Chapter 19
Rowen
I didn’t sleep again after Wolfe dozed off.
Not because of restlessness, not because he and I had spent the night learning every inch of each other, but because my brain wouldn’t shut off.
Something had been bothering me for days while I’d been at Stonefang, since the last rogue ambush where Simon had died. Though now I knew what Simon had been subjecting Solana to, I regretted the tears I’d shed for him.
I had a gut-deep itch I couldn’t quite place. But now, with the Hollow underfoot again, the bond humming like a live wire under my skin, with both of us ready for it to complete, accepting what it meant, and the scent of pack tension still clinging to every corner…I started to see it.
It was in the timing.
The attacks weren’t random. Wolfe knew that, too, but they were more than just passed notes from scared children.
I slipped out of bed, took the quickest shower, just enough to wash away the evidence of him from the previous night, and got dressed fast. He was still sleeping when I re-entered the bedroom, gently brushing my lips over his forehead as I paused to look down at my mate.
This was right. He and I. I knew it now. Maybe the Goddess had sent more than a landslide after him. Maybe she’d sent him me.
I forced myself to move away; if I lingered, he’d wake up, and I wouldn’t try that hard to resist if he pulled me back down beside him.
I made my way to the pack hall. I passed faces I knew and cared for, yet every shifter I passed that I’d grown up with in the Hollow, I now looked at with doubt in my mind. How strange that the shifters in my pack that I wasn’t wary of were the shifters who weren’t of the Hollow.
I didn’t want to raise suspicion; I knew I would be watched because I knew that the betrayal in my pack didn’t stop with Lewis. I just didn’t know who else.
But I would.
So, for appearances, I paused to spend time with those being trained.
I exchanged pleasantries with Brand, who said nothing about the fact that his alpha was still sleeping.
I didn’t get one comment from Cody as he joined us, but I saw the changes in them towards me, though they masked it well.
While Brand was not exactly softer—I don’t think he knew how to be—he wasn’t as abrasive as he’d been before.
I brushed off Cody’s suggestion that he get Axel to walk with me. The pack hall was within sight of where we were standing, and I reminded them both they could see me.
In the pack hall, I spent time in the kitchens and carefully avoided overreacting to the fact that the kitchen had descended into chaos, and not even well-organized chaos, in my absence.
Within an hour, a system was back in place and variety returned to the weekly menus; the only obstacle was getting supplies in and out of the territory if the barrier was maintained.
I promised them I would talk to Wolfe about supply runs.
A few hours after leaving Wolfe, I was finally closing the door to my dad’s office where I turned my attention to searching for old logbooks.
I found the patrol logs from the last few weeks, written in Wolfe’s neat, almost obsessively tidy handwriting.
I flipped through them, scanning the dates, looking at earlier entries, the locations, and the names of those assigned to different posts.
I noted the dates of the attacks and jotted them down. Different points. Different patrols. But always when the perimeter shifted. Always when a new patrol schedule went live.
The kind of information only an inner-circle shifter would see. Only someone trusted.
I sat in Wolfe’s chair, my teeth worrying at my bottom lip as I looked towards my dad’s old filing cabinet.
These weren’t random attacks. They were testing us. Probing the lines. Not to conquer. Not to wipe us out.
To push us.
Splinter us.
Weaken us.
A cold certainty slid down my spine. Someone wasn’t out there waiting to take this territory. It was about creating pressure.
Chaos.
Just enough to strain loyalties and force decisions that fractured the pack further, and they were doing it flawlessly. Which meant one of ours wasn’t just passing along intel—they were working with a tactician. A strategist.
Someone orchestrating it from inside like a goddamn conductor. I stood quickly, determination setting my jaw.
This was more than Lewis, I knew it.
Had Wolfe or the others seen it yet? Maybe they had—and hadn’t wanted to say it out loud. Not because they didn’t want to trust me, but maybe because they wanted to give me time to adjust?
I didn’t need time, because this wasn’t about rogue strays anymore. It was coordinated, which meant someone was planning for a future where Wolfe and I wouldn’t be leading this pack at all.
My foot tapped against the floor, my finger pressed into Dad’s old desk. Wolfe would have been through every filing cabinet, every journal, log, all of it. I glanced at the door. Would he have known to look everywhere?
