The Alphas Assassin (Complete)

Unsolved Cases

*Ariella*

Carter dropped Miss Anna off at her home, tucked back in a tiny suburb in the interior of the city, a few miles from the hotel and on the opposite side of town from the Full Moon Pack house.

I switched to the passenger seat as she waved us goodbye, leaving me with a gentle kiss on each of my cheeks and a hug before she headed into her little brick and mortar house that looked like it belonged in a fairies cottage core dreams. A black cat laid sunbathing on the porch and barely paid her any mind as she walked past.

“I want a house like that…” I sighed softly, staring with envy as the wooden door shut and lights flickered on through the silvery white curtains as she moved through the house.

“Dang, one month knowing a guy and you already wanna be some little housewife?” Carter teased as he pulled the car from the driveway. I giggled and shook my head.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” I rolled my eyes. “But…” I relented, “It would be nice to have a little house like that… away from the hustle and bustle, private… ya know…”

He shrugged. “To each their own.”

“You can’t say you want to be stuck with no privacy all your life…” I responded.

“I think you got spoiled being in a real pack.” He teased back.

I shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe I did kinda get used to just existing like a normal person… no training, no regiments, no Farm Rules…”

“Did you think about Mason's offer?” He asked.

I sighed and shook my head. Turning my eyes down to my hands for a moment as I fiddled with my fingers. “No… I mean… kind of… but I haven’t decided…”

“What’s got you hung up?”

“I just… don’t know how I’m going to explain any of it to Gabriel…” I responded, “Then there’s… the issue still of the feud between Full Moon and Waning Moon… since I’m still from that pack… I guess I don’t know how that will affect us in the future since everyone from Waning Moon was sentenced to death…”

“Could just talk to him about it…”

“Oh yeah, that’ll go over well. ‘Hey Gabe, just so ya know, your pack killed mine, and my goal was to kill you, but now we are mates and I know I rejected you but I’m pregnant with your baby and we should, like, totally make up and just put all this behind us.’ As if that will go over well…” I scoffed as I rolled my eyes.

“Worth a shot.”

“What, are you actually saying you want me to go back to him!?” I asked in a bemused manner, “I thought you said you can’t stand the guy.”

“Well, I mean I couldn’t stand the guy when he took advantage of you in his office…”

“In his defense I… kinda let him.” I laughed,

“Kinda.” He moved his fingers in air quotes over the steering wheel.

“I mean! I did! That heat hit me hard and I wanted it. He just happened to be the one who found me… I’d have done just about anyone I think… it was just pure luck that it was Gabriel.”

“Still…” Carter continued, “I didn’t like him then, but the more you talked about him, and especially after finding out you’re mates… you know I’m a sucker for mate stuff… and I want you happy, I don’t want you living your whole life with this personal vendetta over your head. You have the chance to be happy, have a mate, a family… I mean, that’s something not many of us get to choose to do at The Farm…” he paused, taking a breath and shifting his head from side to side in a hesitant manner. “You seemed to get along well with him, and his pack members and maybe… ya know… Maybe this is your chance to have a normal life…” he sighed and I watched him brush his fingers through his blond hair. “Not everyone gets the chance to leave The Farm… maybe… maybe you should take advantage of it…”

“The Farm is my family… Carter…” I said in a soft voice, “You… and Mason… everyone there is my family… I can’t just abandon The Farm…”

“It wouldn’t be ‘abandoning’… just a way to get out of the responsibility …” he responded turning blue eyes back to me, I saw them glint with the moon overhead. “It’s not like we won’t be here for you and the pup… ya know, ‘It takes a village’ and all that… but Mason said it would relinquish you of all tasks and future missions… you could start fresh, and if you ever wanted to come back… then… ya know…”

“I don’t know yet Carter I just-…”

My voice was cut off by the ringing of his phone. I pulled it from the cup holder and recognized Masons Alias, setting it on the dash as it connected to the Bluetooth in the car.

“Hey Ma-…”

“Carter.” Masons voice cut quickly, cutting Carters voice off. We exchanged glances quickly, Mason never cut us off when we’re were speaking if he could avoid it. He may have been our boss but he was always more than respectful.

“Wha-…”

“Is Ari there?”

Carter looked at me. “Yeah she’s…”

“I’m here…” I responded, Carter turned his eyes back to the road and shrugged slightly.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Is Melany with you guys?”

We glanced again at one another, both shaking our heads.

“N-no…” I started.

“Why?” Carter asked.

“She’s missing…” Mason's voice quieted.

