Chapter 6

TATE'S POV

Nicole had been unusually quiet for days. I noticed. I notice everything — Caesar made sure of that from the time I was old enough to stand.

That morning she handed me the wrong tie. Her fingers moved too fast and her eyes didn't meet mine. Storm flagged her scent immediately, something underneath it was off, and I looked at her a second longer than I needed to.

But the North Maple discussions were at a critical point and I had a pack to run. She was an omega without a wolf, what could she possibly do?

I went to my meeting and told myself it was nothing.

********

The beta's report came through the mind link mid-morning on the fourth day, during a break between sessions. Unauthorized movement on the western border a small cluster of wolves who scattered the moment our elite squad arrived.

Probably rogues testing the perimeter, it happened twice a year and rarely amounted to anything. I told Jonathan to monitor and returned to the conference room.

I was forty minutes into the afternoon session when Tracy link hit me.

“Nicole is missing.”

Storm was on his feet before I had consciously processed the words. I excused myself from the table, walked into the corridor, and kept my voice low when I replied through the link. When did you last see her?

This morning. Early when she brought my medication but she hasn't come back.

I told Jonathan to quietly end the session and followed Storm's instinct toward the mansion at a pace that was not quite running but was not anything else either.

The mansion was in controlled chaos when I arrived. Servants standing in doorways.

I called her name and my own voice surprised me. There was nothing of command in it. Storm had been telling me for days that something was wrong, and I had chosen, deliberately, not to listen because listening would have required me to admit that I was watching her more carefully than I had any intention of admitting.

That when she handed me the wrong tie that morning I had stood still for two seconds longer than necessary, not out of irritation but because something in the way she moved had changed, and I had noticed but had dismissed it immediately.

I called her name as my own voice surprised me. I had not raised it for Nicole in a way that was not contempt or command in three years. This was neither. I called it again.

The silence that came back was deafening.

I asked every person I encountered, where she was. When did anyone last see her? What time. Where. Nobody had a clear answer. Nobody had been watching closely enough because nobody considered her worth watching.

She was the omega, she was the locksmith's daughter. She was the pack's penance and the pack's shame and she had spent three years making herself so small that everyone had learned to look straight through her. Including me.

I told myself the fury rising in my chest was at her. For the disruption, for the audacity.

She tried to escape several times in the past two years, and each time my warriors caught her. Each time she was brought back, I would lock her in a dark basement for 24 hours. This was the best way my father taught me to make wolves obey; I don't know how many times I was put in solitary confinement as a child. At first, you'll howl, then you'll cry and beg for forgiveness, then you'll be terrified, as if the whole world has abandoned you. In the pitch-black confinement room, you lose track of time, you don't know what's happening outside. Fear engulfs you, and finally you surrender. That's how I learned absolute obedience, and I hoped Nicole would learn it too. I thought she had already learned it, but today I realized she's still as cunning as ever.

I led the search myself. Storm was not calm about any of it, which I told myself was the bond. It was always the bond. It had nothing to do with the fact that I had memorised the sound of her footsteps in the east corridor, or that I knew exactly which window she stood at when she thought no one was watching. Those were security observations, nothing more.

I split the elite squad across all four borders and covered the inner pack territory myself with the senior warriors. We searched through the afternoon and into the evening. Every building but we found nothing.

By nightfall I was standing in the empty room she had occupied for three years. She was gone. She had planned it, she had stood in front of me this morning with the wrong tie in her hands and something hidden behind her eyes and I had looked directly at her and decided she was not worth the second thought.

Storm lay down in the corner of my mind and pressed his face to the ground and made a sound I had never heard from him before.

The next day, Jonathan came to me with the report, a patrol squad covering the northern forest perimeter had found something.

Jonathan brought it to me personally, which told me before he opened his mouth that it was not good.

A pool of blood at the treeline. The quantity of it left very little room for interpretation.

Storm pressed his nose to the ground of my mind and went very still. "Is it hers," I asked.

