Chapter 52: Chapter Fifty-Two

Ryder stared outside the window of his sitting room, his hands folded across his chest, a frown on his lips, as he got lost in his thoughts.

It wasn’t often that he allowed himself a moment to stew in his thoughts but lately, getting lost in his thoughts was the only thing he seemed capable of doing.

He should have been focused on the folder Shivani had brought to him, a folder that contained information about Silver Moon Pack but, neither his mind nor his heart were in it.

He was tired of reading and reading, trying to come up with the best strategy to deal with his father, which didn’t end with either of them dead, but it seemed like the only option he still had was the Alpha duel.

He, Shivani along with Zayden have been working tirelessly for years, wanting to deal with the corruption that ran within both of their households but they have never stroke gold.

Alpha Gabriel needed to dealt with, soon.

Ryder didn’t care how it happened, all he wanted was for his father to be dethroned, and for him to take his rightful place as the heir of Blood Moon Pack.

What he did care about however, was not having to kill his father, even though he knew it was the only way to permanently deal with the threat that constantly hung around his family’s territory.

To dethrone his father without killing him, and have the backing of other allied packs, Ryder needed to provide solid proof of his crimes, which were still hard to come by. His father had covered his tracks so meticulously, it had been hard for Ryder to accept the truth about his activities at first.

It had taken five dead bodies to convince him to reconsider what his father was capable of, and to see him for what he truly was.

He tried to focus on the scroll he was holding but instead, his mind kept wandering back to Saffron. Flashes of her unguarded moments came to him, and a smile curved up his lips, as he got a flash of that sly smile of hers, that always made him thinking about things he shouldn’t be thinking about. Especially with someone who wasn’t a shifter.

“Ryder,” Shivani called out, cutting into his thoughts, effectively ending his daydreaming about a certain silver haired human.

They had been discussing duel strategies for over an hour now, but Ryder’s mind wasn’t there, it was somewhere else.

And from the look of irritation on her face, Shivani had noticed that too.

“Focus!” she snapped her fingers over his face, earning a scowl from him. “You need every advantage you can get, if you want to emerge victorious. The Alpha Supreme isn’t known to play fair when it comes to Alpha duels. How do you think he’s stayed untested for the fifty years he has been Alpha?”

“He is also my father,” Ryder pointed out, rather unhelpfully.

“Yes, he is,” Shivani responded in a flat tone. “As if anyone could ever forget that.”

“That is not…”

“What you meant?” she cut him off, completing his sentence, her brows quirking up. “Yeah, I know. However, because he is your father, and you have dared to issue a challenge against him, he wouldn’t go easy on you. You challenging him undermines his leadership, and with an ego as big as his, Alpha Gabriel will want to use you to set an example to the others. You need to be ready for anything he would throw your way.”

Ryder sighed heavily before sitting on the windowsill, his gaze trained on the scroll he had been reading before.

He had no idea how it would help him win the Alpha duel but if Shivani thought reading some ancient scroll about Alpha duels that took place in the past would help, then reading it was what he was going to be doing.

“Hey Shivani,” he called out suddenly, rolling back the scroll and dropping it on the windowsill, before he rose to his feet and walked towards his dining table. “What do you know about the Silver Moon Pack?”

“Nothing concrete really,” she pursed her lips, her gaze landing on the folder she had dropped on Ryder’s dining table when she had come in earlier, before she returned her gaze to him. “Which is odd, considering they are Blood Moon Pack’s biggest rivals. No one knows anything about them, except for the fact that their business operation is now triple what it had been before.”

“How is it possible that no one knows what they are up to?” Ryder mused, a thoughtful frown marring his face, before he smoothed it down.

“I have no idea,” Shivani shrugged. “I tried getting someone to do a stealth mission once but it failed, and I never heard back from the person I sent. So, I stopped trying to make contact with the pack. It’s like the whole pack became ghost which is also impossible since they still operate their business.”

“Hmm,” Ryder made a non-committal sound, before he dragged one of the stools out, and sat on it, his hand hovering over the folder before he turned to face Shivani again. “Can you try to find out more? Zayden said he would investigate but two is better than one, no?”

“Of course,” Shivani nodded. “I will see what I can do.”

Ryder turned his attention back to the folder in front of him, his frown returning as he picked it up, like it was nothing.

The folder weighed nothing, it was like there weren’t even papers in it, which was surprising because his father made sure to have extensive research on all supernatural clans and packs in existence.

The weightlessness of the folder was the first alarm bell that rang in Ryder’s mind.

When he flipped it open, the first page was the same as any other, containing the usual introduction about the Pack’s history. The second page contained a biography of the current Alpha of the pack which wasn’t something Ryder didn’t already know. It was the third page however that made him freeze, shock, and disbelief flashing across his face.

Staring back at him was a grainy picture of Saffron, or what she would look like, if she was ten years older.

Ryder knew that logically it couldn’t be her, but physically, there was no refuting the evidence; it was the same shock of silvery-white hair that was the first indication that the two were the same, or related.

The same high cheekbones framed in a heart shaped face, and brilliant brown eyes, only slightly older.

A laugh of disbelief escaped his lips, as he continued to read the bio of the woman who looked exactly like Saffron, shaking his head at his stupidity, as the final piece of the puzzle clicked inside his head.

Saffron was a werewolf, a half-breed. And she didn’t know it.

Hell, he hadn’t known it too. But, he should have. After all, the signs had all been there, but he had been blindsided.

Now, the problem was, how would he break the news to her?

His joy however morphed into despair as he thought about how this new reveal changed everything.

While he hated what his father stood for, he still had a sense of loyalty to him, and this information was something he had to tell him, as the reigning Alpha Supreme.

But how? And at what cost?