Watched
1500 Words
CHAPTER 6:
Damian's POV
"You are losing ground."
Lord Caden had been building to that sentence for the last ten minutes. I had let him talk because cutting him off only made him repeat himself from the beginning.
"The Crimson Fang Alpha made a public statement this morning. Broadcast to every pack in the world. He questioned your fitness to lead. He said the Onyx Pack has been running without a visible Alpha for six weeks and that the silence speaks for itself.You have seventy two hours to respond publicly or it becomes a formal concession." He said.
I said nothing.
"Damian. Every pack leader on the planet saw that statement. If you do not respond—"
"I heard you."
"Then you understand what is at stake. This is not a territorial filing. This is a direct, public challenge. If you let it sit unanswered for seventy two hours the Crimson Fang does not need to fight you. You hand them the win by doing nothing."
He was right. I knew he was right. A public challenge in the Lycan world was not just politics. It was a signal to every other pack watching that the Onyx Alpha was either too weak or too afraid to respond. Either reading was dangerous.
"There is something else," Caden said, and something in his tone made me sit forward slightly.
"Three of your pack members have not reported in. In the last two weeks, Keran, Doss, and Mila. All inner circle. All gone without a trace. No bodies, no communication, nothing." He paused. "The Crimson Fang is not just talking, Damian. They are moving."
I put the phone down without ending the call and looked at the wall for a moment.
Keran, Doss, Mila.
Three people who had been with the Onyx Pack for years, they knew things; Territory layouts, security rotations, the names and positions of everyone inside the inner circle. If the Crimson Fang had them, they were not just missing. They were being used.
And if the Crimson Fang was pulling people from inside my pack without my security team catching it, there was only one explanation.
Someone inside the pack was telling them who to take.
I picked the phone back up.
"Set up the Council meeting for tomorrow morning," I said. "Not end of the week. Tomorrow."
"I will need a statement from you before then—"
"You will have it tonight," I said. "And Caden, keep the missing members off the agenda for now. I want to handle that quietly."
"Damian, three missing pack members is not something you can—"
"I will explain tomorrow." I responded quietly and ended the call.
Marcus was standing at the window. He turned to face me when I put the phone down and I could tell from his face that he had already heard. Marcus always heard everything before I told him. It was one of the reasons I kept him close.
"Keran, Doss, and Mila," I said.
"I know, I got the report an hour ago. I was waiting for you to finish the call." He replied.
"You should have interrupted the call."
He did not apologise. He just nodded once.
"Someone inside the pack told the Crimson Fang who to take. Those three were not random. Keran knew the eastern security rotation. Doss had access to the inner compound layout. Mila was personal staff." I looked at him. "Someone gave them a list."
Marcus said nothing. But something moved behind his eyes that I recognised. The same calculation I was running. The same short list of people who had access to all three of those individuals.
"I want every communication log from the last three months. Everyone with inner circle access. Pull it quietly. No announcements or nothing that tells whoever it is that we are looking." I said.
"Already started," Marcus responded.
I looked at him.
"I started pulling logs this morning when Mila did not report in," he said. "I did not want to tell you until I had something concrete."
"And?"
"Not yet, but I will." he said.
I nodded, turning back to my desk and that was when I looked at the secondary screen in the corner and realised Evelyn had just walked through her front door.
---
My men had gone to her apartment at ten this morning. Two of them, both experienced and fast. The building had fourteen units. Ground floor had one long term tenant, a retired woman named Adler who my men flagged as a risk before they went in. She was present in the building most mornings, observant, the type who noticed strangers.
They spent just over an hour wiring the four cameras. One behind the bookshelf on the second shelf. Three others in places that would take much longer than forty minutes to find, if she ever found them at all.
I had placed the bookshelf camera deliberately. I needed to know what kind of person she was when she was alone and under pressure. Whether she panicked, whether she ran or whether she called someone.
The feed had been running on my secondary screen since noon. Empty apartment, nothing moving. I had worked through the rest of the day with it in the corner of my vision.
At 6:14 PM she came home. She stood in her hallway without moving. Just stood there. Her bag was still on her shoulder and she was looking at the apartment while I watched.
She went to the kitchen, opened the drawer beside the sink, stood with her hands on something inside it. I couldn't see it clearly. Then she put it back and closed the drawer.
Marcus was standing at the window behind me. He had been there for twenty minutes.
"She knows someone was here," he said.
"She suspected before she walked through the door, the woman downstairs saw my men go up." I replied.
He said nothing to that.
She moved through the apartment after that. Not in a panic, not searching exactly. Just moving the way people moved when something felt wrong and they could not sit still with it. She checked a few places, ran her hands along surfaces, looked behind things, but she found nothing.
She made dinner and ate half of it at the counter of her kitchen and then she started moving again and every time she passed the bookshelf she slowed down. I watched it happen three times before she finally stopped in front of it.
She looked at the books. Then she reached behind the second shelf and pulled the books forward one by one until she found it.
The camera. It pointed at the center of her living room. She crouched down and looked directly into the lens.
I sat forward in my chair.
She went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water. Crouched down again, looked into the lens one more time. Then she dropped it in the glass.
The indicator light went dark.
"She destroyed it," Marcus said.
"Yes."
"You do not seem concerned."
I was not concerned because the other three cameras were still running. She did not know that. She thought she had handled it and the watching was over.
I pulled up the bedroom feed. She was in bed, staring at the ceiling, one hand flat on the mattress beside her. Not sleeping.
I watched her for a long time without saying anything.
Then I turned to Marcus.
"I want to know everything she does from this point," I said. "Every morning I want a report on my desk. Where she went, who she spoke to, what time she left, what time she came back. If she stops at a shop I want to know what she bought. If she takes a different route to the building I want to know why." I paused. "Everything."
Marcus looked at me. "That is already in place."
"Then make it tighter."
He was quiet for a moment. "This is not standard monitoring."
"No," I said. "It is not."
He did not push further.
I looked at the screen again. She had turned onto her side. Eyes still open, not sleeping. Whatever she was thinking about was keeping her awake and I wanted to know what it was.
MINE.
I ignored that.
I stood up, put on my jacket, turned off everything on my desk except one screen. The bedroom feed stayed on. Then, I went downstairs.
The chains were waiting and the burning would come the way it always did. I had a Council meeting to prepare for, a mole to find, a public challenge to answer in seventy two hours.
I had enough to think about, and yet, the last thing I thought about before Marcus locked the first cuff around my wrist was not any of it.
It was her. Still awake, lying in the dark thinking she had won something.
I let her have it, for now.
- Writer
