Chapter 11: The Dead Alpha’s Secret

POV: Arthur

I didn’t sleep.

The letter stayed on my desk until dawn. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the same line.

My death was not an accident.

For years I’d accepted the official story without question. My father, killed in a territorial conflict. The enemy attacked. He fought. He lost.

Simple. Clean.

Nothing about it felt clean anymore.

At sunrise I went to the archive beneath the council hall. Only the Alpha, the Beta, and a handful of elders had unrestricted access, and I used mine for the first time in years.

I pulled the file with my father’s name on it.

ALPHA ADRIAN WOLFE.

The official death report. Cause of death: severe internal injuries, blood loss. That matched what I’d been told.

The dates didn’t.

The territorial conflict had ended on the seventeenth. His medical examination was dated the nineteenth. His death certificate said the eighteenth.

Three different dates.

“That can’t be right,” I said, to no one.

I dug further. The medical report carried a signature that belonged to a healer who’d left the pack years before my father died. I remembered her. She’d been gone long before any of this happened.

Someone had altered the report.

My wolf stirred, sharp with anger. Someone had rewritten the history of my father’s death, and they’d done it carefully enough that nobody had noticed for nine years.

I found Ren in the training grounds. “Come with me.”

He followed without asking why.

Back in the archive I laid the documents on the table between us. “What do you remember about my father’s death?”

His face changed instantly. “Alpha…”

“Tell me.”

He looked down at the papers. “Some records went missing. I remember that much.”

“Which records?”

“Medical files. Witness statements. The original battle report.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

He lowered his voice. “Because your mother told me not to.”

My head snapped toward him. “My mother?”

He nodded. “She said reopening it would destabilize the pack.”

“What else disappeared?”

“Names. Wolves who were present that night, their statements were pulled from the file entirely.”

“Who removed them?”

“I don’t know.”

“You were there.”

“I was.”

“And you never questioned it?”

His jaw tightened. “I did.”

“And?”

He hesitated. “I was told to stop.”

“By who.”

He didn’t answer.

“By who, Ren.”

His eyes dropped. “The council.”

My blood went cold.

The same council my father’s letter had warned me about. The same one my mother had warned me not to challenge. The same one that might want Evana controlled instead of protected.

None of it was coincidence.

Someone had been hiding this for nine years, and now that Evana was waking up, the letter didn’t read like a warning anymore.

It read like a countdown.

My mother was waiting in the drawing room when I got back to the manor. Sitting too calm, too composed, the way she always was right before she said something designed to end a conversation before it started.

“You’ve been investigating your father’s death.”

That was not a question.

“Who told you?”

“No one needed to.”

She stood. “Arthur. Leave the past alone.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s dead.”

“Exactly.”

Her expression tightened. “Digging him up won’t bring him back.”

“I don’t want him back.” I stepped closer. “I want the truth.”

She looked away. “Some truths destroy more than they heal.”

“Did you know?”

There was silence.

“Mother.”

She said nothing.

“Did you know something about how he died?”

Her eyes finally met mine, and for one second something flickered there, fear, plain and unguarded, before she smoothed it over again.

“I know your father made enemies.”

“Inside the pack?”

She said nothing.

“Was he murdered?”

Her lips parted. No answer came out.

“Mother.”

She turned away. “You don’t understand what you’re doing.”

“I understand perfectly.”

“No.” Her voice sharpened. “You don’t understand what happens if you keep going.”

“What happens?”

“The council turns against you.”

I almost laughed. “They already have something to hide.”

She crossed the room toward me. “Arthur, stop.”

“No.” For the first time in my life, I meant it. “He wrote that his death wasn’t an accident.”

Her face went completely still.

“You knew about the letter,” I said.

She didn’t deny it.

My heart pounded. “What else are you hiding?”

Footsteps in the hallway, someone approaching. My mother stepped back from me immediately, the conversation closing like a door slammed shut.

I wasn’t finished. Not even close.

That night I went back to the archive alone. If the council had scrubbed the official record, there had to be something they’d missed.

I searched every cabinet. Every drawer. Every old ledger nobody had opened in years.

Nothing.

Then I remembered my father’s study.

I searched under the desk. Behind the shelves. Inside the cold fireplace. Finally I noticed something wrong with the back panel of a cabinet, a seam that shouldn’t have been there.

I pulled it open. A narrow compartment. Old documents inside, my hands unsteady as I drew them out.

Most of it was nothing. Until I found a list.

Names. Dates. Payments. Meetings.

At the bottom, one name circled in my father’s own hand.

A member of the Alpha Council. A man who’d been present the night my father died. A man who’d signed one of the altered reports. A man who’d personally ordered the missing files sealed.

My blood went cold.

This wasn’t just a cover-up anymore.

Someone on the council had been part of it from the start.

And if this letter was connected to Evana’s bloodline the way I feared it was, then whoever wanted my father silenced might now want my mate gone the same way.

I folded the document and tucked it inside my jacket. My wolf growled, low and certain.

We found him.

I stared at the circled name one more time.

“Not yet,” I said quietly.

Because before I confronted him, I needed to know exactly what he’d done.

The name stared back at me from the page.

Councilman Lucian.

And beneath it, in my father’s hand, pressed hard enough to tear through the paper:

Never let Lucian near my son, or his mate.