The Viper in our Territory

Chapter 10

Lucien’s POV

Three days, that’s how long our youngest has been gone. I had told him repeatedly to abort the solo mission that he wanted to embark on. Yes, the info he had gotten us the first two times was valuable, but not enough to trade into werewolf territory the third time, especially since the world was curling itself around our necks like an invisible rope and choking us all. No matter what, we had to maintain morale, and one of us getting captured was not going to be an amazing morale boost for our warriors.

But Jacob wasn’t going to be Jacob if he wasn’t the stubborn hothead he was. He had managed to snitch his way past the guards I set to watch him, and along with him, our reserve of scent cloakers.

Gabriel was still on the battlefield, trying to maintain one of our borders. When he returned back to hear Jacob was gone, in seconds there was a hole the shape of his fist on the wall. He wanted to hold an all-out search, but that would be the same thing as us holding up a banner and telling the other side that they had a valuable hostage they could capture.

In the end, we had to be discreet in our worries.

But as more time passed, our worries were beginning to pile up, and just as even my own resolve was about to break, he arrived.

Well, seeing it like that sounded far too grand.

He was dragged in like a half-dead corpse by no other person than Vivian Gandallon..

Vivian Gandallon—the Viper.

At first, I took it to be an illusion. It made no sense that one of the biggest thorns that had stuck itself deep into our flesh would return our brother back to us mostly unharmed.

Unfortunately, it was Gabriel that recovered himself first, and he was ready to launch himself at her until I grabbed his arm, straining myself to hold him still.

Then I came closer, whispering, "Gabriel, calm yourself down for a second."

"Can’t you see who she is? She’s the Viper and she has walked straight into our territory! This is the werewolf kingdom's way of spitting in our face. We cannot let her live a second longer!"

"I’ve always told you to think first, Gabriel, before you throw a punch. Look... that’s our brother..."

"He has been drugged," Gabriel pointed out, his anger leveling down but not disappearing completely. Apart from the drug, there were no other injuries, at least no other visible ones on Jacob, and even Gabriel, would have to consider why she would bother bringing him here instead of taking him as a valuable hostage.

There were too many things that were not adding up, and answers that could not be cut from her corpse, so I made the next best decision.

Locking her up in our dungeon, she didn’t resist at all. In fact, she made herself quite comfortable, like she was completely unaware that she was surrounded by enemies on all sides.

I had heard rumors that she had been replaced by her mate. Perhaps she had lost her mind?

The scent cloakers on Jacob had rubbed off on her, so it was making it extremely difficult to get a read on her. Which left me with no other choice other than the undesirable one of talking to her face-to-face, with just a couple of silver bars standing between us, reminding her who was prisoner and who was the captor.

"I never thought I would get a chance to speak directly to the Viper," I said as I walked into the light of the dull bulb.

"The honor is all mine," she made an effort to seem lighthearted, but there was a void in her jokes, an aching emptiness that anyone could look into and see that it was just a pretense.

She sat up from the bed, one of the sparse amenities in the dungeons, coming closer. She had dark circles surrounding her eyes, her hair a tangled mess, and her clothes completely crumpled. She looked nothing like the Viper I had imagined in my mind, that was until I looked into her eyes.

They burned with a passion that pinned me in place, forcing me to maintain eye contact when I didn't even allow my highest-ranking Lycans to look me in the eye.

I managed to break away from it, keeping my calm composure above everything else.

"Let’s not beat around the bush. What are you after? Why did you bring my brother back to us when you could have taken him deeper into werewolf territory and used him as a hostage?"

My mind had run through a dozen different possibilities, but the one that she told me almost made me freeze.

"I have severed all ties with the Voss pack. Now I want to align myself with the Lycans."

I was sure it was my ears playing tricks on me. The Viper, who was known to be, with mild exaggeration, the most viciously loyal woman in Voss pack’s history, was not only cutting ties but coming to join hands with the Lycans.

"I can imagine how you might have been able to deceive my youngest brother with that hogwash," I said, adding a stern edge to my voice. "But I’m not falling for it. I’m sure that you are definitely after something more and this is just a pretense..." I came closer, holding her eyes this time with authority, not whatever was happening before. "Is there some kind of long-term plan to infiltrate us? Get as much information as you can before going back and feeding it to them? Is that what this is?"

It was the way she kept on with the eye contact that really threw me off. I was used to most wolves caving in just from the way I looked at them, but the way she looked right back at me was as if she was waiting for me to cave.

I backed away, covering my eyes as I raked my palm through my hair.

"I can make you talk and…"

"We don’t have time for this."

She interrupted me. I can’t remember the last time anyone interrupted me. I might have done something I would have regretted next, but she spoke up and I was forced to listen.

"Jacob doesn’t have much time. If he doesn't get the antidote, then he'll die.”