All Chapters of Claimed by the Enemy’s Alpha: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

20 Chapters

ZAC MOVES HER

ZAC'S POVRia hands me the figurine when I reach her room and I take it and turn it over in my palm.The wood is dark and dense and the carving is rough but deliberate. The pattern notched into the base is a specific one and I recognize it because I made it my business years ago to know the markings of every neighboring pack. This one belongs to Black Hallow. It is the kind of marker they leave for enemies they are tracking and someone inside my pack placed it on her pillow while she slept two corridors away from my chamber.I set it on the table."Where exactly was it?" I ask."Center of the pillow," she says. "My bag had been moved as well. Whoever came in did not rush. They were in here long enough to go through my things.""Did they take anything?""There is nothing to take," she says. "I came in with almost nothing." She pauses. "But they moved everything. They wanted me to know they had touched it."I look at the figurine again and then I put it in my pocket. I look at Ria. She

QUESTIONED

ZAC'S POVHis name is Oskar.Mid-rank, six years in White Fang, no complaints on his record and no prior disciplinary issues. He trains with the morning group and eats in the main hall and until last night nobody would have looked twice at him.I bring him into a small storage room off the east corridor. No elders, no additional witnesses. Just the two of us and a closed door.I do not sit. I stand across from him with my arms at my sides and I look at him and I wait.He lasts about forty seconds."I did not tell them anything important," he says. His voice comes out too quickly and his eyes keep drifting slightly to the left. "I want you to know that first. Whatever you heard, I did not give them anything real.""Tell me what happened," I say. "From the beginning. Do not leave anything out."He looks at me and then at the door and then back at me. "All of it?""All of it," I say.He exhales and looks at his hands and then he starts talking.Three weeks ago he got a message through an

WHO SENT IT

ZAC'S POV The handwriting is not Oskar's. I already know what Oskar's handwriting looks like from his duty reports. This is someone else entirely and whoever they are they had access to this building and they were careful enough to leave no other trace. Two things this tells me. One, Oskar is not the only person inside White Fang with a connection to what is happening around her. Two, someone in this pack has chosen a side and for reasons I do not yet understand they have chosen hers. I go to find Rowan.

THE BOND SHE CANNOT FEEL

RIA'S POVHe does not answer right away and that is the first time I have seen him do that. Every question I have asked him since I got here he has answered, quickly or slowly but always without hesitating like that.I wait.He leans forward with his elbows on the table and he looks at me and then he says, "I do not know why you cannot feel it yet.""That is an honest answer," I say."I try to give those," he says. "The bond hit me the moment I found you. I felt it before I even saw your face properly. It was immediate and it was not something I could ignore or talk myself out of." He pauses. "I know that is not what you experience. I know you feel none of that. From what I understand, trauma and exhaustion can suppress a wolf's ability to sense the bond. Your wolf has been through a great deal."I think about that. "So it might come eventually.""It might," he says. "Or it might not come the way I felt it. I cannot promise you either way and I am not going to try.""But you believe t

RODERIC WRITES AGAIN

ZAC'S POVThe second letter from Roderic arrives the next morning.Rowan brings it in and sets it on the desk the same way he set the first one down and I can tell from his face that this one is different in tone from the last.I open it and read.Roderic has dropped the formal language. This one is direct and personal. He writes that I am knowingly sheltering a convicted murderer and that my continued refusal to comply is an insult to every principle of inter-pack law that the Highlands have agreed to uphold. He writes that he gave me the opportunity to handle this quietly and with dignity and that I chose instead to make it a confrontation. He says the patience of Black Hallow is not unlimited and that consequences will follow.I read it twice and then I fold it."Bad?" Rowan asks."Different," I say. "The first one was formal. This one is personal. He is dropping procedure and going straight to pressure." I put it in the same drawer as the first one and close it. "Which means the f

DARA

RIA'S POVThe healer's house has become something close to routine now.I come in the morning and Lira is already there and Maren points at things without saying much and I do what she points at. Today it is herbs. There are three baskets of dried bundles that need sorting by type and I sit at the low table near the window and work through them one by one. My hands are faster at this than Lira's and Maren noticed that on the first day and has not commented on it but she does keep giving me more."You have done this before," Lira says, watching my fingers move."Every day for four years," I say. "The Luna kept a herb shelf and I managed it."Lira nods. "She trained you well.""She did," I say.We work in quiet for a while and Lira hums something under her breath that she has been humming every morning and I have started to anticipate it the way you anticipate the sound of something familiar."Maren told me this morning she is thinking about giving you the fever herb rotation," Lira say

THE MAN FROM BLACK HALLOW

ZAC'S POVHis name is Crest and he has been inside White Fang for three years.I have him brought to the same small room I used for Oskar, no witnesses, no official record yet. I want to hear what he says before I decide what to do with it.He comes in looking like a man who has been told he is being brought to the Alpha but not told why and he sits down across from me and he is careful about it. More careful than Oskar was. That tells me something already.I do not speak immediately. I let the silence sit for a moment and I watch him in it. His hands are still. His face is composed. He is someone who has practice managing how he appears under pressure and that in itself is information."Your background is known to me," I say. "I know where you came from before White Fang. I am not asking you to explain that. What I am asking is whether you have been in contact with anyone from your former pack since Ria Vale arrived here."He looks at me steadily. "No," he says.His eyes move once to

ANOTHER LETTER

ZAC'S POVRowan hands me the third letter from Roderic and even before I open it I can see that the envelope is heavier than the last two.I break the seal and unfold it and there are two sheets inside instead of one.I read the first page. Roderic has returned to formal language but this version of formal is different from the first letter. The first one was cold and procedural. This one is formal the way a public document is formal, the kind of language designed to be read by more than one person. He restates his demand for Ria's return with full legal framing and adds a new charge that White Fang is willfully obstructing justice and setting a dangerous precedent for the governance of the entire Highlands. He writes that he has given us every opportunity to resolve this with dignity.I read the second page. It is a list of the three neighboring pack Alphas who have received copies of this letter, each name and territory printed clearly.I set both pages down and I look at them for a

WHERE SHE WENT

RIA'S POVI did not run.I want to be clear about that, at least to myself, because when Colt realizes I am not coming out of the washroom and the whole corridor starts moving the way I know it will, the first thing anyone will assume is that I ran and I did not.What I did was find a second door.It was at the back of the washroom, narrow and set into the wall in a way that you would only notice if you were standing still long enough to actually see what was around you. I stood still. I saw it. I pushed it open and it led into a narrow passage between two buildings and I followed it because I needed five minutes of being somewhere that nobody had assigned to me.That is all this was.The passage opens into a small yard at the back of the inner building. Wooden crates along one wall, bundled rope on a shelf, the smell of grain and old wood. No people. No eyes. No one pointing me somewhere or watching from a doorway or trailing two steps behind me at a measured distance.I pull in a sl

THE WARRIOR

ZAC'S POVI stop and I turn around slowly.The warrior is still standing there. His name is Devlin and I know it because Rowan mentioned him in the count two days ago and I filed it and here he is now standing in my corridor having said what he said in front of his two colleagues who have both quietly taken half a step away from him.Devlin holds his ground. His expression does not change. He is looking at me the way someone looks when they have made a decision and decided to own it and I can see that he thinks owning it makes it legitimate.The corridor is completely still. Two of my senior warriors are at the far end and they have stopped moving. Every person in earshot is watching and none of them are saying anything.I look at him for a long moment and I do not raise my voice."You will apologize," I say.Devlin holds my gaze. "With respect, Alpha, half this pack is thinking what I just said. I am the only one who said it out loud.""That does not make it right," I say. "It makes

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