Chapter 17 Recruiting Help (Declan POV)
The library smelled like old paper and wax polish. Afternoon light slanted through the tall windows, turning dust motes into tiny sparks. I spotted Vivian at a corner table on the third floor, back to the stacks, head bent over a thick book she wasn’t really reading. Her posture screamed vigilance: shoulders squared, one hand resting near the edge of the table where a pen could become a weapon in half a second.
I approached slowly, palms open, no sudden moves.
She saw me coming. Her eyes flicked up, narrowed. She closed the book with a deliberate snap.
“Nightshade heir,” she said. Her voice carried just enough to reach me, not enough to carry farther. “You’re either lost or looking for trouble.”
I stopped three feet from the table, close enough to talk quietly, far enough that she wouldn’t feel cornered. “I need five minutes.”
“You’ve got three.” She leaned back, crossed her arms. “And they’re running.”
I pulled Tyler’s notebook from inside my jacket, black, worn edges, the word TRANSFERS still visible on the cover. I set it on the table between us but didn’t push it toward her.
“Tyler Morrison was working on something,” I said. “Before he died. Transfer students. Missing records. A project called Chimera. Suppression logs. He thought it was connected to something bigger, something that happened seventeen years ago.”
Vivian’s expression didn’t change, but her fingers tightened on her sleeve. “Tyler was on the Concordance Committee. He had access to old files. So what?”
“He wasn’t just curious.” I tapped the notebook once. “He was building a case. Names, dates, patterns. Kids who disappeared from academy rosters. No forwarding addresses. No pack registrations after a certain point. And one of them...”
I opened the notebook to the page Tyler had marked with a folded corner. The list stared up at us: Hannah Kimura. Gabriel Cross. Jennifer Reyes. And halfway down, circled in red ink: Meredith Kim.
Vivian’s breath caught, just a tiny hitch, gone in an instant.
I kept my voice low. “Meredith is on this list. So is Rowan. So are at least twelve others. They weren’t transferred. They were hidden. Suppressed. Their wolves locked down with drugs disguised as vitamins or allergy meds. Someone, multiple someones, ran an experiment to create wolves who don’t need pack bonds. Controllable. Weaponizable.”
She stared at the page. Then at me.
“You expect me to believe you just happened to find this notebook?”
“I expect you to read it,” I said. “Because if you don’t, and the truth comes out during Rowan’s trial, Ironwood will be the first pack to fracture. Your heir, your future Alpha, has been drugged since infancy. If that goes public, your council will implode. Your Alphas will be accused of complicity or ignorance. Either way, your pack looks weak. And weak packs don’t survive Concordance negotiations.”
Vivian’s jaw worked. She reached out, pulled the notebook toward her. Flipped through pages slowly, Tyler’s cramped handwriting, arrows, circled dates, question marks that grew more frantic toward the end.
When she reached Meredith’s name circled in red, her finger stopped.
“How did you get this?” she asked without looking up.
“I took it from Tyler’s room after the morgue visit,” I lied smoothly. “He had it hidden under his desk drawer. Wesley let me in to pack Tyler’s things. I didn’t tell him what I found.”
She glanced up then. Eyes sharp. “And you’re showing it to me because…?”
“Because someone is recreating the pattern from seventeen years ago,” I said. “The same kind of killing. The same kind of framing. The same chaos right before a major Concordance. Back then, it ended with an execution and a fractured treaty. This time, they’re trying to make sure the treaty never gets renewed. And they’re using Rowan, and now Meredith’s name in the crosshairs, to do it.”
Vivian closed the notebook. Pushed it back toward me.
“Why should I help you?” she asked. “Nightshade and Ironwood don’t collaborate. We tolerate each other. Barely.”
“Because you’ve already started investigating,” I said. “You found Meredith sick after the party. You’ve seen the signs. You’re protecting her. I’m protecting Rowan. Our goals overlap.”
She studied me for a long beat. “You don’t strike me as altruistic, Hale.”
“I’m not,” I admitted. “But I’m also not stupid. If the conspiracy succeeds, if the Concordance collapses, Nightshade suffers too. My father’s already threatening to disown me over this. I’m past the point of playing safe.”
Vivian exhaled through her nose. “You’re asking me to trust a Nightshade heir who’s spent three years treating Ironwood like dirt.”
“I’m asking you to trust that I want the same thing you do: the truth. And I want it before Rowan’s trial in three days. Because if we don’t expose this, she dies. And if we do expose it without being careful, Meredith’s future dies with her pack’s credibility.”
She tapped one finger on the table, slow, deliberate.
“What exactly are you proposing?”
“Information sharing,” I said. “You have access to Ironwood medical records. I have archive files and Tyler’s notes. We compare. We look for overlaps. We find who’s still administering suppressants. We find who started Rowan’s Turning and framed her for murder. We do it quietly. No pack channels. No official reports. Just us.”
“And when we find them?”
“We take it to the Alphas together,” I said. “All three. At the Concordance. Public. Undeniable. They can’t ignore three heirs presenting evidence of a conspiracy that threatens the treaty itself.”
Vivian leaned forward. “You realize if we’re wrong, if we accuse the wrong people, we both end up rogue. Or dead.”
“I know.”
She stared at me for another long moment.
Then she reached out and pulled the notebook back toward her.
“I’m not doing this because I trust you,” she said. “I’m doing this because Meredith is my friend. Because Ironwood can’t afford to look complicit. And because if someone’s playing puppet-master with our heirs, I want their hands cut off before they pull any more strings.”
I nodded once. “Fair enough.”
She stood, tucked the notebook into her bag. “Meet me tomorrow night. Old chapel basement. Midnight. Bring whatever else you’ve got from the archives. I’ll bring Meredith’s medical history.”
“Done.”
She started to walk past me, then stopped. Looked back.
“One more thing,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“If you’re lying, if this is some Nightshade play to discredit Ironwood, I will end you myself. Slowly.”
I met her gaze. “If I’m lying, I’ll hand you the knife.”