Chapter 28 #2
“What kind of reports?” Delton’s voice remained steady, warm, free of judgment.
“Everything. Security rotations. Ward schedules. Where people sleep, who’s important, who’s vulnerable, what the compound looks like.
” The tears were flowing freely now, dripping off his jaw onto the table.
“They wanted to know about King Erwan. About the White Dragon. About Gregor and King Fergal once they arrived. I told them as little as possible. Like, when the pack did the rescue mission for the remaining omegas… I didn’t tell them that.
I said I hadn’t known about it, that they hadn’t told the omegas, which they believed ’cause they never would’ve informed us had it been them.
But I had to tell them some things, or they would’ve killed Tiernan. ”
“For how long, Simon?”
“Since shortly after we arrived.” His face crumpled.
“Fallon trusted me. He led us to freedom, and I’ve been betraying him since the first night.
Every kind thing anyone has done for me—the cabin, the food, the clothes, the therapy sessions—I took all of it, and I reported back to the men who beat us and starved us and—”
His voice broke completely. Delton waited, his hand resting near Simon’s on the table, not touching but available.
“Yesterday,” Simon whispered when he could speak again.
“A message came through the stone. They said they knew Commander Gregor’s patrol route.
They said they had men positioned along the perimeter.
They said if King Fergal didn’t come to the eastern tree line alone within fifteen minutes, they’d kill Gregor. ”
“And you delivered this message to Fergal.”
Simon nodded, his face a wreck of tears and snot and self-loathing.
“I went to the cabin. Fergal was alone. I told him what they said, and he… He didn’t even hesitate.
He wrote a note and he followed me out. He walked right into them because I told him to.
” His voice dropped to something barely human.
“They took him because of me. Because I’ve been feeding them information for months, and then I handed them the king, and I can’t… I can’t…”
Gregor listened to all of it with his hands braced against the wall, his knuckles white, his body so still that Rhene, standing beside him, kept glancing over as if checking that he was still breathing.
The rage was there. It was enormous, this black, consuming fury directed not at the broken omega crying in that room but at the men who had broken him, who had taken a traumatized man and used his brother as a leash, who had turned Simon’s love for Tiernan into a weapon aimed at everything Gregor held dear.
But underneath the rage, with a clarity that surprised him, was recognition.
He knew what it was to carry an impossible secret.
He knew what it was to live with the daily knowledge that you were betraying someone’s trust because the alternative was unthinkable.
He knew the corrosive guilt of lying to people who were kind to you, who welcomed you, who looked at you with compassion and called you family while you carried a truth that would shatter their faith in you.
He knew because he’d been doing it himself. Not for months. For decades. For more than a century.
The parallel was so precise it felt like a knife between his ribs.
“Simon.” Delton leaned forward. “Look at me.”
Simon raised his head. His eyes were swollen, devastated, the eyes of a man who had been drowning for months and had finally stopped trying to keep his head above water.
“Your brother. Tiernan. Is he at the same location where they took Fergal?”
A nod. “They call it ‘the old king’s new place.’ That’s where they all are now.”
Rhene slapped his forehead. “Cladhaire’s property. Emma mentioned that he bought some land about two hundred miles from here. He wanted to go into isolation again. I’d forgotten about it until now—there was so much else happening.”
“Can you confirm the location?” Gregor asked, his voice steady through sheer will.
“Emma will have it in the records. Give me two minutes.”
It took less than that to get an address from Emma, and they pulled it up on Rhene’s laptop just as Erwan, Blair, and Jermon joined them as well, all alerted by Rhene about a new development.
“One hundred and fifty-three acres, purchased under a shell company. Rural property with a farmhouse and several barn structures,” Rhene said.
Two hundred and seven miles southeast. Remote terrain, limited road access, no immediate neighbors. The kind of property where you could hold prisoners for months without anyone knowing.
Gregor looked at Simon, who still sat in the room, quietly sobbing as Delton comforted him. “Simon, you said that’s where Tiernan is?” Gregor fought to keep his voice level and his expression neutral.
Simon nodded.
“Do you know how many people are staying there?”
“No, but more than just the Murphy alphas. I think…” Simon bit his lip. “I think there are Doyle dragons there?”
Doyle dragons?
Erwan had paled. “The rest of our former clan. We never tracked them down.”
“How many?” Gregor asked.
“Seventeen, by our count. A mix of alphas and omegas. No children.”
Seventeen plus the remainder of the Murphys, plus Cladhaire and Baoth. They could be looking at as many as thirty dragons, maybe more. Not the best odds, but he didn’t care.
“We get him back. We get all of them back.” Gregor looked around the room, at Rhene, steady and sure; at Erwan, radiating fury barely contained by honor; at Jermon, Blair, and Zack, each ready to jump into action. “We know where they are. We know who’s holding them. Now we plan, and then we move.”
He reached into his pocket and touched the wire frames of Fergal’s reading glasses. The metal was warm from his body heat, and the familiar shape grounded him the way holding Fergal’s hand once had.
His hands were shaking again. Fifth time in his life. Not from rage, not from grief, but from the missing mate bond, his body demanding proximity to the man who was the other half of his soul.
He would get to him. He would tear down every ward, fight through every Murphy alpha, break every lock between him and Fergal. And when he found him—when, not if—he would open every door. Every single one.
“Let’s plan,” Gregor said, and the room came alive.