Page 36 of Captured By Chaos


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Beckett scoffed. “Typical Cole, abusing his power for his own benefit.”

“As for the rest?” I scratched my fingers along my thighs, my mind clouding with fog, but I pushed myself forward.Focus on the theories. “My guess is they were desperate not to put me in the position of Alpha, but they knew if our Faction File had all of the information about this past year, qualified candidates wouldn’t want to transfer.”

“No surprise,” Greyson mumbled, his file clutched so tightly it was almost crinkled into a ball. That would be fun to explain when I returned the File to Nolan. “What new Alpha wants to come in and deal with a defiant and insubordinate team?”

“And with the Elliot case popping up, they didn’t want a Faction they couldn’t control completely in charge, so they did everything possible to make sure a new leader was put in place.” Liv’s hazel eyes shifted bloody red. “Unbelievable!”

The weight on my chest grew, pressure building unbearably fast as people shouted and ranted about this news around me. It was pulling me back, bringing me to a place I rarely visited in my past.

My fingertips grazed over the inch of scar peeking out from the collar of my black tunic. All of these truths, these exposures into the High Faction’s negligence, were hidden from the rest of the world. I knew everything would be buried from the public, but from the rest of the Guard? Although I didn’t need every person knowing the truth about my past, something about this whole thing soured my stomach, making my fingers twitch uncontrollably.

This wasn’t right, this was…I didn’t know what it was, but my instincts told me that it wasn’t good, and that terrified me.

“So this entire time, Nolan has just been trying to be nice to us?” Eden whispered, pulling me from my thoughts; she was still looking down at her file as if everything missing would magically appear, red hair framing her face.

My gut twisted at those words, the weighted truth behind them. For so long, a part of me had hated the idea that Nolan knew what happened, that he was given such intimate details about my past without my permission. Those moments—what had happened to me over this past year—was my history, it was my story to tell, not the High Faction’s.

Yet, to know that Nolan had only been given a piece of the story—the piece that made me look weak and fragile—made things swirl inside me, a cacophony of emotions that didn’t blend well together: anger, fear, confusion, sadness. Even if the allegations I had brought forward had been dismissed, they’d still happened. It was that one night that changed everything for me, that made my wolf retreat and tore me down from the inside out. It was that night, and the High Faction’s inaction afterward, that had led me to some of the darkest parts within myself.

There was so much to my story that Nolan didn’t know. Now that the decision to tell him was mine once again, did I want him to know the truth? Did I want him to see the whole story?

Somehow, I had no answer, not even a theory to go off of. Everything was just…blank.

There was no way to know what I was ready for, not when it came to Nolan and my past.

The voices around me brought me back to the needs of the moment.Focus on the facts. Focus on what you can control around you.

“We all assumed he was acting oblivious as a way to manipulate us…none of us were willing to trust him,” I whispered, all eyes falling to me, burdening me with the weight of their gazes. “But we were wrong. He wants to be here, to be a part of this Faction. He deserves to be given a chance.”

“Kas…” Lucas’s chair scraped closer to mine, but I flinched away when he reached out to touch a tattooed hand to my shoulder.

“No, don’t pity me, you all know it’s true.” I shook my head. “It’s one thing to have known all of that about us, but he knew nothing. The High Faction chose to keep secrets, and it led to a gross miscommunication over these past few weeks. He doesn’t deserve to be treated like an outsider, not when he’s trying so hard to find a place here and the only reason he can’t is because no one will give him a chance to.”

He still had the job that I had earned, he’d taken something from me without even realizing it. But he wasn’t as terrible as I’d thought; he wasn’t pretending to be our teammate or acting as if he was going to hold all of this information over our heads as blackmail. He was just a man who transferred to a post, who wanted to find his place here—and who wanted to lead the Elliot investigation, that much was clear. Yet, it didn’t stop him from being genuinely interested in the Faction.

“You all need to get to know him and form your own opinions about him without wondering what I’ll think.” I had said from the beginning that I didn’t want any of them to be influenced by my own personal feelings. Yet once he’d arrived, I’d let that disappear. I could try and make up excuses, say that when I thought he knew all of the truths, he deserved to feel like an outcast; but a voice in the back of my mind told me it was a lie. I had let everyone treat him like an outcast because I had wanted him to feel that way, I had wanted to get back at him in a little way. It was petty and immature, not the qualities of an Alpha.

I wasn’t even a little surprised; I was no Alpha.

Nolan didn’t deserve that treatment from us. That was pure fact.

“Kasha’s right.” Beckett circled the room, collecting everyone’s files from them. “Nolan is here because he wants to be. He wants to help us hunt down a killer and become a part of this family. He’s smart, a hard worker, an impeccable fighter. If it was under normal circumstances, you all know we would be welcoming him with open arms.”

Everyone’s gazes shot to the floor, proof that they all knew Beckett’s words were true even if they refused to admit it.

“You don’t have to like him, but you do need to give him a chance.” He stopped in front of me, picking up the folder and slipping everyone’s files back inside, his gaze lingering on me before turning back to the room. “He’s earned that much from us, don’t you agree?”

Everyone mumbled in agreement, something in the room shifting from weighted anxiety to fresh clarity. I didn’t know how to move forward with Nolan myself, but at least I felt a settling in my chest, knowing everyone else could.

Chapter Nineteen

I had wanted privacy that evening, the nighttime peace my favorite time of day on the Compound. When people were either winding down from a long day or on overnight patrol, I had the run of the training house.

But not tonight, it seemed.

I was drawn to the distant sound of daggers whipping through the air wafting down the hall from one of the target rooms. I didn’t know why my legs took me there, beckoned like a siren song. No one else on the Compound usually worked out this late, which meant there could only be one person I would catch. Yet, no matter how much I had been avoiding him all day, I still found myself in front of the glass wall, staring at him while he threw knives against the fake human target.

He never missed, each tip lodging in the main kill areas. The heart, the head, the carotid, the stomach.

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