“Because she loves you, and I’m pretty sure she’d be horrified if she knew how you still felt
about everything after all these years.”
“I don’t want to remind her of something that broke her heart.”
“She’s stronger than that and you know it.” He looked as though he wanted to grab Daryl and shake him. “Just call her, please.”
“I’ll think about it,” Daryl muttered.
Alec’s phone rang, startling them both. “It’s Cam,” he said, glancing at the screen before he answered the call. “Hey.” His expression immediately darkened. “Fuck. Yeah, hang on, he’s here.”
Alec put his phone on speaker and held it between the two of them. “Go on.”
Cam’s voice sounded strained. “As I was telling Alec, the alpha council have found evidence the rope was tampered with.”
Daryl sucked in a breath, one hand going straight to the dressing under his T-shirt. “Me and Jason walked that route about twenty minutes beforehand. Everything looked okay then.”
“Yeah, Alpha Cornell said they’d checked everything first thing.”
Silence filled the room as that sank in. Someone had tampered with it between Jenn’s team completing it, and Daryl’s team reaching it.
“You don’t think one of the council—”
“No.” Cam cut him off, voice decisive like he knew for definite. “They found a claw tip embedded in the top of the rope.”
Daryl’s heart stopped for a second before setting off at a gallop. “Do they know whose?”
“Tom Sharp.”
“They know that for sure?” Jason had said there was something off about him from the start, but all that had seemed resolved the last few days.
“Alpha Cornell recognised his scent.”
“But they did that obstacle just before us, though, right?” Daryl pointed out.
Cam sighed, as though he didn’t want to believe it. “True, and that would explain his scent being all over the rope. But he had no reason to have his claws out. Alpha Cornell assures me that shifting of any kind was expressly forbidden.”
“Fuck.”
“Did anyone see him do it? Surely someone on Jenn’s team would’ve noticed?” Alec’s grip on the phone tightened.
“I just finished speaking to her,” Cam said. “No one saw him tamper with it, but Tom was the last one to get on the plank, so the last one in contact with the rope while holding it. Jenn said by that point, the rest of them were all looking towards the other side ready to start moving.”
Alec huffed. “What do you want us to do?”
“Take a couple from your unit and go collect Tom from his flat. Take him to the containment flat we used for Felix and stay there. The alpha council are on their way and want to question him as soon as they get here.”
“What about me?” Daryl asked, eager to find the fucker who’d nearly killed him.
Cam cleared his throat, and Daryl deflated.
He wasn’t going to like this one bit.
“Under the circumstances, I don’t want you involved in this.”
“What circumstances?”
“You’re still healing from the accident, for one. And with your potential bond, both you and Jason are unpredictable.”
