Chapter 171
Asher
Drake's voice: "Did you know who she was?"
"Crystal told us later. Said the woman claimed to be 'a close friend of Scarlett Reeves,' visiting from Los Angeles."
Drake stopped the tape. The silence in the war room was deafening.
"That's the contradiction," he said quietly, pulling up the photos again. "Real Scarlett in LA, fake Scarlett in Alaska, same night. Impossible without—"
"Blood magic substitutes," Dmitri finished, voice hollow. "Eclipse Court's signature technique. They need a living template—hair, blood, recent memories. The substitute can pass for the original in casual observation, but they're puppets. Controlled remotely, used for surveillance."
My mind raced through implications. "If they had a substitute of Scarlett Reeves watching Kara at that party... they've been planning this for months. Since before we even marked her."
"Or longer," Cole whispered. "Ethan, who else did you interview?"
Drake's expression darkened. "Crystal. The party planner. And... it gets worse."
He loaded a new tape. Crystal's voice was defensive from the first word. "I have a boyfriend! I never tried to seduce the Alphas!"
Drake's voice, harder now: "I want to know if you deliberately sent Kara to that bathroom, knowing Lillian, Jade, and Nina were waiting to humiliate her."
Silence. Then, small and ashamed: "...Yes."
"Why?"
"They paid me five hundred dollars. They wanted to 'teach her a lesson.' I just... provided the opportunity."
Five hundred fucking dollars. That's what Kara's safety had been worth to this woman.
Blake's breathing turned ragged. Through our bond, I felt the barely leashed violence, the need to hurt someone, anyone, for what had been done to our mate.
"Blake," I said quietly, pouring command through the bond. "Control."
For a moment, I thought he might not listen. Then he grabbed an empty chair and hurled it at the window with supernatural strength. Glass exploded outward in a shower of crystalline shards. The chair sailed through the air before crashing into the snow-covered grounds below.
Cold Alaskan wind rushed into the room. Blake stood there, chest heaving, eyes still black. "I needed to fucking vent."
"Venting," I said with forced calm, "is using the mental link to express your rage. Not destroying the goddamn house."
"We need this house," Cole added, voice shaking, "to coordinate the rescue operation. Don't wreck it."
Blake's eyes slowly faded back to blue, though his gunpowder scent remained explosive. Through our bond, I sent what little control I could muster. Together. We stay together.
Drake cleared his throat nervously. "There's more. Crystal's full confession."
The tape resumed. Crystal's voice had lost its defensive edge, replaced by callous indifference. "Kara used to be unpopular at school. Suddenly she's the center of three Alphas' attention. It was annoying. I thought the girls would just say mean things, not actually hurt her."
"So you found it entertaining? Watching her be humiliated?"
A cold laugh. "Honestly? Seeing her illusion shattered—that the triplets secretly hated her—was satisfying. And when she threw up on them... that was hilarious."
The combined scent of three enraged Alphas made the air nearly unbreathable. Even Dmitri swayed on his feet, unused to such concentrated aggression.
I forced myself to think past the fury, to focus on what mattered. "The substitute. Tell us everything."
Drake pulled up more photos—grainy social media shots from Natalie's party. In several backgrounds, barely visible, was the silver-dressed woman. Her face was always slightly turned away, but her attention was clearly fixed on one person.
Kara.
"According to multiple witnesses," Drake said, "this woman arrived alone, claimed to know Scarlett Reeves, and spent the entire evening observing Kara from a distance. She left before midnight—before the real Scarlett's LA event even ended."
"Reconnaissance," Cole breathed. "They were studying her. Learning her patterns, her vulnerabilities."
"Her worth," Dmitri added darkly. "Eclipse Court doesn't waste blood magic substitutes on random surveillance. If they deployed one to watch Kara, it means she was already flagged as a high-value target."
"But why?" Blake demanded, voice raw. "What the fuck do they want with her?"
"That," Dmitri said heavily, "is what we need Konstantin to tell us. Or whoever his mysterious female Boss really is."
Drake was carefully packing up his equipment, clearly eager to leave the room full of predatory Alphas. "There's one more thing. I managed to track down the guest list from Natalie's party. Cross-referenced it with known Court sympathizers."
He pulled out a printed list, several names highlighted in red. "These three individuals have documented ties to Eclipse Court operations. They were all at the party that night."
