MARKED BY THE ENEMY

CHAPTER 22: PATTERN

Elira's POV

Naya worked through Corrin's records for two full days, and I spent most of that time helping where I could, sorting printed timestamps into piles while she cross referenced them against scout logs, phone records, and anything else that might confirm or dismiss what Whitlock had pointed us toward.

"Here," Naya said, on the second afternoon, sliding a sheet across the table toward me. "Look at this pattern. Every time Corrin logged a report about border activity near the mill, there's a gap. Sometimes ten minutes, sometimes closer to thirty, between when the scout radioed in and when Corrin's official log shows the entry." "Could that just be normal delay? Writing things down, getting to a desk?"

"It could be, if it happened randomly," Naya said. "It doesn't happen randomly. It happens specifically on reports involving Reeve's movements, or activity near properties Whitlock later identified as connected to Corbin. Every other report Corrin's filed, ordinary pack business, territory disputes, nothing sensitive, logs almost instantly." She tapped the sheet. "That's not sloppy record keeping. That's someone taking time to make a call before writing anything down."

The implication settled cold in my chest. "He's been warning them. For months."

"It looks that way." Naya's jaw tightened. "I don't want it to be true. Corrin trained half the scouts currently active in this pack, myself included when I was young. He's the reason half of us know how to track properly." She set down the pen she'd been holding. "But the pattern is too consistent to be coincidence, and I've checked it four different ways now trying to find an innocent explanation."

Kane found us there an hour later, and Naya walked him through everything she'd found in the same careful, methodical way, watching his face carefully for a reaction he mostly kept controlled until she finished.

"That's enough to act on," he said finally, quiet and grim. "Not enough to prove it publicly yet, the same problem we had with Reeve, but enough that I'm not willing to wait for more confirmation while he potentially warns Corbin that we're closing in."

"If we move too fast, we tip him off the same way we lost Reeve," Naya warned. "I know." Kane rubbed a hand over his face. "Which means we need to do this carefully. Farris should be the one to approach him. Someone he trusts, someone who won't raise his guard the way an official confrontation would."

Farris arrived within the hour, and the four of us sat together working through a plan that felt uncomfortably like the one that had failed with Reeve, careful surveillance, watching for any sign Corrin sensed he'd been discovered, waiting for the right moment to move without giving him the chance to run or warn anyone further.

"I'll talk to him tonight," Farris said finally. "Socially, nothing that would seem unusual. I've had dinner with Corrin more times than I can count over thirty years. One more evening won't raise suspicion." Her expression had gone carefully controlled, the same discipline I'd watched her use in the council room weeks ago, though something underneath it looked genuinely pained. "I'll see what I can learn without asking anything directly."

"Be careful," Kane said. "If he's been feeding information to Corbin for this long, he's not someone to underestimate."

"I've known Corrin longer than you've been alive," Farris said, not unkindly. "I understand exactly what he's capable of, better than anyone else in this house." Something old and tired moved behind her eyes. "That's what makes this so difficult. I keep hoping Naya's pattern has some explanation none of us have thought of yet. I know how unlikely that hope is, and I'm holding onto it anyway."

I understood that feeling more than I wanted to admit, thinking of Whitlock's twenty two years of exile, of Doyle's quiet fear, of everyone in this story who'd been forced to reconcile people they trusted with truths that didn't fit the version of them they'd carried for years.

Farris left for her dinner with Corrin just after sunset, and the rest of us settled into the same unbearable waiting that had defined the last week, Kane pacing the length of the kitchen more than once before finally sitting across from me, exhaustion and worry both etched into his face."You're thinking about Farris," I said.

"I'm thinking about how many more people in this pack I'm going to have to question before this is over," Kane admitted. "I became Alpha because I believed I understood every wolf under my protection well enough to know who deserved my trust and who didn't. The last three weeks have taught me how wrong that confidence was."

"You couldn't have known," I said gently. "Corbin's been building this for over a year, probably longer. That's not a failure of judgment. That's just how deeply hidden he made sure this stayed."

"Maybe." Kane didn't sound convinced. "But it doesn't change how it feels, sitting here wondering if the next name we uncover belongs to someone I've trusted my entire life." His eyes found mine, something raw underneath the exhaustion. "You've had to do this too. Doyle, your own town, people you grew up believing were simply background figures in your life. How do you carry that without it changing everything you believe about people?"

I thought about it honestly before answering, unwilling to give him an easy reassurance that wasn't true. "I don't think it doesn't change you," I said finally. "I think it has to. I just don't think it has to change you into someone who trusts nobody. It just means you get more careful about who earns it, and you stop assuming trust is owed just because someone's been around a long time."

Kane was quiet for a moment, turning that over. "That's a harder way to live."

"Probably," I agreed. "But it's an honest one. I think that matters more than easy, in the end."

We sat together through the rest of that long evening, waiting for Farris to return with whatever truth she managed to uncover, and somewhere in that quiet waiting, I felt the last of my old certainty about a simple, clear cut world finally settle into something more complicated, more real, and somehow, despite everything, worth holding onto anyway