me?” I whispered into the space, desperately wishing I could get an answer.

But of course, I was all on my own.