جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 80

COLENoah had spilled the contents of Daniel Voss's box across an entire table by the time we got there, photos and papers stacked in careful piles, almost all stuck to places in the room with sticky notes that to everyone except Noah, seemed utterly indecipherable."I found something," he said, not looking up from what he was doing, "and I rather suspect what it means."Lena set her coffee down with a heavy sigh. "Well? Let's see, then."Noah spun the laptop around so we could all see the screen, a map up on it as pack territories were marked across a much wider stretch of the region than any of us might have ever expected to see marked out in such a place in one sitting. There were small red marks scattered across several of them, the dates spanning out across multiple decades, not just years."These are council seat transitions," Noah said, still focused on the screen. "Not just what the council here has. I started cross-referencing the pattern Ivy found - unusually deaths, sudden

COLENoah arrived at my apartment at seven in the morning, dressed just as he had been the day before, clutching the laptop against his chest as if afraid I would steal it the moment it left hands"Someone's been in my system," he announced, before I could even open the doorNot obviously. Carefully. Someone monitoring my searches."Careful enough to only reveal their tracking methods if I specifically search my history for odd or inconsistent queries," Noah continued, moving toward the kitchen counter"A search I only conducted because I felt something was wrong."Lena materialized behind me, her eyes widening with every word. "What do you mean in your system?""A search about the council seats, territories, and names." Noah carefully set his laptop against the table. "Rhys. Daniel Voss. The Architect. All have been flagged at least two weeks ago."A heavy silence stretched between us: the safety of my home considerably less safe all of a sudden."Since when?"Noah hesitated. "Probab

COLEOkafor arrived at my apartment one Tuesday evening, unannounced, and with a knock that had both Lena and me on high alert until we recognized her through the peephole."I heard what happened," she said, once we had let her in, a look of almost guilt twisting across her features. "The car followed Lena. I should have warned you about this.""You knew," Lena said, carefully."I suspected, but did not know for certain until after the incident, and even then only through great care in my deductions rather than anything I could specifically point to." Okafor sat when I gestured to a chair, and a carefully cultivated composure she often wore in council meetings seemed notably absent from her bearing tonight. "I have debated for weeks whether speaking to you directly would be the safer option and I have chosen tonight to speak to you rather than remain silent in this one's name.""What changed?" I asked."You do, to a degree. The scope of your findings. The other packs involved with thi

COLEIt took three days before Aiden returned my call, and as soon as I saw the text message appear on my phone, I knew why Thorne had been so hesitant about disclosing it in the first place.Dr. Holloway. Northcrest University faculty advisor for the journalism department.I read it to Lena twice before showing her the text, watching the color drain from her face as she read the name.“That's my advisor," she said, barely looking up from the message. "Dr. Holloway approved my thesis proposal last month, and I've had office hours with him. He's reviewed half my work that's been published this semester."There was this feeling in the air when I looked into her eyes, that something we'd been chasing across deserted ranger stations and across the length and breadth of the pack territories had, all along, been right here in the offices of the university, close enough to touch, close enough to have been quietly watching over Lena's studies for the past months.We had an emergency council m

COLEDamien requested to talk with me privately, something that hardly ever happened in the last several weeks.Our meeting spot was the same edge of woods, where we talked the morning after the claiming, at the fort-building trees, which neither of us mourned the loss of still yet, still yet in our childhood memories as well. Damien looked better, there was some new strength in him, a purpose firmly fixed in place"I talked with my father again,"he said, right when we met. "A proper conversation. Not the confession.""How did that go?""Better than I anticipated. Worse than I wished. It's still my father, despite all of the other things that he is, and some part of me has always wanted to protect despite knowing."Damien's jaw set, it was a familiar muscle, an old habit that had originally unraveled his father's carefully guarded guilt in Ivy's shop"I asked him for something. A help that wasn't silence.""What kind of help?""He still has his connections. Old relationships that he'