I scanned the names, committing them to memory. "Send this to Devon. I want surveillance on all of them within the hour."
"Already done," Drake said. "And... Alphas? I'm sorry. About what they did to your mate. To Kara."
The use of her name—not "the Luna," not "your female," but Kara—made something in my chest crack. This human investigator had more respect for my mate than I'd shown her for most of her life.
"Thank you," I forced out. "For finding this. For... caring."
Drake nodded and left. The moment the door closed, Blake exploded into motion, pacing like a caged animal. "We need to visit every single person who hurt her. Every. Single. Fucking. One."
"We will," Cole promised, his voice gone cold in a way I rarely heard from him. "After we get her back. After we make sure she's safe."
"The substitute," I said, pulling their focus back. "Dmitri, you said Court uses them for surveillance. What else can they do?"
The older man's face was grim. "They can interact, speak, touch. But they're limited—no independent thought, no real personality. Just puppets following programmed instructions." He paused, silver scent flickering with old pain. "When they killed my daughter and her companions, they used substitutes to lure them into the trap. Made them think they were meeting allies."
The implications crashed over me. "If they can make a substitute of Scarlett Reeves... they could make substitutes of anyone. Anyone Kara might trust."
"Or anyone we might trust," Cole added, analytical mind already racing. "How do we know the people around us are real?"
"Blood," Dmitri said simply. "Substitutes can't bleed true. Their blood turns black within seconds of leaving the body. It's the only reliable test."
I filed that information away, already planning new security protocols. But first...
"Cole," I said quietly. "You've been silent. What are you thinking?"
My youngest brother stood at the broken window, staring out at the frozen landscape. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely audible over the wind.
"I'm thinking about how scared she must have been. At that party, cornered by those women, hearing all the cruel things we actually said about her." His mint scent wavered, mixing grief with guilt. "We gave them ammunition, Ash. Every insult, every 'Carrot,' every time we treated her like she was nothing—it all got used against her."
"And we didn't protect her," Blake added, rage turning inward. "We were right fucking there, at that party, and we didn't protect her."
I wanted to argue, to rationalize, to find some way to make this hurt less. But the truth was inescapable. We had failed Kara long before Eclipse Court took her. We had made her vulnerable, isolated, convinced she was worthless.
And now she was in the hands of people who'd been watching her for months, studying her, planning.
"The substitute wasn't just surveillance," I said slowly, pieces clicking together. "It was a test. They wanted to see how she'd react under pressure. How isolated she was. Whether anyone would protect her."
"And we failed the fucking test," Cole whispered.
"Which made her the perfect target," Dmitri confirmed. "A powerful bloodline, isolated from support, convinced of her own worthlessness. Easy to manipulate. Easy to control."
Blake's fist slammed into the wall, leaving a crater in the plaster. "I'm going to kill them. Every single person who hurt her. Everyone who watched and did nothing. Everyone who—"
"Blake." My command cut through his spiral. "Focus. We can't help Kara if we're drowning in guilt and rage."
"Then what the fuck do we do?" he demanded, eyes flashing gold again. "How do we fix this?"
"We find her," I said with absolute certainty. "We bring her home. And then..." My ebony scent turned deadly. "Then we make sure no one ever hurts her again."
Through our bond, I felt my brothers' agreement. Felt their shared determination, their united purpose. We had failed Kara before.
We would not fail her again.
"Dmitri," I said, turning to the older wolf. "You mentioned blood magic substitutes require a living template. Does that mean..."
"Scarlett Reeves is still alive," he confirmed. "Somewhere, Court is keeping her alive to maintain the substitute. Same with anyone else they've copied."
A terrible hope kindled in my chest. "Kara's parents. Connor and Celeste. If Court has been using substitutes..."
"They might still be alive," Cole finished, voice trembling.
"Or they might have been templates," Dmitri said heavily, "until Court decided they were no longer useful. The substitutes we encountered in 2015 were active. That means my daughter and her companions were still alive when the attack happened. What happened after..." He couldn't finish.
Kara's parents might be alive. Or they might have been kept alive just long enough to create perfect copies, then disposed of once those copies had served their purpose.
Either way, she deserved to know the truth.
"We need to know," Blake said, voice rough. "When we find Kara, we need to know what happened to her parents. She deserves that truth."