Semua Bab The Alpha Forgets : Bab 71 - Bab 75

71 The packhouse had finally gone quiet. Not silent Dark Mountain never truly was but quieter in a way that only came after something big had been claimed, witnessed, and celebrated. The echoes of music still lingered faintly in the walls, laughter carried down distant corridors, and somewhere far below a stubborn group of wolves refused to let the night end. But up here it was still. Decker stood in his office beneath a low lamplight, Matthew’s file spread open across his desk. The Luna ceremony was over. Lotty was his Luna. The pack had accepted it. And now, with the mountain settled for the night, Decker turned his attention back to the part no one had celebrated. The rot. He had been reading for over an hour. Not skimming. Reading. Again and again, forcing himself past the satisfaction of the ceremony and into the colder reality waiting underneath it. Because the truth didn’t care that the pack had howled for their Luna. It didn’t care that the mountain had felt whole for a fe

73 The packhouse had gone from celebration to containment in less than an hour. Doors quietly sealed. Corridors watched. Movement controlled without panic. To anyone unaware, Dark Mountain had simply settled after a long night. To the wolves who mattered it had locked down. Three separate rooms. Three separate prisoners. Three separate interrogations. And one shared understanding between the Alpha, his Beta, and his General: Do not bring in the suspects yet. Not until they knew exactly how deep the rot went. Decker’s room. The room he chose was small. Stone walls. No windows. One table bolted to the floor. No distractions. No escape. The wolf across from him was the one from the sitting room the one Hale’s false schedule had drawn in like bait on a hook. He wasn’t a high-ranking wolf. Not a leader. But he wasn’t a mindless rogue either. There was discipline in the way he held himself, even with his hands bound and his throat still marked from where Decker had pinned him to the wal

75 The next phase began quietly. That was the only way it could work. If any of the three suspected for a second that the noose was being tightened around them, they would stop moving, stop passing information, and whoever sat above them, the real hand on the knife, would vanish deeper into shadow. So Decker, Tony, Jared, and Lotty did what dangerous wolves did best. They lied carefully. By the following morning, the trap had changed shape. No longer a single false thread. Now it was a weave. Layered. Dense. Impossible to read cleanly from the inside. And that was exactly the point. Decker stood in the strategy room with the revised schedules spread across the table, one hand braced against the wood while Tony shuffled papers into separate stacks. Jared stood at the opposite end, going over patrol notes with the same hard patience he brought to war planning. Lotty sat near the hearth with a copy of the household schedule across her lap, reading it for the third time to make sure ev