The Feral Alpha's Captive-Chapter 38: Inside Job

🔹️THORNE

After combing the Red Mist for two weeks and patrolling the borders of allied packs throughout that time, nothing came up.

There was less activity than before, which told me the allied packs knew to be careful after the attack on our own. They were not taking chances—no reckless hunts, no border skirmishes, no signs of provocation. Which meant there was no opening to find out exactly what had happened to Zeta Kael.

"If this continues, the allied packs will starve," Zeta Lysandra said after the patrol report had been studied. Her voice was just as unforgiving as it had been for days. "With no fresh kills during normal hunts, they will die out."

Not that she sounded particularly bothered by that possibility. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

"And not like that would be a bad thing," Zeta Riven muttered, glancing over the parchment and squinting as though the words personally offended him. "But we need Kael back. This clan cannot lose another Zeta."

I nodded.

Zetas were high-ranked anywhere, but in our clan they were something else entirely. Most of the Vargans of Silverfang who had survived the slaughter—my mother’s slaughter—had been distributed to allied packs and worked to death. Their children replaced them in the slave force, generation after generation.

Slowly, deliberately, the history of Silverfang was being erased. The memory of what it had once been was crushed under the heel of inherited subjugation, along with the wisdom and power of the Witch Luna.

The Zetas were the survivors. The witnesses. The ones who remembered the world before it burned to ash under the High Alpha and his right hand—High Gamma Morgana Nocturne.

Most young, able-bodied Vargans died before their third decade. For an elder Vargan to remain was nothing short of a miracle.

As much as I was the head of the insurgency—the rebirth of our people in the form of a clan—the Zetas were indispensable. Their counsel, their lived knowledge, their scars shaped every strategy we employed.

And as insufferable as Zeta Kael was, he was integral.

Even if he were not found alive, it would be a dishonor to everything he had contributed for him to be buried anywhere but our land.

I refused to let his body be desecrated.

It would be another injustice in a long list of them.

"Thorne," my grandmother’s voice slipped through the wall of my thoughts, soft and sharp all at once. "We may not see your face, but we can tell when something is weighing on you. You see it too, don’t you?"

Nyx stared at her from her perch, head cocked, black eyes gleaming with that uncanny knowing.

I sighed as the other Zetas exchanged confused looks.

"I see it," I conceded.

Before they could demand an explanation, I laid it bare—knowing damn well some of them would refuse to see what was right in front of us.

"This is an inside job."

The silence that followed weighed a ton.

Zeta Lysandra finally spoke, tentative and incredulous. "What is?"

"The incident we are still contending with."

My grandmother inclined her head. "It is all too convenient," she said. "And yet it makes no sense."

Nyx let out a low caw—her ugly version of a chuckle.

Zeta Riven rolled his eyes. "You are looking for yet another way to absolve the omega who calls herself the Silvermoth," he said sharply, "because you want a fated mate for your grandson. I am well aware you do not fancy Delta Ivanna."

The crone was unfazed.

"Each time I am tempted to trust your discernment," she said calmly, "you use your prejudice to disappoint me."

"You speak as though that so-called prejudice is not warranted," Riven snapped. "She is pack-born. Daughter of Morgana Nocturne."

"And yet," my grandmother countered, "the arm of one of ours was severed, a letter the Deltas could not detect before it was secured was found in the hands of a prisoner who has not known a sliver of peace since she arrived here. And still, the obvious frame-up goes right over your old head."

Nyx cawed again.

"Look who’s talking," Zeta Lysandra shot back.

The crone did not so much as blink.

"If you believe it truly so," she asked mildly, "why do you suppose these traitors came up with such an intellectually inept ploy?"

No one answered.

"That is simple," she continued, shrugging one thin shoulder. "They know us. They know exactly how we would react. Quick to jump at what the scene implied without questioning it, because the suspect was someone we preferred to hate rather than see the truth standing plainly before us."

"That assumes intelligence where there is none," Zeta Riven scoffed. "Traitors are not known for subtlety."

"Traitors are known for familiarity," I said quietly.

All eyes turned to me.

"Whoever did this knew our patrol routes, our response times, our internal fractures. They knew exactly which nerve to strike. That kind of precision does not come from the outside."

Zeta Lysandra frowned. "You are suggesting one of us—"

"Or someone close enough to us," I cut in.

The chamber grew colder.

"And Kael?" she asked. "You think he—what? Stumbled upon it?"

"I think Kael saw something he wasn’t supposed to," I said. "And someone made sure he disappeared before he could speak."

"That is conjecture," Riven snapped.

"No," my grandmother said softly. "That is pattern recognition."

Nyx’s feathers bristled.

"And if you are wrong?" Lysandra asked. "If this is what it appears to be?"

"Then we have already lost," I said evenly. "Because it means we have stopped thinking."

The argument might have continued—voices rising, alliances shifting, old wounds reopening—if the doors had not slammed open.

A Gamma burst into the chamber, breathless, eyes wild.

"Zeta Kael," he gasped. "He’s back."

The room froze.

"What?" Lysandra demanded.

"He crossed the western treeline," the Gamma said, chest heaving. "Alone. Injured. He’s alive."

For a heartbeat, no one moved.

Then Nyx screeched, wings flaring.

My grandmother smiled—slow, sharp, vindicated.

"Well," she murmured. "Let us see which truths return with him."

I was already on my feet.