The Captain's Forbidden Mate

Episode 30: NOAH’S FIND

COLE

We left the house close to midnight. Lena didn’t say much on the drive back. I didn’t push her.

Noah was still up when we got to the apartment, laptop open, surrounded by printouts. He looked up the second we walked in.

“I found something,” he said. “About the number that texted Lena.”

“You traced it?” I asked.

“Not exactly. But I ran the pattern past my cousin. He says it’s not a Ridgeview burner. Not Silverclaw either. It pings off a tower near the old warehouse district downtown. Nobody from either pack has business down there. Hasn’t for years.”

“Thorne,” Lena said.

“Maybe. Or someone working with him.” Noah turned the laptop around. On the screen was a grainy photo, clearly pulled from an old newspaper archive. A group of people standing outside a building, dated twenty-two years back. “This is the last known photo of the Corwin alliance leadership before the m******e. I found it buried in an old digitized newspaper archive nobody’s looked at in years.”

Lena leaned in close. Her breath caught.

“That’s her,” she said, pointing at a woman near the edge of the photo. “That’s my mother. I’ve never seen a picture of her that young.”

I looked closer. The woman had Lena’s exact eyes.

“Who’s that next to her?” I asked, pointing to a man with his hand on her mother’s shoulder. Younger than Thorne, dark-haired, and unfamiliar.

Noah zoomed in. The image blurred, but not enough to hide the resemblance.

“I don’t know for sure,” he said slowly. “But look at the jaw. Look at the eyes. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that man is related to Damien Holt.”

The room went quiet.

“That’s not possible,” I said. “Damien’s family led the m******e. Why would one of them be standing next to a Corwin leader before it happened?”

“Maybe he wasn’t standing with them,” Noah said. “Maybe he was already inside their circle. A spy. Someone feeding Ridgeview information from the inside before the attack even started.”

Lena’s face had gone pale. “If that’s true, then Damien’s family didn’t just attack the Corwins for territory. They had someone on the inside first. Someone who might have helped set the whole thing up.”

“Which means the treaty story is even more of a lie than we thought,” I said. “It wasn’t a fair fight dressed up as retaliation. It was a betrayal from the start.”

Noah pulled the photo up bigger, studying the man’s face. “There’s one more thing. I ran a rough age comparison. If this man is who I think he might be, he’d be about the right age now to be Damien’s father. Not his grandfather. His father.”

“That doesn’t match the story,” Lena said. “Damien told me his grandfather led the massacre.”

“Right,” Noah said. “So either Damien’s lying to you. Or Damien himself doesn’t actually know the full truth about his own family.”

Lena stared at the photo a while longer, then sat back, arms wrapped around herself.

“There’s more,” she said quietly. “Cole’s father told me something tonight too. He said a man inside Ridgeview helped my mother escape. Someone close to the Holts. He never learned the name.”

Noah’s eyes went wide. He looked back at the screen, at the man standing next to Lena’s mother.

“You think it’s him,” Noah said. “The man in this photo.”

“I don’t know,” Lena said. “But it fits. If he was close enough to be standing right next to her before the attack, close enough that people mistook him for a spy working in the wrong direction, maybe he was actually the one who warned her. Maybe he’s the reason she survived long enough to have me at all.”

I looked at the photo again, at the man’s face, blurred but still readable. Something about the set of his jaw did look familiar, though I couldn’t place exactly why.

“If he’s still alive,” I said, “he’d know more about that night than anyone left standing. More than my father. More than Thorne. More than Damien.”

“If he’s still alive,” Noah said. “Which is a big if, considering everyone else assumes he’s dead.”

“Then we find out,” Lena said. Her voice had gone steady, determined in a way I hadn’t heard from her since before all of this started. “Three days isn’t much time. But it’s enough to ask one more question, if we’re smart about who we ask it to.”

Noah closed the laptop slowly. “You’re talking about Damien.”

“I’m talking about Damien,” Lena said. “He’s the only one left who might actually know something the rest of us don’t.”

“That’s a risk,” I said. “Last time you two talked, he handed you a fake version of your own history.”

“I know. But if there’s a real chance he doesn’t know the full truth about his own family, that changes things. Maybe he’s been lied to as much as I have.” She rubbed her eyes, exhausted. “I’m not saying I trust him. I’m saying I think it’s worth one more conversation, carefully, on my terms this time. Not his.”

Noah looked at me, waiting to see what I’d say. Some old, possessive part of me wanted to refuse outright, to keep her as far from Damien as possible. But I’d already broken one promise by doing exactly that once before, and I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.

“Then we plan it out,” I said. “Carefully. Somewhere public, somewhere I can be close without hovering. And if he says one thing that sounds like a threat, we’re gone. No second chances this time.”

Lena nodded, already pulling out her phone to figure out how to reach him.

“Text him now,” Noah said. “Before you lose your nerve. Keep it simple. No mention of the photo, no mention of his uncle. Just ask to meet.”

Lena’s thumbs moved fast across the screen, then stopped. She read the message back to herself once before hitting send.

“Done,” she said. “Now we wait and see if he answers.”