Chapter 67 - Lost II - The Royal Hybrid

Gabriel’s POV

I pulled my suit out from the closet and hung it over the chair by the desk,

”I don’t understand Hayden,” I admitted, shaking my head slightly while straightening out the fabric. ”You made such a big deal out of her being alive only yesterday and now you want me to sit through her funeral tomorrow and not speak a word about it?”

“I know it makes no sense,” he gushed as he paced back and forth, gathering papers in his hands. “But everything will.”

“You need to at least try and explain this to me,” I sighed. “It’s not that I don’t want to believe you-“ I quickly added, “-but…”

He stopped pacing around, took a quick glance at me, and nodded before fumbling with the papers he had already collected in his hands.

“I have spent most of my waking hours thinking everything over,” he began as he started to scatter out the papers on the floor. “And as you know, there’s been a lot of them, but that is not the point. The point is that there is something not adding up. As you already know I met her right after she ran away from her old pack. I found her in that cave all panicked, in distress, but do you know who just randomly showed up not very long after that?”

I looked at him and tried to desperately understand where he was going with this, but it was hard. I could see it in his eyes. The way they begged me to understand, to agree with him, and for some reason, I felt a part of myself begging for that same thing. To believe him.

“Kathleen,” he exclaimed after a moment of silence on my part. “She said she had followed her scent there, but one of the things that had caught me off guard back then, was the fact that I hadn’t noticed her being in that cave before I saw her with my own eyes.”

“I don’t follow,” I grimaced.

“Gabe… There was no scent to follow. I don’t know why it didn’t strike me before now, but… There was no damn scent.”

“What do you mean there was no scent?” I asked. “I’ve only known it to be something you could do through magic.”

“And Tatiana has magic! I asked around a bit and, apparently, that was also why she was so hard to track down after she was kidnapped in the first place. They made her mask her own scent back then too.”

“Wouldn’t she know if she did something like that?”

“I don’t think she was aware that she continued to do it or even how to do it,” he shrugged and laid out another piece of paper with scribbles on it. “This is a timeline I have made and this,” he said as he leaned back and pulled a huge paper out from under the bed. “This is a map I have drawn.”

“A map of what?”

“From where she was held captive all those years and to where I found her. Gabe, even if I was wrong about the entire masking her scent thing, there would be no way for Kathleen to track her down this far after so many hours.”

And then it clicked in my head.

“If she couldn’t track her down, that means she would have to know where she was heading in the first place, which means…”

“She knew that Tatiana didn’t belong there. She knew where she would go because she knew her wolf would guide her there,” he said, his voice cracking. “Someone told her Gabe. She didn’t find her by accident or luck as I did..."

“She knew…” I muttered. “She was sent to find her and most likely by Killian!” I half yelled as I jumped up from the floor.

“You have to keep it down!” he whisper-yelled. “We can’t risk anyone knowing this!”

“What do you mean?” I hissed. “She should be held accountable for what she has done!”

“And she will!” he assured me.

He put his hand on my chest and took a deep breath. I wanted to shake him off, I even tried to a few times, but he just continued to do so until I eventually did the same.

“This doesn’t explain why you think she is alive though,” I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. “After all, her masking her scent wouldn’t work on the mate bond.”

“I couldn’t figure out where Chad's part in all of this fit in. After all, what would he get out of it when all he was, was the son of a beta?”

“I am guessing that you have an answer to that question too?” I stated with a raised brow.

“I did some digging in the library,” he smirked and went to the desk drawer.

“The library? When did you do that? You never left this room or mine, for that matter.”

“I have my ways,” he shrugged, his back still turned to me.

He flipped a few papers around in the drawer before pulling out an old-looking book.

“This will explain it all,” he said as he turned to me and held the book up in the air.

It was a dark, dusty brown color with gold edges. The front was decorated with golden leaves and a gold clasp keeping the book closed. The book itself had no headline and from what I could see there was no author's name either, but one thing it did have was a small engraving of a necklace and a ring. The royal pieces of jewelry.

“This is the book of all born or at least that is what I call it since it doesn’t officially have a name. You see, when I first had my suspicions, I knew I had to check it out. I couldn’t just let it go like I initially had wanted to do. I also knew that Chad had to be something other than a beta’s son and it turned out I was right. Every alpha ever born or alpha to be, will have his name in this book, and guess who is standing right next to Killian.”

“Chad,” I nodded and walked over to see the page he had found.

“Exactly,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “Chad and Kathleen are not siblings. She is the beta’s daughter, yes, but he… He is Killian’s son. His own blood and an alpha to be.”

“This is so fucked up,” I sighed as I dragged a hand over my face. “Okay, so Chad is an Alpha to be, Kathleen is not who she gives out to be and Killian is still the bad guy, but I still don’t see what that has to do with Tatiana being alive.”

“That is the part I can’t fully explain, but we know there was a reason that Killian wanted Tatiana in the first place, right? Seeing as she escaped, whatever he had planned went down the drain.”

“You think that he needed her powers for something?”

“No, we already knew that, but when he suddenly didn’t have her, why not still go through with his plans?”

I stood there for a moment thinking of what he was saying. It made sense, but then again, it felt as if we were missing a whole bunch of information to piece this together. He was right though. Why go after her again with the intention of killing her if he needed her powers? That wouldn’t make sense or benefit him unless…

“Her magic could stop him,” I whispered. “What if he didn’t actually need her magic? What if he just needed her to be on his side to keep her in check so she couldn’t fight him?”

“That was my thought too,” he agreed and closed the book. “If you think about it, everything she has ever told us about Chad was bad but what if he did all of that because he had to? Back out there, when we first captured Chad, he told her about her mating situation – a thing she needed to know in order to bond with her other wolf and also-“

“- to get access to all of her power,” I muttered, finally understanding where he was taking this. “You think he was secretly helping her without raising suspicion towards Kathleen?”

“I do, yes, and I also believe that is why he took her. We haven’t seen her body; we only felt our bond break and with the magic so many have access to, these days, like, for example, the spell he used to escape with her… It wouldn’t surprise me if there was a spell that would be able to hide her.”

“One thing is to hide her though… But to be able to cloak her even from her mate bond? That would be nearly impossible, wouldn’t it?” I questioned and watched as his face twisted into a look of uncertainty. “But maybe…”

“Maybe what?”

“The only way to truly know that is to ask Zaya. If someone were to know about hidden magic or rare spells, it would be her, right?”

“We can’t ask her and you know it,” he stated.

“If we tell her why, then maybe she could help us, Hayden… I know you don’t want to let people know in case the wrong people get to hear about it but, also, you don’t want to give others hope… Right?”

“You think she will understand that?”

“I think she will, but more than that too… It wouldn’t surprise me if she had already done some research herself.”

Zaya was never the one to slack around. I had heard stories about everything that had gone down before I was born; how she risked her life warning Talia about Tyson and how she from her jail cell performed magic she had stored within herself over the years. Even when being bound down she pushed her limits. I doubted this would be any different and I had a feeling that if Hayden could put this together, then so could she.

“Fine, let’s go see her but Gabe, if this goes wrong…”

“It won’t. Now it is your turn to trust me,” I winked.