“Missing?” We said in unison. “Everything is gone. Her room is cleared out, files gone, no one has seen her since Carter left…”

“That’s…” I began.

“Weird…” Carter finished.

“Did she say anything to you guys when you were with her?”

We both shook our heads in thought. “No…” Carter answered.

“Not that I can think of…”

“Well…” Carter started, “She had talked about her old pack a lot on the way back to The Farm… Saying she was homesick… maybe it has to do with that?”

“Did she say her pack name? Anything?” Carter's voice was frantic. We had never had a member of our group go missing without some form of evidence. He was trying to get as much info as he could before he sent operatives to find her.

“She mentioned a name when we were headed back after dropping Ari off… Red… uh Red something?… Red Moon? Red…”

“Red Moon…” I heard Mason typing onto his computer, no doubt doing his searches and cross referencing that name with his database. “I don’t have a Red Moon…” he responded with a heavy sigh.

“I know it was Red… maybe Red Oak, or…”

“Red…” I repeated softly after a moment of him thinking, Mason still typing and sighing occasionally over the phone. “Red River?” I whispered, my chest tightening.

“That may be it.” Carter said, snapping his finger and shooting a point toward me. “Try Red River.” He said louder so that Mason could hear him.

“Red… River.” More typing, a few moments of silence, more typing.

My chest began to burn at the name, I didn’t understand why. A pain radiates through me as the name seemed to echo through my ears and scramble my brain.

“Bingo!” Mason cheered excitedly, I saw Carter smile beside me as he looked at the phone then to me and his smile faded.

“Woah! How’d you know that Ar!?”

I’m sure my face had gone flush, I felt hot but a clammy cold feeling slithered up my hands and down my spine as the name continued to ricochet off the walls in my head.

“Way to go Ari!” Mason's voice came through the speaker along with more typing. I was staring silently at the road with my eyebrows scrunched in thought as I tried to remember where I had heard that name and why that pack name caused such pain in my heart.

“Ar…” Carter said more pressingly as he nudged my shoulder gently with his right arm.

“Ye-yeah?”

“How did you know that pack name?” He asked.

“I… I don’t know… I… feel like I remember it from somewhere…” I whispered, I wrung my hands together.

“Melany Ashwood-Briggs is her real name…” Mason said softly, more tapping from his keyboard as his resources did their job and zeroed in on her information. “She’s… wait…” he paused and thought for a moment.

“She’s what?” Carter asked. We had finally pulled into the parking lot of the Hotel.

“Well… Melany…” Mason paused in thought again, more tapping as he confirmed whatever information he was looking at. “The last known record of her was… when she was 15…”

“Okay?” Carter asked, leaning back in his seat slightly as he put the car into park.

“Well…” Another pause and get more typing.

“Out with it Mason.” I scowled at the phone, Carter gave me a concerned glance but then a slight nod showed me he agreed.

“Well, that was more than 13 years ago…”

“And…?” I pushed

“And… Melany was supposed to have just turned 23… she’s only been with us for 8 years… but she really excelled past her age…” Carter remarked, “Right?”

“Right…” Mason answered. “She’d be almost 29…”

“So, she forgot her birthday or…?” I asked.

“No… it’s like she was intentionally wiped from the registry… she’s the daughter of the old Beta Reynaldo Ashwood and Antoinette Briggs but she’s completely gone after 15 years of age… No school records… No doctor records… but no death certificate either… no record of her in any cemetery… but Beta Reynaldo retired 9 years ago and there’s no recorded beta of the pack that can be found…”

“So… she went missing, isn’t that how everyone comes to you…?” Carter asked as his head tilted to the side.

“Yes… but usually if I need to I can find the information on people if their identity comes into question… I never had a last name or pack… she said she had been rouge since she was born…”

“Did you look at birth records? Anything stating she’s had children, any new babies registered? Elections?” Carter thought, “Town census?”

“Everything about her has been gutted…” Mason responded, “but, I took all of you in as kids… of course I didn't record chasing her… she said she was only 15…”

“So…” I began pulling my legs into a criss-cross on the seat, leaning over the dash slightly with my elbow. “She was intentionally deleted from everything they could… to… what? Hide her? Did Reynaldo do something to her?” I scratched my chin softly. “Maybe she was kidnapped? Missing persons reports? I’ve heard of packs kidnapping kids for ransom…”

“Nothing… I checked it all…”

“Huh…” Carter shrugged and looked at me, tilting his head. “Whatcha think Ari…”

“I’m not sure…” I said with a sigh. “I wasn’t really friends with her… so I never pried into her life, you probably have the best info since you were in the car with her for so long going back…”

“She just rambled on about being home sick.” Carter shrugged.