I left Dad’s office and made my way to the room Dad used to use for meetings with his council. I’d never liked it in here. It smelled of dust, wax, and old blood.
Dad had never expressly forbidden me to come in here, but it wasn’t a place you went to unless you were called. Too many secrets hidden in these walls, too many ghosts of justice since passed.
Which made it exactly the place where I needed to be.
I slipped into the room, relieved to see it empty, and closed the door firmly behind me. There were no obvious chests standing containing information, but I was the alpha’s daughter, and I knew where things were hidden.
A long table ran along one wall, ornate, heavy, ugly. With practiced fingers, I opened the latch and pulled out the hidden drawer. It took some work, as it ran the length of the table. Rows of thin files looked back at me, and I exhaled with relief that these were still here.
Wolfe was focused on Corrin, but I wondered if he knew this room housed more than elders. As I pulled patrol reports out and onto the table, I was starting to think that the rot in this Hollow didn’t begin with a rogue attack.
It started before.
The old records were kept in leather and cloth—leather long since cracked, but still marked with sigils of the Hollow’s founding lines. I pulled the reports for the last ten years of council meetings. Minutes. Decrees. Jurisdictional shifts.
It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. A report labeled Territorial Oversight: Border & Rogue Activity–Assigned Councils, 7-Year Rotation
Names. Dates. Duties.
And right there, tucked into the list like it wasn’t a damn bomb waiting to go off: Corrin—Rogue Border Oversight, Years 3–7.
I stared at it, bile rising in my throat.
Corrin.
Wolfe was right.
He’d been in charge of rogue relations. Not containment. Not eradication. “Relations.”
Monitoring movements. Logging contacts. Occasionally, negotiating for peace when rogue dens cropped up too close to our territory line. He would’ve known their hunting grounds. Their migration patterns. Their weak points.
He would’ve known how to use them.
More than that—he would’ve had the authority to bury anything that didn’t fit the narrative the council wanted to sell. My heart pounded in my ears. My hands curled around the edges of the parchment, nails biting into the paper.
Wolfe was right to be suspicious of him.
He just hadn’t known why. But even he didn’t know how deep this went.
This wasn’t just betrayal. It was calculated.
It wasn’t just about undermining Wolfe. It was about controlling the future of this pack from the shadows—and using old alliances and rogue grudges to make it happen.
I folded the page, tucked it into my jacket, and closed the book slowly.
The Hollow wasn’t just fractured. It had been built on cracks we never saw coming, but I was going to be the one to rip the truth into the light.
My bed is empty, and so is my office. Are you hiding from me, princess?
I jumped when I felt him in my head, the smile on my face reflecting the warm teasing of his voice. Hiding? I teased him back. Maybe I’m recovering…
I felt his amusement. If you recover, I’ll just have to wear you out again.
Goddess, that didn’t sound like a bad plan. Instead, I finished putting the records away. Can you come to me? I asked him, my tone serious once more. Alone?
His humor was instantly gone, his alpha tone very much in place. Where are you?
I told him, warning him to be careful, knowing I had piqued his curiosity.
I’d barely restored everything back in place when I heard the door open, and Wolfe entered the room, his warm scent wrapping around me.
I didn’t look up. “Shut the door, lock it if it still has one.”
“It doesn’t.”
I looked up at the sound of his voice, being drawn to it, him, like a magnet. His T-shirt was a simple black one, his black jeans had frayed hems, and his boots were dull but clean. Jaw sharp, lips full, eyes focused and sharp, hair tousled like he’d just run his hand through it.
Good Goddess, that was my mate. Mine.
Wolfe’s eyes darkened as he walked towards me. “Princess, your scent just turned…delicious.”
His mouth claimed mine in the next breath.
The kiss was slow and deliberate, hands running down my back to cup my ass easily, our tongues tasting each other as I returned his kiss.
It was unhurried and sensual, a reminder of what we had shared last night, but softer.
Making me forget for a moment why I’d called for him, what I had tucked in my jacket.
Wolfe’s fingers dug into my ass, the kiss deepening.
His tongue brushed against mine, his teeth nibbled my lower lip, and my hand lowered to run over the hardening length of my mate as he pulled me closer, and I heard the crinkle from old paper resist at the pressure between us, causing me to draw back.
“Mm-hmm, this isn’t what I wanted you for,” I told him, stepping back, my thumb wiping across my lower lip.
“Okay.”