Jonathan didn't answer immediately, he didn't need to. The bond had already told me, Storm had already confirmed what no one needed to say aloud.

"With that volume of blood loss," Jonathan said quietly, "even if she reached the border on her own, she would not."

"Continue the search," I said.

"Alpha"

"In the forest, all sectors. Continue."

I walked back to the mansion alone and did not speak to anyone for the rest of the evening.

They came on the third day. I was already in a poor mood when I walked into that room and the mood did not improve as Elder Crane led it. "The search parties are pulling warriors from border rotations all for an omega.”

"I am aware of what she ranked," I said.

"Then you understand the optics." Crane folded his hands on the table. "Resources committed at this scale signal to the pack that the matter carries weight it should not carry and it raises questions about your "

"Careful," I said quietly.

He was careful, he waited and then continued. "About the pack's priorities, there is also the matter of closure. For the pack, for your ability to move forward on the Luna question, which cannot remain open indefinitely."

I listened to all of it. When the last voice finished I said, "Three more days."

Crane's expression shifted, just slightly. "Alpha, the evidence"

"Two days more," I said again, and looked at him until he closed his file.

They filed out, Sophia was waiting in the corridor, which meant she had known the meeting was happening and had positioned herself accordingly. She waited until the council members were out of earshot and then she turned to me with an expression I had seen before.

"They're right," she said. "You know they're right. End the search, Tate. She's gone. And when you're ready when you've had whatever time you need I'm here. I've always been here, make me your Luna. We both know it was always going to be me."

I looked at her for a moment. "You are not my mate," I said. "You were never going to be Luna."

Something flickered across her face like surprise, then something harder underneath it. "That's not what you said when you were in my bed, what is this? Guilt?" She tilted her head. "You allowed the entire pack to treat her the way they did. You allowed it for years, don’t stand there performing grief over a bitch who"

"Don't." The word came out very quiet. "Do not use that word for her, not in front of me. Not ever."

Sophia blinked.

"She was Luna of this pack," I said. "Whatever else she was or wasn't, she held that title. You will not refer to her that way."

"Tate." She shifted, moving toward. "I only meant"

"I know what you meant." I held her gaze. "But don’t you ever talk to your Alpha the way you like, Also I want to be clear about something, Sophia. Everything you have, your position here, your access to this pack, the respect you receive in these halls I gave you that. Every piece of it and I can take it back with a single word. Do not mistake proximity for permanence."

She held my gaze, something calculating moving behind her eyes, and then she straightened. "I've already arranged for the servants to start clearing Nicole's things from the mansion. It needed to be done sooner or later."

I was already moving before she finished the sentence.

I heard the noise before I reached the corridor as I stopped in the doorway.

The room was a mess, books pulled from the glass case and thrown on the floor, the small chair knocked on its side, clothes dragged from the wardrobe and piled in the centre of the room. One of the maids was standing directly on top of that pile, her full weight on Nicole's folded things, reaching for the high shelf, while the step stool was right beside her. She was standing on Nicole's clothes because she wanted to.

"Stop." My voice came out low as all three froze. "Put it back, every item. Exactly where it was. If you don't remember where it was, you stand in that corridor until you do."

"Alpha," the nearest one said carefully, "Luna Tracy gave the order, and Miss Sophia confirmed."

"I am the Alpha of this pack," I said. "Not Luna Tracy, not Sophia. Put it back."

They moved. I watched them go and stood in the corridor for a moment, breathing.

I finally stepped into the room, It looked as I remembered it — simple, barely personalized.

"Alpha." One of the maids appeared behind me, hesitant. "While we were, when we were clearing I found something. Under the sink in the bathroom. I thought you should see it before I"

She held it out as I took it from her and turned it over. Two lines.

I stood completely frozen in the middle of the room and looked at the test in my hand for a long time without speaking, without moving, without being able to do either. Positive.

"Leave," I said as the maid left.

The door closed. I was alone in Nicole's room with a positive pregnancy test in my hand.

"She's pregnant,"