Sacrificed To The Triplet Alpha Kings

Finn nodded.

”Eli.” Nicholas looked at him. ”The fourth username from the last meeting, the one that went dark two days ago. Find it. Deleted accounts leave traces and someone getting nervous enough to disappear is someone who made a mistake. I want to know who was behind it.”

”Already running it,” Eli said.

Nicholas looked at Callum last. ”Look more into the Origin point. First forum, first account, first timestamp, I want the beginning of this, not the spread. Someone chose where to plant this deliberately and those choices will tell us who has the knowledge and the motive.”

He picked up the document and looked at Callum again ”Cross reference against any pack that has made moves against Blackwood territory in the last two years. Political, financial, territorial...anything.”

Callum nodded. ”Yes, Alpha.”

”Nothing leaves this room,” Nicholas said and looked at all three of them.

”Nothing reaches the council, nothing reaches the pack. My mate’s name is not going to be used as a tool in someone else’s game. Are we clear.”

”Yes Alpha.”

”Go now.”

They stood up, Eli closed his tablet and Finn pushed out of his chair while Callum gathered the documents.

At the door Finn stopped and looked back. ”The theory she put forward in the last meeting,” he said. ”About this being about her father specifically and not the pack. She was right.” He held Nicholas’s gaze for a moment.

”Whoever is doing this knew Victor. Personally. You don’t dig into a dead Beta’s service history for political leverage unless you know exactly what you’re looking for.”

Then he walked out.

Callum was the last one through the door, and the door clicked shut behind him.

The office became quite after they left and Nicholas just sat there thinking about the entire situation.

He pressed his palm flat to his head.

Finn was right. Whoever was doing this knew Victor personally.

Which meant they might already know everything else.

He stood up from his chair, pecked up his jacket and left room.

*****

Lilith was sitting on the edge of the bed when he pushed the door open.

She was fully dressed. and she looked up when he walked in.

”It’s time, Lilith” he said.

She nodded and then stood up from the bed . ”Should we tell Sebastian and Lucian where we’re going?”

”I’ll inform them.” He crossed the room and held out his hand.

She looked at it for a moment. Then she put her hand in his.

He sent the mind link to his brothers as they walked through the quiet corridor. Taking Lilith out. Don’t wait up.

Sebastian’s response was immediate. ”About time.”

They went through the back of the house, through the kitchen corridor and out the heavy side door, the night cold air hit their faces and Lilith took a deep breath.

Then she saw the bike.

It was parked at the edge of the path where the grounds met the tree line, Nicholas watched her face changed as she recognized what she was looking at....the way her eyes moved over it slowly and then came back to him and smiled.

And at that moment, Nicholas knew he had made the right call.

He always ran to the falls in his wolf form alone, in the dark, through the forest he knew better than anything. It was faster. Easier. But Lilith was still finding her footing around Kael, still carried that careful wariness in her body when his wolf was close, and he wasn’t going to ask her to hold on to his back through a dark forest she didn’t know.

Not tonight. So he’d told Callum to find him a bike by evening and now Lilith was staring at it with a smile on her face. ”You ride?” she asked.

”Yes.”

”I didn’t think you would.” She looked at the bike, then back at him. ”You seem more like someone who takes a car.”

”I take a car when I have somewhere to be,” he said. ”This is somewhere else.”

He let go of her hand and went to the bike and swung onto it, settled, and looked back at her. ”Come on,”

Lilith walked over to him and looked at the bike for one moment with the expression of someone doing a quiet private calculation. Then she climbed on behind him, her hands hanged loosely to his side before he reached back and took her wrists and pulled her arms around him properly, her palms flat against his stomach, her chest against his back.

”Hold on tight,” he said.

He felt her fingers tighten around him.

He started the engine and the sound of it broke through the quiet night, low and steady and alive, then he drove into the main road leading to the forest.

He didn’t tell her to hold on.

She figured it out herself.

The second the bike pulled onto the main road and the speed hit her, her arms came around his waist and locked. Both hands fisting the front of his jacket. Her face pressing into his back.

He felt it through the leather.

Felt her.

Kael went very still in his chest.

Not the miserable stillness of the last two days. Something else. Something that felt almost like satisfaction. Like a thing that had been waiting a long time had finally gotten exactly what it wanted.

Nicholas kept his eyes on the road.

He went faster.

And her grip tightened immediately.

***

The estate disappeared behind them quickly.

One moment the iron gates. The next....open road. The territory spreading out around them in the dark, wide and endless and nothing like the walls she had been living inside for weeks.

He felt her shift behind him.

Felt the exact moment she stopped bracing against the speed and started actually looking.

Her head lifted from his back. Turned slightly. Taking it in.

The forest on both sides of the road, ancient and dense, the trees so tall they blocked out everything except a narrow strip of sky above them, thick with stars. The road cutting through it like a seam. The air clean and cold and nothing like the city she came from.

He knew what it looked like.

Because he’d grown up in it.