The Pack Lord in the Shadows

POV: DorianI had started the trace the morning after Draven's warning. Not because I was asked to. Nobody had asked me to. But Draven had said there was a player in the situation that none of us had identified, and unidentified players in situations with this many moving parts were the specific kind of problem that got worse the longer they stayed unidentified. So I had started the trace the way I started all traces. Quietly, methodically, from the outside in.The name Aldric Voss had been a deliberate misdirection. I understood that within the first three days. The commercial treaties that Draven had referenced were real, but the name attached to them in the public record was a registration alias, a legitimate business identity used by a holding structure that sat two layers above the actual controlling party. It was not illegal. It was the kind of arrangement used by people who wanted to move through public record without their name being the first thing a search returned.I found

112; Sable's Father

POV: LyraDorian told me at breakfast, He sat down across from me with his tray and his usual morning expression, which was the expression of someone who had already been awake and working for two hours and was now choosing the right moment to deliver something he had been sitting with since last night. I had learned to read that expression accurately. It meant the information was significant and he had already decided how to present it.He presented it quietly and completely, between the first and second cup of tea, with the dining hall noise around us providing the kind of cover that made certain conversations easier in public than in private. Caius Thorne. The ring of commercial treaties. The three bordering territories already in his orbit. The positioning strategy built across two years to take advantage of exactly the kind of instability the misconduct finding was going to create.I listened without interrupting. Then he told me about the meeting. I put my cup down."Edran Ashve

113; The Leak

POV: RonanDorian laid it out at seven in the morning. He had been awake most of the night. I could tell from the quality of his focus, the particular sharpness that came not from rest but from sustained concentration, the way a blade gets its edge from friction rather than stillness. He had the documents arranged on the study room table and a cup of tea that had gone cold an hour ago and the expression he wore when he had followed something to its end and was ready to show someone else the path.I sat across from him and listened. The suspect was a council administrative assistant named Holt. Three years in the reform division's outer office. Unremarkable record, competent performance evaluations, the kind of presence that accumulated in institutional settings without drawing particular attention. Nobody's primary focus. Nobody's concerned."Family connections," I said."Two territories," Dorian said. He placed a document on the table and pointed to two names. "His mother's side is f

114; Feeding the Leak

POV: LyraDorian explained the plan on Monday evening. We were all in the study room. Ronan at the end of the table, Cassian beside him with his notebook open and his pen ready, Sable in the chair by the window that had become her chair over the past weeks, and me across from Dorian, who had the documents arranged in front of him with the precision of a man who had rehearsed the presentation in his head and was now simply executing it.He laid it out clearly and without ornamentation. The reform division filing system had a document management layer that administrative staff used to process, log, and cross-reference hearing preparation materials. Holt had been using his access to this layer to pull documents and pass their contents to an intermediary. The access was legitimate. The use of it was not. But because the access was legitimate, introducing a new document into the system through the same layer would appear entirely routine to anyone watching the system from the outside."We

All Chapters of Marked By The Rival Alphas: Chapter 111 - Chapter 114

The Pack Lord in the Shadows

112; Sable's Father

113; The Leak

114; Feeding the Leak