CHAPTER 29 #3
My heart pounds as I realize what that means.
He’s not letting me leave. He thinks I’ve been compromised, and maybe I have been, just not in the way he suspects.
“I need to make sure the Ravens know I’m alive.
They’ll come looking for me, and if they find me held against my will here, it’ll compromise any chance of an alliance. ”
There’s no understanding in his expression, but at least a grudging respect for my conviction. “Twenty-four hours, Rosen. That’s all I can give you. Meet me back here tomorrow night with your new… allies.” The word seems to cost him physically to say. “If the council agrees, we’ll discuss terms.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Relief washes through me. It’s more than I dared hope for.
As he opens the door, Lexa is right there, her familiar face a welcome sight despite the circumstances.
“She’s leaving,” the general tells her. “Escort her to the perimeter.”
“But—” Lexa’s brow furrows in confusion.
“That’s an order, Captain Ventura.”
Lexa straightens, professionalism masking her emotions. “Yes, sir.”
As we exit the bunker, the others watch me with varying degrees of wariness and curiosity. I ignore their stares, focusing instead on what lies ahead.
Twenty-four hours to convince the Ravens that this tentative agreement is worth pursuing. Twenty-four hours to prepare for a meeting that could change everything.
Lexa walks beside me in silence as we leave the outpost, waiting until we’re beyond earshot of the others before speaking. “How do we know this isn’t some elaborate trap? The Ravens could be using you.”
“They’re not,” I insist. “Look, I know how this sounds, but I need you to trust me. I’ve seen what Cain is capable of. If he succeeds, no one will be safe. Not in Redmoore, not anywhere.”
She nods, then gently squeezes my arm. “I trust you.”
We reach the edge of the clearing, the dark forest looming before us. I stop, turning to face her fully. “Do you know what happened to Max? How did he escape? Was he kidnapped?”
She sighs, fixing a strand of her hair back in place.
“All thirty-seven victims managed to coordinate a simultaneous breakout somehow. No alarms were triggered, no guards were injured. Just gone. You know our containment protocols, right? They’re specifically designed to hold vampires, which means they must have had help from the inside. ”
“You have a mole,” I realize.
Even with Max fully possessed, there’s simply no way he could have orchestrated a breakout of all those vampires without alerting a single authority. It had to have been someone with intimate knowledge of Redmoore’s security protocols.
Someone with the kind of clearance that wouldn’t raise suspicions. Someone who might have sympathies we never suspected.
“We’re investigating,” Lexa confirms, eyes grim. She briefly pauses before shifting closer, her voice lowering. “Remember those students from your junior class?”
My stomach tightens. I know exactly who she’s referring to. Always huddled together, whispering and laughing behind their hands when I walked past, the popular crowd whose opinions carried weight in every corner of the school.
“Jasmine, Gracie, and Colton?” I ask, despite already knowing the answer. There were more, like Mary, Felix, and Camille. But they were by far the worst.
“Yes.” She scans the area to make sure we’re still alone.
“None of them completed slayer training—all requested transfers to key posts. Jasmine is head of vampire research now. She’s been questioning the ethics of our containment methods lately.
Gracie, working in weapons development, has been designing non-lethal capture devices that seem unnecessarily humane.
Then we have Colton, head of security. He lost his sister to vampires a long time ago, but what if that was a cover story?
What if she was turned instead and he’s been a covert player ever since?
There’s more, but these three top my list. Too many ideological shifts, too many conveniently timed decisions.
And most importantly, none of them have airtight alibis. ”
I shift my weight, processing—Jasmine, the bleeding heart.
Gracie, the pacifist. Colton, the double agent.
It’s almost too ironic. They were the ones who made my time at Redmoore a special kind of hell, treating me like a ticking time bomb, spreading rumors about my supposedly unstable vampire side, and now hold positions that would give them the perfect cover for sabotage.
Could their personal grudge against me be so intense that they’d resort to doing the bidding of someone like Cain?
Or is Cain holding something over their heads?
Threatening and blackmailing them somehow?
“Do you think they’re working together?” I ask.
Lexa shakes her head. “No, but it’s possible. That’s the scary part. If we’re dealing with multiple leaks, it means the rot runs deeper than we thought.”
My blood runs cold. One mole is bad enough, but a web of them? Coordinated or not, it means one thing: Cain’s reach is growing.
I glance over my shoulder, sensing rather than seeing the Ravens in the shadows, growing impatient. “I have to go.”
Lexa steps back, her hand moving instinctively to the weapon at her hip. “Twenty-four hours, then. I’ll be here with the general.”
I nod, then turn and walk into the darkness, feeling her eyes on my back until the forest swallows me completely.
The moment I’m out of sight, the Ravens materialize beside me.
This is becoming a war with invisible front lines, where allies and enemies wear the same faces, and trust becomes the most dangerous weapon of all.