12 Kit
In the operations room, we allowed all the alphas to come in to further our perspectives on the situation.
We had them take seats around a large table that rounded for them to see the screen ahead.
Raphael and Anika took point with the video footage they had of our perpetrator we were following.
I stood in the corner of the room for them to do their work, watching all the others as they conversed about what they learned.
Many ideas were shouted from their impatience, so they weren’t heard the way they were hoping.
As if our lack of information wasn’t enough, the person hadn’t been to too many places for us to deduct a better routine.
There was one spot he kept returning to, but I knew a task force couldn’t go into it without being noticed.
A local bar on the edge of the city that all of us knew, warranted dealing with the devil who owned it the second we stepped in.
Castiel wasn’t someone people invited over to a Sunday brunch.
Like the Sellers, he became a cruel bastard who knew how to manipulate people into getting what he wanted.
The guy we had been tailing since rescuing Ryatt and his pack just happened to go into Cass’s building every other day since watching him.
“It's suicide!” Darius shouted from his position. Being one of the older Alphas, he was one of the most respected in the room. His legend followed him, and I remembered hearing about him when I dated the guys. Ryatt’s father cowered to the man sitting in my home.
I wasn’t sure how Leia knew him, but he was the first Alpha we saved from her swooping in to save him through me.
That secret stayed between us, and I respected her privacy not to ask.
It was that one tip-off that made it possible to intervene when the others were attacked.
“I say, we just go to the other locations and leave Castiel out of this,” Reginald voiced what he thought should happen. A cowardly Alpha, but he still managed to hold his seat within the inner circle of the families. Probably from kissing so much ass and schmoozing his way into mooching.
I watched as the seven heads battled it out to make a plan of action, but they weren’t getting anywhere fast because they were all entitled pricks.
It was like watching toddlers squabbling over a toy they all wanted, beginning to form a headache along my temples as I rubbed them to drown out the noise.
The guys only counted as one head even though they had more than one seat because Ryatt became their Alpha.
When the bickering wouldn’t stop, I finally sighed and walked forward to where Anika stood.
Her and her brother knew better than to say anything to the Alphas who were wanting to take control.
They were waiting to find out their ideas before saying what they wanted to do.
It annoyed the hell out of me trying to get these people to function like adults.
Plus, their potent scents were lingering in the room and putting us on edge from sniffing their dominating power.
For us three, we were keenly aware of it because we weren’t claimed to a pack, but none of them knew that.
Our instincts pointed us to seek attention from Darius, so we were watching him in the room.
I wanted Ryatt, but that was from a personal reason.
“May I have your attention,” I started politely, but they didn’t quiet down to listen.
Meeting the eyes of my allies, we shared the annoyance.
Allowing the Alphas to help us wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but a hassle we didn’t want to deal with.
I was also trying to avoid Ryatt after the boathouse incident that happened two days ago. “Shut the fuck up!”
Finally, they heard me. Taken back by me using such crass language, the powerful men in the room gave me their stares. Smirking, I pressed the button that showed live footage coming from the surveillance of the bar.
“Now that I have your attention, how about you sit and listen? You think you’re going to get anywhere against our adversary by fighting and bickering like this?” After I said it, the others thought it wise to not say anything else.
Dropping their gazes, they knew who had the power in this room, and it wasn’t the Alphas. I loved standing in my shoes where I could watch them bow down to an Omega. This role was corrupt, but they had no idea they were being housed in a pack with no Alpha.
“None of you need to put your necks on the line because we know Castiel loves to get favors from Alphas. I will go and do the dirty work because, believe it or not, the cruel bastard owes me one.”
“How did you get that guy to owe you a favor?” Darius wasn’t sure how to take that while being in the same room as me.
“The same way I got one from all of you,” I responded. “I did a task for him no one else was successful at. Now, that isn’t the point of this. I plan to go to the bar, tonight, and see what Castiel knows as my favor.”
“Why would you waste your favor on us?” Ryatt was the one to bring it up. “None of us even heard of your pack until it came time for us to be rescued, so the adversary probably doesn’t know about you either.”
“While your assumptions might be correct, I gain more with the families in power than I do without them. This arrangement benefits me more than you think it does.”
Letting them mull that over, I let them whisper among themselves to make sure this plan suited them.
Darius and Ryatt were the ones fighting over whether or not it should happen, and I could see the tense alignment beginning to build in Ryatt’s shoulders.
Darius was the one who looked back to me and tipped his chin.
“We all agree that this is a good idea, but we want to make sure it’s not going to cost us extra. ”
“It won't,” I promised him. “This information is needed for my home too.”
“And what are you hoping to get?” Ryatt perched himself to sit taller for everyone to notice. “You think Castiel will have the information you want?”
“I think the bar owner knows more than you think he does. I know this from personal experience, but he doesn’t like giving out information freely.
You have to pay the piper, and it’s best I go collect my payment from him.
He’ll either give me the address and location of this man, or he’ll give me something else to lead me there.
Either way, this is the direction I’m going. ”
“We’re all in agreement then.” Darius met the stare of all the other Alphas, excluding Ryatt.
Nodding my head, I let him know this was my stance on it. “Once I have what we need, prepare your Betas that you signed up for tasking. For now, make sure they’re properly rested.”
Knowing that was their moment to leave, they stood from the table and left the room.
All of them except one. Ryatt still wasn’t too pleased with the idea of where I’d be going.
He sat at the table as I conversed with Anika about what I had to do.
Her and Raphael made a plan on who would do what tonight, and he would be inside running things because he took point outside last night.
Grabbing my fur coat, I knew I needed to leave the compound immediately.
Without giving notice to his position, I grabbed some of the prosthetics off the table that we had shown the Alphas that we planned to use on their Betas to hide their identities better.
Some would have these fake noses while others wore beards and hats, but they wouldn’t be able to be traced.
We even managed to make a new scent that would mask what pack they belonged to without it being too similar to our own fake one.
Making my way down the hall, my heels clicked against the wooden planks below.
It only took an extra minute before I heard the door opening behind me as footfalls fell in line to catch up to me.
Ryatt didn’t say anything because he planned to just go with me whether I liked it or not, so I dug my hand in my pocket to pull out the nose that sat inside.
He already wore a ball cap because he liked them when being casual.
“If you’re coming with me, you’re still following my protocol.” I slightly turned my gaze toward him to see his smirk.
“How did you know I planned to come?”
“I knew you for a decade before our separation. It must be so hard for you to sit and be idle while someone else does the dirty work.” Getting to the garage, I opened the door for him to enter first. This part of the compound would be seen by the others when the task teams went out, so Ryatt was just getting a first glance at it.
He whistled when he saw all the different vehicles we had from vans to cars and even some motorcycles.
The parking bay was huge, and we made it useful for exactly this stuff.
“I even managed to secure my own maintenance team within our ranks. They come every other week to make sure all the vehicles are running smoothly.”
Ryatt was stunned into silence because he didn’t expect this. Unlocking the sedan that I commonly used, he looked at the older model and wasn’t sure why I wouldn’t take the fancier sport cars on the other side.
“We’re trying not to be seen,” I reminded him before he even asked it.
Once we were in the car, I got us going and opened the single garage door without doing the larger one.
From the inside, the garage door looked new.
On the outside of the warehouse that hosted them, we fabricated it to look like none of them would open.
Another homeless appearance made it so people didn’t try.
It didn’t take us very long to get to where we needed to go because the bar sat just outside the city right along the river. This hidden man got too close for comfort, and it was making me question things more than I should, praying Cass didn’t feed him information about me.