Alpha's Secret Bride

The first light of moonrise filtered through the tall, arched windows of the mysterious man’s underground headquarters, casting a pale glow across the polished stone floors. The chamber remained quiet except for the low hum of computers and the occasional footsteps of guards moving through the tunnels outside.

The name on the screen had not changed.

Neither had he.

He had spent most of the moonfall going over Rivena’s information, returning again and again to the details she had given them. But now, everything seemed to point toward something far more disturbing than he had expected.

He slowly leaned closer to the screen, his eyes fixed on the single name.

Impossible.

He had spent winters believing that person was gone. Dead. Buried beneath the past, along with every secret they had carried with them.

Yet the name was there.

And if the information was genuine, then the person he had thought was long gone might have been alive all along.

Rivena remained a few steps behind him, watching the change in his expression.

"You know who that is," she said quietly.

His jaw tightened.

"I know who the name belongs to."

Rivena moved closer to the desk. "Then tell me."

He didn’t answer immediately. His fingers rested against the edge of the desk as his eyes moved over the information attached to the file.

The dates.

The locations.

The names of those who had died.

One by one, they began to connect in his mind.

The more pieces he put together, the harder it became to believe that the kingdom’s troubles had been a string of unrelated events. If Rivena was right, the bloodshed and betrayals of the past twenty-five winters had been connected from the beginning, carefully planned by an alpha who had remained hidden while others took the blame.

And now, after all these winters, the trail had finally led them to him.

Or perhaps, he realized with a growing unease, it had never really been about finding the person behind everything.

It had been about making sure they were never found.

He looked at Rivena.

"Where did you get this file?"

Her expression hardened. "From the records I told you about."

"That’s not what I asked."

Rivena held his gaze for a moment before answering.

"I didn’t find the file."

A heavy silence settled over the chamber.

"Then who did?"

Rivena glanced at the name on the screen.

"I think they wanted us to find it."

One question kept bothering him. Why had Rivena kept so much of this information to herself until Nelson arrived? He had seen the hesitation in her eyes when she finally began talking, as if she had been waiting for the sibling she trusted before revealing what she knew.

By the time Nelson entered the command chamber, the man had already poured two cups of coffee. He handed one to Nelson and carried the other toward the tall,arched window. Pale moonrise light stretched across the valley below, but he barely looked at it before turning back to the maps covering the table.

"You look terrible," he said.

Nelson accepted the coffee with a tired smile. "I don’t think sleep is possible anymore."

He leaned against the edge of the table and took a sip before looking at Nelson. "What are you thinking about?"

"My father."

The man set his cup down. "What about him?"

Nelson lowered his gaze to the coffee in his hands. "Before he died, he told me something I never understood. He said that if anything happened to him, I should never trust the official investigation into his death."

The man’s expression changed. "Why?"

"I don’t know. He never explained." Nelson looked up. "He was fighting a war he couldn’t win alone, and I always thought he was talking about the enemy in front of him. Now I’m not so sure."

The man stepped closer to the table. "Did he leave anything behind?"

"No. I didn’t know about it until Rivena revealed the truth."

The man studied him for a moment before reaching for the nearest folder.

"Then maybe he left something you never knew to look for."

Nelson straightened. "You think my father knew about all this?"

"I think we should find out what he knew before we decide what he didn’t."

Nelson set his coffee aside.

"Where do we start?"

The man looked over the maps, then back at him.

"With everything your father left behind."

__

An hour later, a black SUV moved quietly through the nearly empty streets. The man sat in the front passenger seat while Nelson drove. Wyatt, Timothy, and two trusted guards occupied the back, dressed in ordinary clothes with their weapons concealed beneath their jackets.

There were no emblems on the vehicle and no second car following them. They had left the hideout without notifying anyone outside their small circle, and they avoided the main roads whenever possible. If anyone happened to notice the SUV, there would be nothing about it to suggest who was inside.

After nearly an hour on the road, Nelson turned onto a narrow dirt track that disappeared between the trees. Branches scraped lightly against the sides of the SUV as he followed the overgrown path deeper into the forest. Eventually, the trees opened around a small abandoned cabin.

