Chapter 169 I'll Prove to Them
ELIJAH
Fletcher had been in Carver’s pocket for six weeks.
That was what Hazel’s investigation determined. Fletcher’s real name was Declan Fletcher, he’d joined the pack eight months ago through a standard recruitment process that had cleared him without issue because the issue was not in his background but in what had been offered to him after his arrival.
Carver had approached him and they had a pretty simple arrangement; he was to maintain his position in the guard rotation, report what he observed and overheard in the east wing, and receive certain financial considerations in return.
He was not malicious. That was Hazel’s assessment and I agreed with it when I reviewed what she had found. He was a young man who had been approached by a senior council elder and offered money to share information, and he had not fully understood what the information would be used for until it was being used. By then, he was in.
“He came to me before I finished the investigation. He came and told me everything voluntarily.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. He said he heard what happened to Adriana in Carver’s office — that she held her ground, that she held the power back — and he decided he’d gotten it wrong about her.” She paused. “He was genuinely frightened of her after the nursery incident. Carver had been feeding that fear carefully and it had worked. He was starting to rethink whether the fear was accurate.”
I looked at the file in front of me.
“What does he want?”
“To not be dismissed. He knows he’s compromised himself and he’s not asking to be absolved of that. He just wants to stay.”
I closed the file and fixed my steady gaze on her. “What’s your read on him?”
“Useful,” Hazel said. “If he’s telling the truth, which I believe he is, then he’s now an asset rather than a liability. He has access to whatever Carver is planning next and a reason to share it.”
“And if Carver finds out he’s flipped?”
“Then we’ve got a bigger problem than Carver on the council.” She met my eyes. “But I don’t think Carver will find out. Fletcher is very motivated to make sure he doesn’t.”
I told her to keep him in place and keep him talking and bring me anything that came through within twelve hours of receiving it.
That conversation happened on a Thursday.
On Friday morning, through Fletcher, we learned what Carver was planning.
It was more direct than I had expected. Carver had been patient throughout, building slowly, gathering support, moving through proper channels. But the conversation he had had after my mother’s arrival had shifted something in him. The sisters being involved. These were developments that complicated his timeline. He had decided patience was no longer serving him.
He had identified an opportunity.
The following Tuesday was the pack’s monthly community gathering. It was a tradition that predated my tenure as Alpha — the whole pack assembled on the central grounds, formal enough to be a pack event and informal enough that children came and food was shared and the occasion had a social quality alongside its ceremonial one. As Luna, Adriana presided over part of the gathering. She moved through the crowd, spoke with pack members, was visible and present.
Carver’s plan was to use the gathering. He had arranged for a situation to be created — specific words delivered to Adriana by a specific person at a specific moment, designed to trigger a power surge publicly and visibly.
The person delivering the trigger was someone Adriana would not expect hostility from, which made it harder to prepare for. The trigger itself was specific to the maternal instinct connection the sisters had identified. A false threat to the children, delivered convincingly, in the middle of a crowd.
If her powers surged publicly in front of the entire pack, with children present, with no way to frame it as anything other than what it was, Carver would have everything he needed. Not just a council case. A pack consensus that their Luna was genuinely dangerous.
I read the report Fletcher had given Hazel and felt something that was colder than anger and more useful.
I went to Adriana.
She was in the middle of an afternoon training session with the sisters and I stood at the edge of the grounds and waited until there was a break, and then I walked to her and told her everything.
She listened without interrupting.
“He chose the gathering deliberately,” she said. “Because it’s the event where I’m most exposed. Most visible. Most surrounded by people I feel responsible for.”
“Yes.”
She looked at the training ground. Then back at me.
“I’m not going to miss the gathering,” she said. “I want to be clear about that.”
“I know.”
“And I’m not going to tell him I know about the plan, because if I do, he’ll adjust it and we won’t know what the adjusted version looks like.”
“Also what I was thinking.”
She turned fully toward me. “So we go. And whatever he has arranged, I will hold it.”
“The sisters—”
“I’ll talk to them tonight. But—” She held my gaze. “I have to be the one to do this. Not them, not you, not Hazel. Me. I have to stand in that gathering and hold my ground in front of the whole pack, because that’s the only way it means anything. Not just for Carver. For them.” She gestured generally in the direction of the pack. “They’re scared of me. I need to show them something real. Something I can actually do, not just something I can refrain from destroying.”
I looked at her.
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“No,” she said honestly. “But I’m going.”