MARKED TO BURN, BORN TO RULE

CHAPTER 5: SOMEONE STRONGER

REID'S POV

Six of my best trackers went after one wolfless girl. Six.

None of them came back.

I get the news standing in my father's old study, the one I still haven't actually moved into properly because some superstitious part of me keeps thinking he might wake up one day and want it back.

The messenger's young, one of the new recruits we brought in last year to pad our numbers after half the border families left rather than keep bowing to us, and his hands are shaking a little even though he's trying pretty hard not to let me see it.

Smart kid honestly. He should be scared.

"Dead. All six of them?" I ask it again like the answer's somehow going to change the second time around.

"Yes, Alpha." The messenger won't look at me directly, which honestly tells me everything about how bad this actually is before he even finishes talking. "Whoever did it didn't leave much to identify."

Six trained warriors. Killed by a girl with no wolf, no training, and three straight days of running on basically no food.

That's not possible. I know that's not possible, same way I know the sun comes up every single morning, so the only real question left is who actually did it, because it sure wasn't her.

I sit down, settling into my father's old chair behind my father's old desk, surrounded by my father's old maps of territory lines that literally haven't changed in decades, and I stare at the wall a while doing math I really don't want to be doing right now.

Everyone still calls me interim. Even the ones who bow properly, who use my title, who'd never say it to my actual face. Interim, like I'm just keeping the seat warm until my father either dies or wakes up and takes it back, like none of what I've actually done to hold this pack together the last two years counts for anything at all.

I've spent my whole life being told this territory would be mine one day. I am not losing it now because of one wolfless girl and whoever decided to help her.

If somebody's protecting her, that means somebody knew exactly where to look. Which means somebody's been watching my pack way closer than I'd like, probably for a long time, probably long enough to know exactly when to strike.

Which means this isn't actually even about her. Not really.

That thought should make this easier somehow. It doesn't.

Here's the part nobody outside this room understands yet, the part I've spent three whole years making sure nobody outside this room ever finds out. Half the alphas in this territory already think my family stole Mooncrest. They're not even wrong, not that it matters, because the ones who remember the actual truth are either dead or scared enough to stay quiet about it.

Alpha Corrin up north's been saying it outright for years now, at every single gathering, to literally anyone who'll listen, and so far nobody's cared enough to actually act on it. But scared isn't the same thing as loyal, and if word gets out that I've spent years quietly executing wolfless wolves, including my own rejected mate, Corrin and everyone like him is going to have exactly the excuse they've been waiting for this whole time.

I need this contained. Fast.

"Find out who did this," I tell the messenger. "I don't care what it costs."

"And the girl, Alpha?"

I don't answer that right away, because honestly I don't know anymore. Three days ago she was just a problem I was solving before it got complicated. Now she's got somebody powerful enough to wipe out six of my best without even breaking a sweat, and I genuinely have no idea who that somebody even is.

"Should we send more men, Alpha?"

"No." The word comes out faster than I actually mean it to. Sending more men just means feeding them to whatever's out there too, and I already lost six warriors to a mistake I don't fully understand yet. I'm not losing more to the exact same one. "Not until we actually know what we're dealing with."

The messenger bows and leaves, clearly relieved to be out of the room, and honestly I don't blame him for that either.

I go through every single name I can think of. Every rival family, every enemy my father made before he got sick, every old grudge Mooncrest has ever earned itself across three whole generations of doing whatever it took to hold onto power.

Nothing fits. Nothing lines up right.

The only family that could ever actually pose a real threat to my claim's been dead for years. My father made sure of that, or at least I think he did, back before I actually understood what "sure" was even supposed to mean. My father used to tell me the old bloodline died out completely that night, every single last one of them, and I believed him the same way I believed basically everything he told me back then, without ever once asking what proof he actually had for any of it.

I'm asking now.

Letting her run wasn't my mistake. I know that for certain, because letting her run was literally exactly what I wanted people to see, some wolfless girl too pathetic to even fight for her own life. No, my actual mistake was something way simpler, something I honestly should've accounted for from the very beginning.

I assumed that once she ran, she'd stay easy enough to find.

I pour myself something strong and don't even drink it, just hold the glass and watch the candlelight move through it, because my hands need something to do besides shake right now. Whoever's out there protecting her has been patient enough to wait for exactly the right moment to make themselves known. That kind of patience doesn't just come from nowhere.

It comes from a place forged by revenge. From obsession.

From barely controlled rage.