Broken windows, faded paint, and thick vines covering the walls made the place look as though no one had stepped inside for winters.

Nelson switched off the engine.

The man they now called the Boss looked through the windshield at the cabin.

"Your father owned this place?"

Nelson nodded. "He called it his fishing cabin."

The Boss glanced at the overgrown property and gave a faint smile. "I doubt he ever came here to fish."

Nelson couldn’t help laughing. "No. He didn’t."

They entered cautiously, with one of the guards checking the chambers while the others followed. Dust covered the furniture, and old chairs and shelves stood exactly where they had been left. There was nothing expensive or unusual in sight, nothing that would make anyone think the cabin was worth searching.

The Boss slowly looked around the chamber. "If anyone searched this place, they’d leave disappointed."

Nelson walked toward the old stone fireplace. He brushed his fingers across the dusty mantel and stared at it for a moment.

"My father always told me something whenever I asked why he kept this place."

The Boss looked over. "What did he say?"

Nelson crouched beside the fireplace and cleared away a layer of dust from one of the stones.

"’The safest place is the one everyone ignores.’"

He pressed against the loose stone.

A soft click came from beneath the floor.

Everyone went still.

A narrow section of the wooden floor shifted inward, revealing a dark opening and a staircase descending into the ground. One of the guards immediately reached beneath his jacket and rested a hand on his concealed weapon.

The Boss stepped closer and looked down the stairs.

"Your father planned this."

Nelson stared into the darkness, a faint smile touching his lips.

"He always did."

The underground chamber was far more organized than Nelson had expected. Shelves covered almost every wall, each one packed with labeled boxes, hard drives, old photo albums, locked briefcases, and bundles of newspaper clippings. Nothing had been left lying around randomly. Dates, names, and locations were written on nearly every folder, making it clear that his father had spent winters sorting and preserving everything he had collected.

Nelson stood in the middle of the chamber, staring at the shelves. "My father kept all of this?"

The Boss pulled a thick folder from one of the shelves and opened it. Inside were copies of financial records, correspondence, and photographs, all arranged in chronological order.

"He wasn’t collecting memories," he said quietly. He looked at Nelson and closed the folder. "He was building a case."

They spent the next three hours going through the archive. The deeper they went, the more disturbing the records became. Financial statements sat beside property documents, payment receipts, bank transfers, and contracts for companies that appeared legitimate on paper but had little evidence of doing any real business.

Nelson carried another stack of documents to the table and spread them out. "These aren’t ordinary transactions."

Timothy was already working through the records from a secure connection. The documents had been scanned and sent to his computer one batch at a time, and his fingers moved quickly across the keyboard as he traced the account numbers through the financial records.

"Give me a minute," Timothy said.

The others waited while lines of information filled his screen. Then he stopped typing.

The Boss noticed immediately. "What did you find?"

Timothy leaned closer to the screen. "These accounts belong to shell companies. Most of them were registered under different names, but the ownership records keep leading back to the same group of people."

"Who?"

Timothy pulled up another set of records. His expression hardened.

"People connected to the palace."

Nelson stared at him. "You’re sure?"

"I checked the transfers twice." Timothy turned the screen toward them. "Money moved from accounts controlled by these companies into private accounts linked to officials inside the royal administration. Some of it was routed through construction companies first to make the payments look legitimate."

Wyatt looked over the records. "So a regent inside the palace was helping move the money."

"That’s what the records suggest," Timothy said.

Nelson slowly lowered himself into a chair. "All these winters..."

The Boss didn’t look away from the screen.

"Keep going."

Wyatt returned to the shelves while Nelson began sorting through another box. After several minutes, he opened a worn photo album and started turning the pages. Most of the photographs showed royal ceremonies, formal dinners, and meetings that had taken place winters ago.

Then he stopped.

His thumb remained pressed against the edge of one photograph.

"Boss."

The Boss walked over. "What is it?"

Nelson handed him the photograph.