Loving The Enemy Alpha

The Traitor's Mark

Brian's POV

Chloe's hand went slack in Mollie's grip, and I stepped forward before Mollie could shake her awake again.

"Let her rest," I said. "She's given us enough for tonight."

Mollie looked up at me, her eyes wet and furious at once. "Kaelen is alive, Brian. He's alive and they're moving him before the blood moon and we don't even know where."

"I heard her," I said, keeping my voice even even though my own chest had gone tight the moment Chloe said his name. "We'll deal with it, I promise you that. First I need to find out who sent riders after that convoy. Someone knew our route before we did."

"Let me come with you," Mollie said, already rising from the stool beside the cot.

"Stay with her," I said, nodding toward Chloe. "If she wakes again, I want you here. I can handle a scared soldier on my own."

She didn't like it, I could see that plainly on her face, but she sat back down and pressed a cool cloth to Chloe's forehead without another word. I left the healer's chamber and walked fast through the stone corridors, my boots echoing off the walls, straight down toward the dungeon beneath the eastern tower where my guards had dragged the lone survivor from the convoy attack.

He was young, barely past his training years, chained to the wall with a gash across his ribs that Mira hadn't gotten to yet. Blood had dried dark down the side of his tunic. He flinched hard the second torchlight from the corridor spilled across his face.

"Alpha," he said, his voice cracking.

"Tell me everything," I said, crouching down in front of him so we were eye level. "Start from the moment you left the eastern depot. Leave nothing out."

"We were four miles out," he said, swallowing hard. "Just past the old mill crossing. They came from both sides of the road at once. No horns, no warning, nothing."

"How many riders?"

"Six, maybe seven. They moved fast, Alpha. Too fast for regular soldiers."

"Silvermane colors?"

He shook his head hard. "No colors at all. No crest, no banner, nothing on them. I thought maybe rogues at first, but rogues don't hit like that. They knew exactly where to strike us."

That sat wrong in my stomach, colder than the stone floor beneath my knees. "What do you mean, exactly where?"

"They knew our route," he said. "The one we changed two days ago. Only a handful of people inside this fortress knew we'd rerouted the convoy through the mill crossing instead of the northern road."

"Who approved the change?"

"Elder Marcus signed off on it, Alpha. But he answers to the full war council, you know that."

I stood up slowly, my mind already running through every face that had sat around that council table. "Did you see anyone's face? Anyone at all?"

He hesitated, his eyes dropping to the floor.

"Answer me."

"One of them wasn't masked like the rest," he said quietly. "I only saw him for a second before I went down. But I'd know that face anywhere, Alpha, I've seen it a hundred times inside these walls."

"Whose face?"

He hesitated again, and I reached out and grabbed the front of his shirt, hauling him closer until our faces were inches apart.

"Whose face."

"It looked like your brother," he said, the words tumbling out fast now, like he'd been holding them back out of fear. "I swear on my life it looked just like him."

"You're certain."

"I only saw him for a second," he said, quieter now, like he already regretted it. "It could have been someone who looks like him. I don't want to accuse the prince of anything, Alpha, please, I'm only telling you what I saw."

"You already have," I said, letting go of his shirt. "Rest. Mira will see to that wound before the fever sets in."

I walked out of the dungeon with my hands curled so tight my claws pricked into my own palms. My brother had made his hatred of Mollie plain from the very first day she arrived at this fortress. He had stood in the corridor and told me the bond was a curse, that the council would take matters into their own hands if I didn't remove her from the throne myself. I had warned him that night. I had told him if he touched her I would rip his throat out with my own hands.

But an ambush on a supply convoy wasn't the same as touching her directly. It was colder than that. Quieter. The kind of move a man made when he wanted his hands to look clean.

I went straight to the courtyard where the wrecked wagon still sat under torchlight, two guards keeping watch around its perimeter in the cold night air.

"Alpha," one of them said, straightening. "We already searched it top to bottom, nothing left inside worth finding."

"Search it again," I said. "Bring me a torch and hold it steady."

He obeyed without arguing, and I climbed up into the bed of the wagon myself, kneeling in the exact spot where Chloe had been bound and gagged only hours earlier. There had to be something here. Six riders didn't hit a convoy at exactly the right crossing, at exactly the right hour, without someone feeding them the route in advance. And that kind of knowledge meant someone close. Someone with a seat at my own war table.

I ran my hand along the splintered wood, feeling for anything out of place, any gap or seam that didn't belong. My claws caught on a rough patch near the back corner of the wagon bed, where the plank had cracked clean through under the weight of the attack.

"Bring that torch closer," I said.

The guard leaned in, and the light fell clean across the broken wood. I pulled the loose plank back with both hands, and something dark and scorched showed underneath it, half hidden in the shadow of the frame.

I stared at it, my chest going cold and tight all at once. I knew that mark. I had grown up watching it pressed into letters my brother sent from the border posts, private orders he signed without our father's knowledge, a seal only he had ever carried.

It was his personal crest, burned deep into the splintered floorboard of the wagon he'd sworn on ou

r mother's life he had nothing to do with.