Chapter 98: THE ELDER MEETING
CALLUM’S POV
Rhett opened his mouth. And then closed it.
Something moved through his face — the look of a man who had decided to speak and then remembered something that was more frightening than whatever was in this cell with him — and his shoulders came back up, his jaw set and he looked at the floor and said nothing.
I looked at Dane and he looked at me.
"My family has nothing to do with this." Rhett said. His voice was unsteady but the words were deliberate. "Leave them out of it."
"Then help us leave them out of it." Dane said. "Give us a name. That’s all. One name and this stops being your problem."
Rhett pressed his broken hand against his chest and looked at the wall. "I can’t." He said, his voice tight.
Not I don’t know. Not there’s nobody. I can’t.
Which meant there was someone and they were more frightening to him than we were and he had weighed the two fears against each other in the last thirty seconds and arrived at a conclusion that told me more than a name would have.
I looked at him for a long moment.
Then I looked at Dane. "Make sure nobody comes in or out without my clearance." I said. "Nobody. Not guards, not medical staff, nobody until I say otherwise."
Dane nodded and I walked out.
In the corridor I stood for a moment with my hand against the cold stone wall and thought about the face Rhett had made when I mentioned Blythe. The way the assembly of stories had dropped completely for one unguarded second. Someone had gotten to his family. Not as a threat from us — as a guarantee from them. Whoever was behind this had made sure that Rhett’s silence was the only thing keeping his siblings safe.
That was not Osric’s style.
Osric was careful, patient and political. He moved through pack law and council procedure and the slow machinery of institutional power.
This was something else.
Something that had resources and reach and wasn’t above using a seventeen year old girl as collateral.
I went to my study and called a meeting.
The elders arrived one by one over the next forty minutes. Garic first, then Thorne, then Malik, and finally Osric, who came in last and looked around the assembled room with the expression of a man taking attendance.
I watched him look.
Nobody sat. I hadn’t offered chairs and they were all senior enough to know that a meeting where no chairs were offered was a different kind of meeting from the regular kind.
They stood in the loose crescent they always formed and waited.
And then, before I said a single word, the bickering started.
Garic looked at Malik and said something under his breath. Malik looked at Thorne and Thorne straightened up and cleared his throat and said — "While we have this opportunity, Alpha, the matter of Vanessa—"
"Has been raised." I cut him off.
"It has been raised and not resolved." Thorne said. "She has been on this estate for weeks now. The pack is watching. There are expectations—"
Once more. They just had to do this.
"The pack can continue watching." I said.
"Callum." Osric’s voice came warm. The tone he used when he wanted to sound reasonable. "We understand this is a personal matter. We understand you want to take your time. But the longer this goes on without a formal declaration the more it looks like—"
"Like what." I said.
A pause.
"Like indecision." Osric said carefully. "Which an Alpha cannot afford to project."
"Some of us think the Alpha should be given more time." Garic said, looking at Osric. "He’s been more than accommodating about this entire arrangement and—"
"More time accomplishes nothing." Thorne said. "The woman is here. She’s demonstrated herself to be—"
"She’s demonstrated herself to be exactly what Osric told us she would be." Malik said. "Which is a different thing from demonstrating herself to be what the Alpha needs."
"And what does the Alpha need?" Thorne said. "According to you."
"Someone he actually chose." Malik said flatly.
The room went quiet.
Osric looked at Malik with an expression that was trying very hard to be neutral and not quite getting there.
I let the silence sit and let them hear themselves in it.
Then I looked around the room at all of them and I said nothing for long enough that the last of the murmuring died completely and they were all looking at me with the attentiveness of people who understood that I was pissed.
"We caught an intruder last night." I said.
The atmosphere shifted.
"He has been operating on this estate for approximately two months." I said. "Moving through our boundary gaps. Accessing restricted areas. Breaking into residential housing." I looked around the table. "He has been caught and is currently in our custody."
"Who is he?" Garic asked.
"That’s being determined." I said. "What I can tell you is that his level of access to our internal information — our patrol rotation, our schedule gaps, our residential arrangements — strongly suggests he had help from someone inside this estate."
The room was very quiet now.
I watched their faces. Garic’s frown deepening — genuine, I thought. Thorne going still. Malik’s eyes moving briefly to Osric and then back to me, which was its own kind of information.
Osric’s face gave nothing.
Of course it didn’t.
"What are you saying?" Thorne said carefully.
"I’m saying that someone in this pack has been feeding information to an outside operative for two months." I said. "And that anyone connected to that operative will be held fully accountable under pack law." I let that sit for a moment. "I wanted you all to know that we are aware of this. That we are actively investigating. And that the investigation will go wherever it leads."
I looked at Osric when I said the last part.
He looked back at me with his warm patient eyes and folded his hands and said nothing.
"Thank you for coming." I said.
They filed out.
I watched them go and then looked at Dane who had been standing at the side of the room the whole time. "Follow Osric." I said quietly. "Or put someone on him. Someone he doesn’t know."
"Already planning it." Dane said.
"And the others." I said. "All of them. I want to know if any of them make contact with anyone unusual in the next forty eight hours."
"Done." He said and he moved toward the door but stopped. "Callum."
"What." I frowned.
"Rhett didn’t give us a name." He said. "But the way he reacted when you mentioned his sister—"
"I know." I said.
"Whoever has his family isn’t Osric." He said. "Osric doesn’t operate like that."
"I know." I said again.
Dane looked at me. "Then we have a problem we haven’t fully identified yet."
"We have several." I sighed. "Go follow Osric."
He went.
I sat down at my desk and looked at the wall and thought about Rhett’s face when he said I can’t. The way fear looked when it wasn’t fear of the thing in the room with you but fear of something waiting for you outside it.
Someone had his sister.
Someone was patient enough and resourced enough and ruthless enough to use a seventeen year old girl as a guarantee of silence.
But who?