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Damien's POV

I watched the way Robert handled the situation and couldn't help but feel admiration for him in terms of how he suddenly divided them against each other. I could see the leader raging now as he looked among all his men for the traitor who supposedly revealed their storming plans. He was obviously not going to find it by just looking. Hell, he was not going to find the traitor—whoever the person was—by asking or even torturing them because the point was that there wasn't actually any traitor at all, but he didn't know that, which was the one thing that made this entire episode very funny to me.

"Well, I guess he can take the credit for that," I thought, nodding at Robert. If anything, he had at least saved us some time before he did anything he actually wanted to do to us now that he had captured us. He also bought us some time to think, and once again, the last advantage was that it prevented the city from coming under immediate attack the way it was supposed to the moment we fell.

The men were supposed to have already stormed the city and destroyed a lot of things in it like they had done to the other cities, but now they were stalled because of their leader's rage. It was almost as if we hadn't failed yet. Hell, maybe we hadn't, because if we were actually able to come out of this alive and kicking before they attacked the city, then we would have actually succeeded in our mission. It was very unlikely and very difficult considering our current predicament, but I knew that it was possible, and I also wanted it to work for me that way.

I also knew that hoping wasn't going to help me out in this case. I didn't know about Jackson himself, but I was thinking as hard as I could of a way we could get out of the situation. This was pretty much our second chance, our chance to redeem ourselves. The first step, of course, was to get us loose so that we could maybe fight or run like we were supposed to do from the beginning, but either of those two options required that first step. We needed to get loose from our bonds and out of their control so that we could try again.

I considered struggling for a millisecond and decided against it. That was only going to draw attention to us, and that was the last thing we wanted right now. If he could keep on raging and talking, trying to find out who the spy was for the next entire hour—maybe even two hours—it would be best for us. We needed all the time we could get in order to think and find a solution. If we struggled or did anything of the sort, it was going to draw attention to us from what he was focused on right now, and the moment that focus was broken, it wouldn't be long before he went after the city or actually got interested in killing the unimportant ones of us one by one, stealing our chances of actually winning this by a lot.

With that thought in mind, I ruled out struggling completely and decided to think of another plan of action. Well, if I was going to free myself, I needed to do it in one quick sharp motion—something that no one would be expecting—since I would then be able to free my friends along with me. I considered a couple of other methods to do it quickly and in one move, but it all led to the same thing: I needed to use an insane amount of force to cut through the ropes in one swift motion. I needed both force from my strength and speed to accomplish that goal, but then again, even if I did all that, there was a chance that the rope would be stronger, especially since I didn't have the distance to move my hand to cut it apart. I didn't have enough distance to generate that kind of strength between my arms because of how tightly they were tied to each other. So, as much as I loved that plan and as promising as it was, I had to discard it.

I took in a deep breath, suddenly noticing that time was coming to an end. He was looking a lot calmer than before, maybe finally beginning to accept the fact that there could be a traitor in his group—the group that he was talking with right now, the group that he was about to go into war with. He had all of them lined up side by side now and was walking among them, slowly looking into each other's faces as he went. He peered into another one's face and glared at him hard, probably as intimidation for him to confess being the traitor, but he remained silent with the stoic expression on his face that indicated he definitely wasn't the spy.

Everybody else gave pretty much the same reaction, and I could see his frustration when he banged on a rock, shredding it into three equal parts, which showed fine control of his strength. I knew without a doubt after seeing that that he was much stronger than he looked and that if it came down to it and he fought against us, he would be able to do more damage than his entire army combined. It had been very long since I had seen that kind of powerful werewolf. Hell, I wasn't even sure if Robert, the veteran among us, could defeat him.

What's more, maybe Robert wasn't even expected to be able to do that as he was not the alpha of the pack but just a skilled soldier in the field. Yet he is the strongest of us, I thought to myself, only realizing how the elites were not on this mission. As for me, I was a boy, while Jax, the leader of this entire expedition, was a boy like me and was even struggling when it came to defeating me. We were pretty much the same, and every other person except for the veteran was below us. With this kind of crack set of things, it was more than impossible for us to defeat an entire army, and due to Jax not thinking about it that way, we actually attempted it, and that was the reason why we had failed.

Now, if this little team had the alpha of the entire pack, with all its experience, and also a couple of elders, I knew that it wouldn't even need us to defeat this entire army. But then again, it wouldn't be possible because they would never come here by themselves to deal with, for instance, soldiers or kid groups like this one. I was starting to feel more and more frustrated at our helpless situation, especially when I couldn't think of a solution to help.

I was completely blank when it came to having a functional plan that could actually work, apart from what I thought of that were not plausible. I felt like this was going to take a long time and also felt despondent that it was going to fail in the end. Even this little chance that we had because of luck, we were going to lose it any time from now, and it was going to be completely devastating for us. "I thought we could redeem ourselves," I thought to myself, taking a deep breath and deciding to let it go.

There was no other way for us right now. Even I could see that. So I thought that it would be best for me to just relax and let whatever happen, happen. What would be, would be after all, and there was nothing I could do to change the future right now. Usually, I would be able to affect what happened to me, be able to shape my own destiny with my hands. But in this situation, it was clear without anybody having to tell me that I didn't have that luxury anymore.

I was still thinking those depressing thoughts when suddenly I felt a tap on my hand. I turned sharply but met soft eyes, literally asking me to be quiet without saying anything. I was completely confounded when the next moment my hands could move freely, indicating that the ropes were gone. I looked at Robert, the man behind this, who looked like he was perfectly tied. When I looked a little deeper, I noticed that his hands were not tied—he was just pretending that they were. He gave a short nod, a very subtle movement that indicated to me that I should do exactly what he did. I stayed still, deciding to follow his lead. 

I had no idea how he had been able to free himself, or what it was going to achieve at this point. Everything already seemed so hopeless to me, that right now when there was a glimmer of hope, I felt like it was nothing at all, yet I found myself still cooperating with him.

He was onto something. I just didn't know what.