MATED TO THE COLD ALPHA

Chapter 18

Alpha Zerk POV

"Who is that woman beside Kira?”

I let the question sit for exactly three seconds before answering.

"Let's head inside first," I said.

Roan looked at me. Then at Sera. Then back at me with that particular expression that looked like confusion but said nothing more. Which was one of the things about Roan that I liked about him. I will tell him about Sera once we enter my office, since I haven't yet mentioned the situation to him.

We moved inside.

The entrance hall was cool and quiet after the open air of the training ground. Kira was already steering Sera back toward the corridor with the particular efficiency of someone who understood without being told that certain conversations weren't hers to be part of. She caught my eye briefly as she passed.

I gave her nothing back.

"Let's head to my study room," I said to Roan.

He fell into step beside me without asking why. “Yes, Alpha.”

---

My study room smelled like the same coffee cup from last night that I hadn't bothered to remove. I set the relic on the desk and moved behind it. Roan dropped into the chair across from me, like he'd earned the right to sit without being told to by me and had stopped pretending otherwise after four years.

I unwrapped the cloth from the relic.

It sat on the desk between us. Roughly the size of a thick hardback. Dark stone, shot through with faint veins of something that caught the light, not reflecting it the way ordinary stone did, but absorbing and releasing it, slightly delayed, like the material itself was processing the information.

I looked at it for a moment.

One of my guards had carried this. One of my most trusted men, my strongest, currently serving in this pack. The rogue ambush had come out of nowhere.

Three of them had crossed through a region two territories over, fast and organised in a way that told me immediately it wasn't random. It was like they had known what he was carrying in his possession that time.

They had defeated him and his men on the ground that was with him that day, leaving him wounded and battered, taken the relic, and disappeared before my border team could reach them.

They wouldn't have lost if the rogues hadn't been carrying silver-enchanted blades in their possession, a forbidden weapon that only those of the highest elite pack had access to. Before they could come back to the pack and be treated by the healers, two of the men had already died, but the one who had the relic managed to survive in time.

The moment the report reached me, I had sent Roan with six of my second-strongest men and told him to retrieve the relic and kill the rogues that were responsible, but bring one back alive for questioning and torture.

The relic boosts a wolf's abilities by thirty per cent. Such a rare item has also been documented in elder records. It makes whoever has it thirty per cent stronger. Faster. More resilient to silver. In the hands of the wrong wolf, the difference between winning and losing a fight became something considerably less certain.

Which was why it was now sitting on my desk instead of in someone else's hands.

Roan was watching me observe the relic, then he spoke.

"It's still in good condition." He said. "We got to it before they could figure out how it actually works. They knew it was both valuable and powerful."

"That's good to know.” I responded.

"Indeed." He shifted in his chair. Just slightly. Enough to tell me the silver wound was affecting him in a way he hasn't fully been telling me. "The man is gradually recovering well, by the way. I checked on him before I left."

I looked up from the relic. "And?"

"He's annoyed he missed the retrieval." Roan's mouth pulled at one corner. "Spent twenty minutes telling me exactly how he would have handled it differently if he had gone with me."

"From a hospital bed?"

"Yeah.” Roan let out a slight chuckle. “He was being very detailed about it, it's impressive considering the blood loss he had."

I said nothing. But something settled slightly in my chest.

A knock sounded from outside my study door.

"Enter."

Cael stepped inside, took one look at the man sitting across from my desk, and his expression showed something it rarely did- something more relaxed.

"Wow, you look terrible, Roan." He said.

"Thank you, Cael. It's the symbol of my victory." Roan replied.

Cael crossed the room and gripped Roan's shoulder once, not a performance, just contact, the way men who had worked alongside each other through enough difficult nights. Then he straightened and looked at the relic on my desk with the focused attention of someone cataloguing a threat.

Then Cael looked and noticed something on Roan's left brow.

"God damn, Roan, did a silver blade do this to you?" He said to Roan. Touching the side of his forehead where the injury was.

"Yeah, but it's just a little cut."

"He keeps saying that," I said.

"Because it's true," Roan said. "I've been more injured making breakfast."

"You don't make breakfast," Cael said.

"Exactly. So the comparison is hypothetical and therefore unassailable."

I looked at both of them. "That wound. You should check it with the pack healers before you sleep." Cael said.

"The Alpha has already told me," Roan responded.

Cael pulled the chair from the corner and sat down in it, which was also something he had stopped asking permission for at some point. Between the two of them, they had colonised my study in a way I had chosen not to address.

"So, what did I miss while I was managing the assembly?"

"Nothing much," I said. "Nobody from the training ground stepped forward to confess."

Cael absorbed that. "So you still think one of our pack members did this”

“There's no other explanation for whoever did this. So our only approach is to interrogate every pack member that was present in the dining hall that day.”

Cael nodded, and I stared at Roan. He looked at me and asked a question. "You said the photograph was taken inside the estate?"

"From the dining hall. Two days ago.”

Roan's jaw worked once. "Inside." He repeated it the way he repeated things he wanted to make sure he'd heard correctly. "Not from the perimeter or outside the estate."

"No," I answered

The three of us sat with that for a moment.

"That pretty much narrows it down," Cael said. His voice had gone flat in the particular way it went flat when he was moving from conversation into deep thinking. "The dining hall at that hour would have had a limited rotation. I can cross-reference the schedule against–."

"I've already started," I said.

"Of course you did," Roan said. Not sarcastically. Just the acknowledgement of a man who had long stopped being surprised by this.

"I want the list on my desk by tonight." I looked at Cael. "Every wolf who had access to that space during that time. We'll work through it methodically. No accusations until we have some solid evidence."

Cael nodded once.

Roan was quiet for a moment. Looking at the relic. Then at me. Something moving behind his eyes that I recognised as the approach of a topic he'd been patient about for long enough.

"That woman.” He said.

I didn't respond immediately.

"The one that was standing beside Kira at the door." He kept his voice even. Professionally even, which was its own kind of signal. "I don't think I recognise her as our pack member."

"No, she isn't."

"Who is she then?" Roan questioned.

"She's the intruder I captured last week who tried to steal the Moonveil roots from the outer section in the woods. Her name is Sera." I stated.

Roan looked at me for a long moment. "What. Really?" He said, sounding shocked and suppressed hearing this matter. “You mean she secretly crossed through our territory to steal from us?”

“Yes,” I responded.

"She's from Ashbone Pack," Cael said quietly. To Roan. Not interrupting, offering context, the way he did when he thought it was useful.

Something shifted in Roan's expression. Not dramatically. Just the way his face recalibrated when information arrived that changed the shape of what he was looking at.

"Ashbone?" He said the word like he was checking if he'd heard it correctly. "You mean that outer territory pack I once heard about?"

"Yes."

"Is she the one you told me is being captive?"

"Yes."

"And she's still here because?"

"Because I allowed it." My voice came out flat and final, the way it came out when the answer to a question was given, and the conversation around it was finished.

Roan looked at me for exactly three seconds.

Then he looked at Cael.

Cael looked very carefully at the relic on my desk. Trying to avoid Roan's gaze.

"Right," Roan said. Slowly. In the tone of a man who had just filed something away for a more appropriate moment.

I picked up the relic from the desk and set it to the side. I looked at the desk surface for a moment. Then I looked back at him.

"There's one more thing." I paused. Roan started looking at me more observantly, knowing I was about to say something. “She's my fated mate."

The study went completely silent for a moment.

Roan was out of his chair before the sentence had fully landed in the room.

“What!” His voice came out loud, completely unlike his usual voice. His face showed shock written all over it.

And for the first time in as long as I could remember, I had absolutely nothing to say back.