The Alpha's forbidden claim

Chapter 2: The Alpha's Verdict

"She filed it yesterday," Remy said. "It's already in the regional database."

He slid the printed report across the kitchen table without looking up from his coffee. Declan picked it up.

One page. University letterhead. A wildlife researcher named N. Okafor, on a twelve-month behavioral study contract with Crestwood Reserve, had submitted preliminary field observations noting unusual large carnivore activity along the eastern corridor. The language was careful. Academic. No species named outright. Just measurements and movement patterns and a note about stride intervals that were, in her words, inconsistent with documented regional fauna.

Declan read it twice. Then he set it down.

"How far into the eastern corridor?" he asked.

"Camera station seven." Remy wrapped both hands around his mug. "That's four hundred metres from the boundary marker."

Four hundred metres. Close enough that her equipment was picking up movement that should never have been picked up and another week of her being out there would give her more data than she should ever have.

"Pull the contract," Remy said. "One call to the regional office, we can have her reassigned by Friday. Clean."

Declan looked at the report again. The measurements were exact. She had measured the print three times, which was noted in the margin in small, neat handwriting. Not the handwriting of someone careless and who would let an inconsistency go.

"No," he said.

Remy looked up.

"I'll go myself." Declan folded the report and put it in his jacket pocket. "Today."

Remy was quiet for a moment in the way he was quiet when he disagreed but had already decided arguing would not change anything. Six years as Beta had taught him where the line was. He knew Declan's decisions from his positions, and this was a decision.

"She's been out there since six this morning," Remy said. "According to the reserve log, she runs dawn patrol to midday most days."

Declan checked the clock on the wall. Half past eight.

"I'll find her," he said.

He drove with the window down despite the cold. The plan has always been straightforward in situations like this: find the person, assess the situation, apply the appropriate pressure. Researchers responded to authority, legal language, institutional weight and to the suggestion that their contract could be reviewed. He had done this three times in twelve years. Each time it took less than an hour.

He parked off the access road and went in through the treeline on foot. The eastern corridor smelled like wet soil, pine resin and the cold mineral smell of the creek running north. His territory. He had run this ground since he was a boy, patrolled it for six years as Alpha, knew every boundary marker and soft patch of ground that held a print longer than it should.

He found camera station seven without needing to look for it. The orange flag she had planted beside the print was visible from twenty metres out. He stopped at the clearing's edge and looked down at the impression in the mud.

She had measured it and marked it and done it properly. He crouched and looked at the print for a moment, not at the measurement but at the mud around it. Clean and undisturbed. She would have noticed that too.

He pressed his thumb into the mud beside the print, just once, and felt the cold of it, and then stood up.

He followed the trail markers toward the research station. She would have come back after morning patrol, logged her notes, maybe eaten something. He would find her and he would be polite and firm and by tomorrow the report in his jacket pocket would be the last one she filed from this corridor.

The station came into view through the trees. Equipment cases stacked near the door. A pair of muddy boots outside. A coat on the hook. He knocked. No answer. He knocked again, waited, then looked at the window. The light inside was on.

He walked around to the east side and looked out at the treeline.

Empty. Just mist and the creek sound in the distance.

He checked the equipment bay. Memory cards lined up on the shelf in order of station number. Everything labelled. Everything in its place. He stood at the front of the station and went still and listened.

Somewhere to the north, moving away from him, he heard the soft regular sound of boots on wet ground.

She was already back out in the field.

He had knocked on the door but she was already gone, already out there with her notebook and her orange flags and her very exact measurements, and the report in his jacket pocket suddenly felt less like a solution and more like evidence of a problem he had not yet defined correctly.

He turned north and followed the sound.

She was far from where he expected her to be.

She was somewhere else.