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CALLAN

His legs were already shaking as he stumbled ahead of me, breathing raggedly. We went up another flight of stairs, down a long corridor, until he finally stopped in front of a heavy steel door with a keycard lock. 

With trembling hands he took out his card and swiped it. The lock clicked open and then he pushed the door open slowly, as if testing my patience. I chose not to react because I might knock him out if I acted on my anger. 

And I needed him until I destroyed the evidence. The room was brightly lit with dozens of monitors stacked along the walls, each one showing different parts of the hospital. 

I could see the nurses hurrying along the hallways as they tried to evacuate the scared patients. After I demanded for the camera that watched over her room, he pointed shakily toward the top right monitor. "That one. That's the one you're looking for- room twelve." 

"Delete it," I ordered. 

But instead of doing it immediately, he froze, staring at me like I had grown horns out of my head. Then, to my shock, he shook his head, slightly. 

"I- I can't. If Alpha Magnus finds out, I'm going to be in trouble." 

I was behind him in a second. This time I wrapped my hand very right about his throat. 

"You either delete it right now, or you won't have to worry about what my brother will do to you because you'll be dead when he gets here." 

He tried to struggle again but I replied in a cool voice. 

"There is no need to panic or try to fight. You're either deleting the file or you're doing, there is no middle ground. So if you know what's good for you, get on with it immediately. You have less than two minutes." 

I pushed him close to the monitor and he got to work quickly. His hands fumbled across the keyboard as he clicked through the files. I watched intently as the file popped up and then he clicked delete. 

That's when I finally let go of him. But despite that I still wasn't fully convinced. It felt like he was hiding something from me. This felt too easy. I leaned closer to his ear, forcing him to sit down. 

"Is there a backup?" 

The moment I asked that question, his whole body went stiff, and then slowly, hesitantly, he gave me another nod.

"Where the fuck is it?" I growled. "Where?" He pointed towards a small metal drawer beneath the desk.

"The SD cards. They are backed up here every minute."

Letting another curse fly out of my lips, I yanked the drawer open and saw them. There were rows or tiny back cards connected to something with tiny wires. I glared down at him. 

"Are you insane? Did you think I wouldn't fucking ask? You thought deleting the footage on-screen would trick me? Or do you think that if the footage I wanted to delete somehow got aired, I wouldn't come back looking for you? Are you stupid?" 

"I'm- I'm sorry your Grace. I was scared." "Sorry my ass." 

I ripped the five SD cards but just as I did, the door burst open behind us. The doctor was the first to walk in, followed by Magnus and the nurse who had been talking with the IT guy standing nervously in the doorway, shaking. Magnus’s eyes went straight to me, then to the SD cards in my hand. 

His face darkened instantly and then he demanded in that sharp, commanding voice. 

"What's going on here?" I smirked, even though I had the premonition that this meeting wasn't going to end well. "Just taking care of something." 

His eyes narrowed and then he stepped forward. When his eyes dropped to the card in my hand, his face darkened in realisation. 

"Hand it over." I smirked, watching the serious look on his face. I remembered countless times when he had been wearing that shit-eating smirk while I was the serious one, always stressing over one thing or the other. 

But the tables had turned now and I was just about to give him a taste of his own medicine. 

I snapped the cards into, making sure every single one of them were in pieces before I crushed them harder and tossed the shards onto the floor in front of him. 

His face was already twisted in anger but I could give a shit. He turned to the doctor, the nurse and the IT guy before he growled out the command. 

"Leave us." The trio scrambled out quickly, not daring to look back. 

The door clicked shut, and then it was just the two of us, soaking in the tension that had stretched taut like a bow that was about to snap. Magnus took a step closer, and then lowered his voice to a dangerous baritone. 

“What the fuck are you thinking, Callan? Have you lost your damn mind?" 

I stood my ground. "How does it feel, huh? You want to know what I think? It's the same thing I think every time you make your twisted, sick decisions. The same thing I think when you destroy lives like they are nothing and then defend yourself when I want to correct some of your decisions. I was thinking I'm not going to let you see what happened. So you can also understand, or at least have a taste of what you do to me." 

His lips curled back in a snarl that bared a fang. "You think breaking my rules will save you? You think destroying what's mine to see will protect her? Let's be honest with each other, you're not just doing this to take your revenge on me or to make me understand how I treat you, or some bullshit like that. We both know that something happened there and you're trying to cover it up." 

He paused, looking me in the eyes now. 

"Now, I saw what happened there and I am pretty sure that there is no way something hard must have hit the wall to the point where it cracked. The nurses said they heard the sound of thunder, but it's not in days. And there is no sign of a storm. It's very bright outside. You can try to hide whatever it is that happened in there but I know that there is something strange about her. And even though I don't actually know it, I can feel it and I'm going to keep looking into it. I'm going to keep piecing it all together until I get my hands on the answers that I’m looking for. You've made a statement, good for you, but don't take me for a fool." 

I didn't answer him, and I made sure not to react in a way that would prove him right. He was probably trying to get to me to know if I would prove him right and that was the last thing I wanted to do. 

He leaned closer, this time and his growl vibrated in his chest as he warned. 

"If you want to test me, brother, then be ready. I'll make sure you regret every bit of it. I don't want to think that you could be actually thinking about plotting against me, but if that's what you're doing, I'll make sure you regret it. If you ever decided to put my life or that of my Pack in jeopardy..."

His words trailed as he slightly tilted his head, smirking. He didn't need to say more for me to know what he wanted to say. 

But it didn't get to me. Without another word, he stepped back and turned before storming out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Once the room was quiet again, I sighed and sagged against the desk. 

The only thing that gave me a bit of respite now was the fact that I had been able to destroy the recordings and he hadn't seen it. He could threaten me all he wanted, but no threat could compare to him seeing what had happened inside that room. 

I crouched down, picked up the broken pieces of the card before sliding them into my pocket. I couldn't leave them here, I needed to make sure that everything in there was destroyed. Until then, my mind wasn't going to be at rest. I straightened slowly and stared at the empty doorway. 

Magnus already knew something was off about Ariadne. Was that why he made her his partner for the Moonlit Hunt Games? 

Was he purposely putting her in a life and death situation where she would be forced to use her powers? It dawned on me instantly what he was doing. 

The shock of the realization made me freeze. I had to get Ariadne out of here before the games, because once it started, Magnus would have every opportunity to find out who she really was. 

Just when I thought I had everything under control, Magnus’s plan had reared up its ugly head again.