Teasing Her Alpha Guard

CHAPTER 18

Roman

Someone was banging on my door before the sun was even up.

I was still half awake, mind replaying everything from the night before, Dahlia's question hanging in the air between us with no real answer. I pulled on a shirt and crossed the room fast, already bracing myself for bad news. Nothing good ever knocked this early.

I opened the door and found Morgan standing there. He looked wrecked. Eyes red, jaw tight, shirt wrinkled like he hadn't slept at all.

"Morgan. What happened?"

"Can I come in?"

I stepped aside and let him through. He didn't sit. He paced instead, running a hand through his hair over and over like it might shake something loose.

"You're scaring me," I said. "Just say what it is."

He stopped pacing and turned to face me, and his expression made my stomach drop before he'd even opened his mouth.

"I need to tell you something before Lena finds a gentler way to say it. Because there isn't a gentler way."

"Morgan."

"I've been feeding information to Gideon's people." He said it fast, like ripping off a bandage. "For months now."

The room went still.

"Say that again," I said slowly, because some part of me was hoping I'd misheard him.

"I've been leaking information. About you, about Dahlia, about the estate's security. All of it going straight back to Gideon."

I felt something cold settle into my chest, spreading fast. Morgan was the one person I'd never questioned. The one person who'd had my back since we were kids running wild through pack territory, getting into trouble together, watching each other's backs through every job since. And he was standing in front of me admitting he'd been working against me this whole time.

"Why?" My voice came out low. Dangerous.

"They have Elena." His voice cracked on his sister's name. "They took her three months ago, Roman. Right after Gideon hired you. He needed leverage in case you didn't play along the way he wanted, and he found her."

"And you didn't tell me."

"He said if I told anyone, if I so much as breathed a word to you, they'd kill her." His hands were shaking now. "I've seen photos, Roman. They send me photos every week to prove she's still alive. Last week her hands were."

He stopped. Couldn't finish the sentence.

I felt the fury rising in me fast, hot and immediate, but somewhere in the middle of it I realized it wasn't aimed at Morgan anymore. It had shifted, redirected itself entirely toward the man pulling all these strings from somewhere far away, comfortable and untouched while everyone around him bled.

"Show me," I said.

He pulled out his phone with trembling hands and scrolled to a photo. Elena, thinner than I remembered, sitting in a bare room, a bruise blooming dark across her cheekbone, her wrists bound in front of her. My chest tightened looking at it.

"They did this to keep you compliant."

"Yes."

"And you've been feeding them information this whole time to keep her alive."

"Everything I gave them was small. Schedules. Nothing that could actually hurt Dahlia directly, I made sure of that, I swear to you." His eyes were pleading now. "But I know it added up to something. I know it helped them get closer than they should have."

I sat down at the edge of my bed, dragging both hands down my face. Part of me wanted to be furious at him, wanted to throw him out and cut him loose the way any smart operative would do with a compromised asset. But looking at that photo, at Elena's bound wrists and bruised face, I understood exactly what kind of impossible choice he'd been living with. I would have done the same thing for Isabelle. I knew that with total certainty.

"Roman, say something please."

"I'm thinking."

He waited, still standing, still shaking slightly, waiting for me to decide whether our entire friendship ended in this room.

"If I cut you loose right now," I said slowly, "Gideon finds out within the hour. He kills Elena and then he knows exactly how close we are to figuring out his plans."

"So what do we do?"

I looked up at him. "You keep feeding him information. Everything I tell you to give him from now on. We use you as a double agent."

His eyes widened. "Roman, if he figures out I'm playing both sides, he'll kill her instantly without warning."

"I know." I held his gaze steady. "It's a risk but it's also the only real advantage we have right now. You're already inside his network. We use that instead of throwing it away."

He was quiet for a long moment, jaw working, clearly weighing his sister's life against everything I was asking of him.

"Okay," he said finally. "Okay. Whatever you need."

"I'm not making this decision alone." I stood, grabbing my jacket off the chair. "Dahlia needs to be part of this. She's not just my responsibility to protect anymore. She's my partner in this now. We decide together."

We found her at the hospital, still sitting beside Cassian's bed, dark circles under her eyes from a night with barely any sleep. She looked up the second we walked in, and something in her face told me she already sensed this wasn't a casual visit.

"What's wrong?"

I explained everything. Morgan's confession, Elena, the photos, the plan to use him as a double agent. She listened without interrupting once, her hand tightening slightly around Cassian's where it rested on the blanket.

"You're asking me if I'm okay risking someone's life for information," she said finally, looking at Morgan. "That's not a decision I take lightly."

"I know," Morgan said quietly. "I wouldn't ask if there was another way."

She studied him for a long moment, then looked at me. "If we do this, we protect Elena the second we get any real opening. Promise me that."

"I promise."

She nodded slowly. "Then do it."

Morgan let out a breath he'd clearly been holding since he walked in. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet," Dahlia said. "Thank me when your sister is safe."

He nodded, swallowing hard, then reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

"There's something else." His voice dropped lower. "Something I found going through Gideon's private channel last night, before I came here."

"What is it?" I asked.

"Someone inside the Argent estate has been feeding information to Vale territory. Has been for a while now. I cross referenced the dates against everything we know, the attacks, the timing of when Gideon always seemed to know exactly where Dahlia would be." He looked at the torn ledger fragment I'd left sitting on the small table beside Cassian's bed, the one with the burned edge and the half legible name. "It matches. Same person."

Dahlia's whole body went still. "Who?"

Morgan hesitated, glancing between the two of us like he wished there was some other way to say it. Then he unfolded the paper in his hand and turned it so we could both see the name written across it.

The room went dead silent.

Dahlia's hand slipped out of Cassian's, her face draining of every last bit of color as she stared at the name on that paper, a name that belonged to someone standing far too close to her, someone she never in a thousand years would have suspected.

I looked at her face and knew, whatever happened next, nothing about this fight was ever going to feel the same again.