Chapter seventy-eight

Eduardo

I followed the rest of the guards toward the place where Austine had discovered an opening. "Here," one of the guards pointed toward a wall. I followed his hand movement, and my gaze fell on the wall. I frowned, confused.

It was just a wall.

"This is just a wall," I said, my eyebrow drawn back.

"The same thing we thought," another guard said, stepping forward. He traced his hand over a part of the wall before sliding his finger along a small line that looked like a crack that normally appears on an old wall. Then, he slowly dragged it back, and a sudden creaking sound had my jaw dropping.

WTF!

My gaze bulged out as I watched it open, revealing the path that led to the back of the pack building.

This is... fucking impossible. How come this is here? My shocked eyes snapped back to the guards, now looking at me.

"How was this possible?" I asked.

The first guard pointed his finger to the guard on my left. I tilted my head, my confused gaze falling on him before shifting back to the first guard.

"We were looking for traces when his sword mistakenly got stuck in the crack line. We tried to pull it out, and that's when we discovered that there was a door here," he explained, but this felt like a whole hallucination.

His words sounded foreign to me.

This was never here; the fact that I had passed this part of the hallway at times was what made it crazy to me. A mere look at this, and there was no way you would know. It looked like a normal wall.

"This is crazy," I mumbled and instantly mind-linked Valerio. He needed to see this too. I couldn't be the only one.

'Hey, bro, can you come over?' I said before shutting the mind-link and walked outside from the opened wall door to the back of the pack house. My eyes gazed sharply across the whole place, as if to detect anything unusual.

"What's going on here?" The deep voice of Valerio resonated in my head, jolting me back to reality.

And I quickly strode back to the hallway to find the confused gaze of Valerio. Austine was right beside him.

"This is the path we told you we discovered," Austine said, and Valerio's furrowed gaze twirled back at him.

"How come this was here?" Valerio asked, and I chimed in, striding toward him. "The same thing I kept asking."

This didn't just come out overnight. It has been here.

Valerio's eyes, normally a piercing blue, were wide with shock, the pupils constricted in a mixture of anger and confusion as he trailed his finger along the edges of the opened wall door before I saw his jaw clench, the muscles in his face were tense and rigid.

"To my office," he suddenly growled, his voice echoing through the hallway. The atmosphere seemed to darken and thicken, like a storm cloud gathering on the horizon. The air grew heavy with tension, and the silence that followed was oppressive, like a physical weight pressing down on all of us.

Valerio's eyes snapped sharply at me and then Austine.

"Follow me," The command was not a request, but a demand, one that brooked no argument or disobedience.

He's pissed off; I could feel it.

But who couldn't? Not when a path is in your pack, a means that your enemies can easily use and sneak into your pack. I could see the fear in the guards' faces.

I swallowed. Austine and I followed him.

Immediately, we reached his office, Valerio growled out in frustration and pulled hard on his hair, turning to face us. The skin around his mouth was pale and pulled taut over his teeth as he snarled.

"How did that thing come about?!"

"I think we might have a spy here," Austine started to say, but a loud growl from Valerio shut him up.

"We have always had a spy here, but how relaxed have you all become that you didn't hear or detect any sound when that person was boring a hole from that wall?!" He bellowed before snapping at Austine.

"How?!"

Austine flinched back before gulping hard, his head lowered.

"I'm sorry, Alpha," he mumbled, but that only fueled Valerio's anger more.

"This thing didn't appear overnight," I interjected, trying to pull his attention away from the nervous Austine.

"Exactly what I'm saying,"

I nodded at him. I'm also fucking pissed off. Not us calling Lucius names when we had an opening... a path that the enemies could equally follow into our pack. That makes our pack insecure.

"This explains how those fools entered here and the sudden disappearance of that snitch," he spat, his eyes flared with anger, and his pupils burned with a fierce inner light.

"I think that place has been there before Aurora and Luna came here," I said, and Valerio's face seemed to darken.

"If that's the case, then that means the person who created that path aided in her escape. Maybe also a spy from Lucius," Valerio's voice was laced with venom.

"What do you mean?" Austine and I asked in unison, looking at him.

Valerio rubbed his clenched jaw and hissed. "Forgotten so soon that... that snitch works for Lucius. Whoever helped her might also be working with that fool."

I sighed, feeling a mix of emotions. He always wants a way to criticize her and ridicule her into a mess. Although I understand him, nobody would be happy to know that his mate's lack of a wolf was due to it being suppressed. I'm also angry; she's our Luna, but I doubt Aurora intentionally gave it to her.

It feels like there's more to this that we had no idea about.

"This is not what we're supposed to be talking about now, but how to find the culprit," I said, trying to steer the conversation back on track.

Valerio shot me a sharp look before turning to Austine. "Go seal up that place. I won't have my people's safety tampered with."

"What about Aurora?" I asked, and Valerio frowned.

"What's my business with her?"

Austine bowed and tried to leave, but I held him back. He stopped and hurled me a confused stare, and I shifted my attention back to the furious Valerio.

"I don't see any reason to seal it up. Why not leave it, pretend as if we discovered nothing, and place some guards invisibly around the place to catch the culprit?" I suggested, trying to think strategically.

"Perfect," Austine hummed beside me in agreement, nodding his head. I smiled and turned to Valerio, his gaze was on me but his face was cold and blank, making it hard to make out what's going through his head.

I hope it's not something bad.