Chapter 14 - Viktor
Viktor spread the three files across Kahn’s desk and stepped back.
Nadia Soren. Hired eight months prior, during reconstruction. A background gap of six months between her previous pack and Beaumont. Olivia had spotted her first—a fact he’d stopped resisting and had begun to treat as useful information.
Brennan Cole. No relation to Marcus, but the last name had earned him a second look. The second look had turned up a communications pattern that didn’t match his stated routine: three trips to the northern market town in six weeks, each one falling within forty-eight hours of a perimeter breach.
Maren Holt. Senior administrative staff, access to scheduling documents, ward rotation timetables, the ritual preparation logs that detailed Caitlynn’s last-minute request for the grounding token.
She’d been in the great hall during setup, close enough to hear the conversation, and her attendance record showed a half-day absence the morning of the kidnapping that she’d attributed to illness.
Nobody had questioned it, because nobody questioned Maren Holt.
Kahn read the files in order. His face gave nothing. Chris sat in the chair by the window, one ankle crossed over the other, reading upside down with the ease of a man who’d spent years absorbing intelligence from angles that weren’t meant for him.
The study was warm—fire lit, the last of the afternoon coming through the west-facing window in long amber panels that lay across the floorboards and reached the edge of the desk.
Viktor stood to Kahn’s right, and the position felt the same as it always had, which was precisely why the difference underneath it was so noticeable—a crack in old plaster, invisible until you knew where to press.
“Brennan’s trips,” Kahn said. He’d reached the second file. “These are market runs?”
“Supposedly. He’s listed as purchasing medical supplies for the barracks. The receipts are genuine, the purchases match the inventory, and every trip has a documented return time.”
“So what’s wrong with them?”
“The timing. Three trips in six weeks when the standard resupply cycle is monthly. Someone is sending him more often than necessary, and whoever authorized the additional trips isn’t in the chain of command I’d expect.”
“Who authorized them?”
“Maren Holt.”
The room thinned. Kahn set the second file down and opened the third.
Viktor watched him read it the way he’d watched him read a thousand briefings—searching for the moment the information rearranged itself behind his eyes, the click that showed on his face as a flattening of the mouth and a slight narrowing at the temples.
Chris spoke from the window. “The half-day absence. Did anyone actually see Maren that morning?”
“Elena saw her in the kitchens at seven. Nobody can place her between eight and noon.”
“Four hours.” Chris uncrossed his ankles and leaned forward. “That’s enough time to send a message and get back. A relay posted between here and Marcus’s camp would close the distance.”
“That’s what I think happened.”
Kahn closed the third file and set it on top of the others. His hands stayed flat on the desk for a long moment, palms down, the posture of a man holding something in place.
“Eleven years,” Kahn said. “She’s been here eleven years.”
“I know.”
“She was here when my father was Alpha. She helped organize Eli’s memorial.
” The name came out clean, no hesitation, though the air around it changed.
“I’m asking whether you’re certain, Viktor.
If I pull Maren Holt into an interrogation room, the entire administrative core of this pack feels the tremor. ”
“I’m close. Olivia and I have been cross-referencing the archive access records, and there’s a pattern in the vault logs that narrows the window further. Another two days, maybe three, and I’ll have enough to move on.”
Kahn looked at him with the same depth his looks had been showing ever since Olivia was chosen as his mate. A look that thickened whenever her name was mentioned.
Chris, to his credit, was studying the ceiling with deep concentration.
“You said Olivia’s been working the archive.” Kahn’s voice was measured. “How is that going?”
“She found the scheduling overlap that exposed the southern approach. She caught the gap in the vault logs before I did.” He kept his tone level, professional, each sentence carrying the same weight as the one before it.
“She brings a different angle. People give her information they wouldn’t give me. ”
“Because they’re less afraid of her.”
“Because they underestimate her. The result is the same.”
A beat of silence, and Chris coughed into his fist in a way that didn’t entirely sound like a cough. Kahn’s eyes cut to him and back.
“I’ll clear the interrogation room for the end of the week,” Kahn said. “Bring me the rest when you have it. Chris, I want you running parallel verification on Brennan’s market trips—receipts, travel times, anyone who can place him at the northern town during those windows.”
“Done.” Chris stood, tucked the chair back under the window ledge with the unhurried grace of a man who’d learned to occupy space without claiming it.
He clapped Viktor’s shoulder on the way past and let his hand stay a beat longer than usual—warm, deliberate, the kind of gesture Chris offered when he sensed something in a room that the other men weren’t saying.
The door closed. Viktor reached for the files.
“Leave them,” Kahn said.
Viktor’s hand stilled.
The study was quiet in a way that had weight—the loaded kind of quiet, heavier than the pauses between briefing topics, holding a question someone hadn’t asked yet. Kahn was still sitting behind the desk, hands flat, the light through the window retreating toward the wall as the afternoon faded.
“How are you sleeping?” Kahn asked.
“Fine.”
“You’ve been in the barracks gym at four-thirty every morning this week. The night guard mentioned it.”
“I’ve always been an early riser.”
“You’ve always been a five-fifteen riser.
Four-thirty is new.” Kahn leaned back. The chair creaked beneath him.
“And you look like you’ve been running on coffee and patrol reports, which is normally your preferred condition, but there’s a quality to it this week that concerns me.
” He stopped. Tried a different approach. “Are we alright, Viktor?”
The question sat between them. The “we” encompassed fifteen years of doorways stood in, briefings shared, the unsaid things that had accumulated between them like sediment—building a foundation neither of them had examined because examining it would have meant admitting it was there.
“We’re fine,” Viktor said.
Kahn’s mouth compressed at the corners—the expression Viktor knew better than any other, the one that meant Kahn had heard the answer, measured its distance from the truth, and decided to let the gap stand for now.
“The files stay,” Kahn said, nodding toward the desk. “I want to read them again tonight.”
Viktor left. The corridor was dim, the sconces lit for evening, and his footsteps were the only sound. He walked past the kitchen, where the smell of chamomile drifted through the half-open door, telling him Olivia was in there without needing to check.
He went to the quarters. Sat at the desk. Opened the investigation notes and worked them by lamplight, because work was the one language that never required him to be anything other than competent.
He worked until the lamp burned low. Olivia came in sometime after nine, moved through the sitting room without speaking, and closed the bedroom door behind her. The click of the latch was quiet, ordinary, the kind of sound that should have been nothing.