Page 23 of Guarded By The Alpha

Jace, from the wall, said flatly: "They set the scene."

Four words that landed in the room like something load-bearing had given way.

I turned to Gideon. "Where she's being held. Do you have it?"

"A warded place about forty minutes outside the city. Owned through three layers of fake companies, all with the Council's prints on them. The wards match how they hold people. Someone's been there in the last eighteen hours." He pulled up the footage—a property built to look like nothing—and marked a vehicle near the edge. "This is the problem."

The plates came up. I knew the company they traced to from the warehouse the night I walked into Roan's case.

"That's Drake's," Roan said.

"The Cleaner's been at that place. Lately."

Forty minutes. My mother was forty minutes away, and twelve hours ago—while I was lying in a corridor holding Roan's hand in the red-lit dark—Drake had been close enough to touch the same walls she was behind.

"We have to move," I said.

"We have to know what we're walking into," Caleb said. "Going into a warded Council site blind is how people die."

"My mother's been there thirteen years. How much longer is all right?"

"As long as it takes to bring her out alive instead of getting killed trying."

Roan's hand found my arm under the table—brief, steadying. I made myself unclench my jaw.

"How long?" I asked. "Honestly."

"Two days to see the whole thing clearly," Roan said. "But we move knowing what's there, not guessing."

Two days. I knew what I wasn't going to do: sit in a room for two days while everything pointed at a place I could practically see from here.

"I want all of it," I said. "Everything the agency has on my bloodline. My mother. My life, that they've been moving around like a piece on a board."

Caleb's expression flickered. "Some of that's sensitive⁠⁠—"

"Give it to her," Roan said. "All of it, now."

The look that passed between them was a conversation I wasn't all the way inside. Caleb's jaw tightened, but he didn't fight it.

"Fine," he said. "But she stays inside until we know what we're dealing with."

I nodded. Not because I agreed, but because that fight could wait.

The full version was worse than the summary.

I sat in my room with Gideon's work spread across every surface. My mother's name showed up seventeen times. Each one was a wound I hadn't known I was still carrying.

Elena Hale, taken. Day one.

Day one of my sixteenth year. The morning I woke up and she was gone.

I photographed nothing, because this wasn't evidence I could keep at arm's length. This was already inside me, and reading the cold words for what they'd done to her was just putting names to the shape of the hole.

The files showed they'd been watching me for eighteen months—quiet eyes on my assignments, notes on how I held up at bad scenes, every time I'd shown what they called "unusual calm." They'd been waiting for the thing in my blood to answer the right call.

Recommend exposure to a strong wolf to bring it out.

I read that line three times.