“The name of her pack sounds so familiar but I can’t put my finger on where I’ve heard it before…”

“Mason, can you look up pack treaties between known packs in the area? Close to The Farm, Full Moon, Silver Falls…”

There was a barrage of typing on the other end of the phone. Mason's furious keyboard skills washed the car in a little symphony of clicks and clacks as he typed, clicked, deleted, retyped, and repeated.

“Nothing for Silver Falls besides a territory treaty and a few disagreements about 80 years ago… However, Red River has been in a peaceful alliance with Full Moon for over 50 years… that would go well before Alpha Valerian or Gabriel took it… Nothing in the packs around The Farm besides for a few export and import agreements with some Canadian packs… same with the Mexico packs…”

I swallowed hard as an idea finally came to my mind. “Wh…What about Waning Moon…” I whispered, hoping what I’d said had fallen on deaf ears. I didn’t really want to know; something inside of me told me I had to.

There was another mix of typing and clicking of his mouse. The silence had begun to make me nervous and I had begun to chew the nails on one of my hands.

“Uh…” Mason's voice held an air of apathetic concern. I could tell he was pausing as he was taking in whatever information he had found.

“Mason…” I urged carefully. “What… what did you find…”

“I uh… found an arranged marriage proposal between the Alphas children in an alliance agreement…” he began. “17 years ago…”

“Well I would have only been three…” I began.

“No… not you…” he responded and I tilted my head as my eyes locked with Carters.

“It’s for… Isabel Laurent…”

“Isabel…” the name tasted familiar on my tongue as it escaped my lips. “Isabel…”

“The agreement was for Isabel Laurent and Armin Ramos to marry when Isabel reached 20.”

“Who… who is Isabel?” Carter began as he locked eyes with me.

“Alpha Arlo’s eldest daughter…”

“You have a sister?” Carter asked.

I shook my head “No… I was… an o my child…” I responded.

“According to birth and death records… Alpha Arlo and Luna Kerstin had two daughters… Isabel Laurent was… declared dead at 7… the… the autopsy states she was beaten… tortured, and…”

“STOP!” I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to hear the rest of the statement. There was a pause as tears sprung from my eyes at the thought. I heard Carter clear his throat and reach over to me, placing his hand over mine as I chewed my nails more. I thought I had kicked this bad habit years ago…

“Ar…”

“I… had a sister?” I asked. “And… and she was…” I swallowed the lump forming in my throat. “She was… killed…?”

“Ari…” Mason began, “The pact records say that Alpha Camilo… had asked for your hand in place of Isabel for Armin… after that the pact documents and archive are pretty scarce of information… Then after you turned 6 there were some notes of Alpha Arlo refusing the marriage completely, a few Alpha meeting minutes discussing disagreements between the two packs… then the archive stops completely about the time you’d turn 8… like they were trying to hide you from the public eye… that would have been a bit before I found you…”

“Then… my family was killed when I was 9…”

“There’s a document from the Red River Department of health that has a scanned copy of a handwritten death record of the Waning Moon Pack… it’s dated a few days before I found you… it has Isabel on it…” Mason paused and I could hear his throat dry as he said the next words “Ariella, your… your name is on here too…”

“Does… does it say who killed Isabel?” My voice shook, it was the only piece I could think of within the wealth of information he was giving me.

“It… just says a warring pack… there’s no more information on it… besides for the autopsy and final investigation report in another document… the killers of Isabel were never identified…”

“Send them to Carter…” I ordered. “All the info you have…”

There was a pause as Mason thought. “Ari… are… you sure? It’s… graphic.”

“I was trained just like every other operative.” I responded. “Send them.”

“Just… be prepared…”

“Send. Them.” I growled.

“Okay… okay…” he typed a few things and then pressed send. “Sent…”

“Mason…” I gritted through my teeth.

“Y-yeah?

“Who was it that ordered the assignment on Full Moon…”

“You know I can’t disclose tha-…”

“NOW. MASON.”

He sighed and hesitated “My source says the initials were CRR… but that's all I can-.”

I grabbed the door handle and swung my legs from the car. I slammed the door behind me as I walked through the parking lot and headed toward the lobby of the hotel. My vision began to fade into darkness as I walked. My hands balled into fists where I felt my nails biting the skin of my palms

Then I knocked into a heavy body…