Charles and I finished our dinner in silence. There wasn’t much else to say that we wanted to share in the open space of the living room. Everything else would need to be dealt with more privately.Besides, from the tightness of his jaw and stiff set of his shoulders, everything else he had to say wasn’t in favor of what I wanted to do next.After dinner, Charles made a show of turning on the TV and sitting down in the living room. I doubted he was really watching, though. He selected some boring program about yachting, and I’d never seen him anywhere near a boat.

I touched Theo’s hand. “Let’s go for a walk,” I suggested.Theo had been with me long enough that he caught my meaning and just nodded. The two of us walked, and I directed us out into the center of a grassy field. At this time of year, no one was utilizing the lawn space, and there were no buildings, bushes, or anything around us where anyone could slyly overhear what we were talking about.Still, when I spoke, I used a low voice. “I’ve been looking over everything, not just about Anthony, but from the corruption I uncovered at the very beginning. I’ve been trying to add the pieces together, and there is one frightening t

Gwen snarled in Anthony’s direction. “The only thing you can do to make up for all the trouble you’ve caused is to burn in hell.”He nodded. “I suppose I deserve that. But please hear me out.” He turned a pathetic look on me. “You’re a reporter and the one who’s out for truth for everyone. Aren’t you interested in hearing what I have to say? Getting the whole truth before you act?”I let out a huge sigh. He’d played upon my only remaining sympathy for him. “Make it quick,” I snapped.He nodded but st

Back when Alpha King James was a young man, he refused the arranged marriage that his parents set up for him. We definitely hadn’t learned about that. He opted instead to select his own wife.This was Luna Queen Rosemary from our history books. In class, we learned that she was an unsuitable queen, being both too soft in nature and too weak in her health. But in the archive’s database were documents of abuse.The poor woman saw the palace physicians on a regular basis, not for sicknesses but for bruises, broken bones, small cuts, and lacerations. It was a sickening account of domestic abuse and violence.

I could see that Charles now fully blamed the Alpha King for the fall of his family. Thanks to the information we’d uncovered with Anthony Bellweather, we discovered that the Alpha King found the Rafe family too much of a threat.With a young son and heir to their conglomerate and control over much of the media on the far side of Orlune from Packhaven, the king had decided to silence any opposition preemptively. And he’d employed Anthony’s services, or rather, forced Anthony into service, to accomplish that.This totally made sense. From everything I had learned about the pack structure, who better to use than an alpha family who would otherwise