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Jackson's POV

I felt touched by his noble sacrifice. Honestly, I did, but I also felt like he shouldn't be doing it. If I could think correctly, I wanted at that moment to stand up and confess that it was me instead because I wanted to be punished. I actually wanted to face the consequences of what I had done because it was my actions that brought us to where we were right now—this bad situation that was probably going to end in my friends losing their lives and me bringing calamity upon the entire werewolf pack.

I wanted to feel the pain that came along with my mistakes and to take full responsibility for everything that I had done, but I just didn't say anything. I kept it in. I also wanted, at the same time, to not be punished for all the crimes I had committed. Since he was asking to take my place, I would let him, even though it didn't really sit right with me, and even though deep inside I wanted to scream out loud and take everything that belonged to me—the praise and the blame alike.

The man looked at Robert and shook his head. "There's no way we could have found out," he said. "How would you have known that we were coming here just by studying the pattern of the last couple of attacks that we launched?" He glared at him as if he was going to punch through his head just because he said that he figured it out.

With that manner, we glanced at each other, not understanding why this man was so upset all of a sudden for no just reason. What's more, that was just about the truth about how we found out, so I couldn't really think of anything we could say to make him not angry anymore because we had already told him the full truth.

"It's the last chance," he said. "Tell me everything that I want to know, the entire truth," his voice steady and low, a growling sound that made me sure that he was going to do something drastic because I hadn't seen anything yet.

I wanted to say that it was the truth. That was the only thing that I would have said if he had asked me directly because there was actually no other thing we could tell him in this particular situation. But I thought also that it was going to be a mistake. I looked at the man in front of me, the veteran, and decided that this was a good opportunity to learn from him and find out what he would do in this kind of situation by himself—when someone actually refused to believe the truth and wanted a lie instead.

Robert was silent for a moment, and for just a moment there also, I felt like he was actually about to say something different. I watched him, intending to learn from this, even if I had already screwed up badly. I didn't know whether he had the power to actually save us from the situation, and I didn't think it was likely either, but I was definitely going to survive this. Therefore, if I got some valuable information and training from this, it would be at least compensation, even though it wouldn't be worth everything I had lost in order to get this.

My dad was right, and the others also. I wasn't ready for this kind of stuff yet, but then again, I hadn't asked for this. Anyway, I looked back at Herbert, wanting to hear whatever he had to say.

"You are right," he said, letting out a sigh. "I thought that you didn't know about it, but you are actually quite smart. I'm guessing you already know how I found out?" he asked.

The man let out a low grunt, silently asking him to speak further.

"Well, I heard it from a spy," Herbert finished, and I almost let out a high-pitched sound at the blatant lie. That was something I would never have expected. Well, first of all, he had tried to tell them the truth, but they hadn't believed it. But now, he was telling them a lie that was more devastating than the truth, and a lie that was going to tear apart their divisions as they kept on looking for whoever was the traitor among them. It was freaking genius.

He should have actually told them the lie in the first place, but he hadn't even thought about it, the truth coming to him automatically. But now he had, and it was about the most wonderful response he could have ever given the man.

The man took a step back, taking in a deep breath and then puffing it out with a very annoyed look on his face. "I knew it, I knew it," he said, pacing back and forth as he went, and didn't say anything more, just moving and waving back and forth.

I knew that he was very angry, but it was also a sign of something else for me. I didn't see any other person getting all fired up and angry the way he was, which probably indicated that he was the leader among them here. Okay, maybe not the general leader of this entire movement, because it was clear from how many had been commenting over and over again that they were under some kind of general leader, and this was just a mere division of this little rebellion, but he was a prominent person and a leader of this division, at least like a commander of a hundred or so in an army. I could liken him to that easily.

I looked at him, staring him down as I thought about all this and waited for him to say something. He had a solemn expression on his face as he turned to look at the remaining 25 or so men that were still alive. "Did you hear that?" he asked. "The traitor among us—" he started, but someone raised up his hand and spoke before he even gave him permission to speak.

"But sir, it shouldn't be so. Why wouldn't he lie? He is probably trying to cause confusion between all of us." I looked at that person intently, wondering how he had caught the true intentions immediately without any form of hesitation or investigation. These people around here were a bit too smart for my liking. They had such an intuition that I was not quite sure whether it was even human anymore.

Wait, it was werewolves, but even werewolves didn't have that much precision in terms of thought processes. Well, I'll take it that this guy who has just spoken isn't that good at fighting, I thought to myself, placing a marker on him with my eyes.

The first person, the leader of the group, was obviously not good at something tactical and not good at predicting stuff also because he had actually forced us to turn the truth into a lie. He wasn't able to read into the looks on our faces and our emotions to figure out what was actually happening. And I was pretty sure that this second man would have done so easily if he was given the chance. And even now, he was doing the same thing.

The leader probably made up for all that in terms of brawn and strength, but this guy was going to make up for it in terms of brain. I was pretty smart deducing things about them, even though I didn't even know what the real answer was due to having never met them. However, I thought that it was crucial for me to know who I was dealing with, especially considering that there were a whole 25 of them for us to fight against if we even got the opportunity to fight against them in the first place.

We needed to be ready and we needed a heads up on our enemies if we were going to have a fighting chance at all. Even if it was just two of them that I had the slightest idea of right now, at least it was something and I was pretty sure it would be able to accomplish me something.

The leader turned to look at Robert with a frown on his face and indecision written in his eyes. He wasn't sure whether he was lying or telling the truth, though he had believed him a second ago. He's also not too sure about the story, I thought to myself, putting a frown on my face because I had actually expected him to cut down the idea from the other guy immediately who said it because of how confident he was in his own theory, but no, he hadn't.

It only served to show that he was a lot more considerate about people's opinions and he wasn't very firm on his own because any normal leader would have immediately dismissed that idea. He went up to Robert, but Robert had a stoic expression on his face, obviously not going to change anything that he had said. I knew that Robert was very aware of how much it made sense for us to get the information from the spy so he wouldn't work on that lie as it was going to hold.

"It's a spy. It's a spy." The large man said. I'll kill him. I'll kill him."