Chapter 54 MEMORIES
VANCE POV
After a quick shower, I went to the kitchen and made breakfast. Sianna still slept soundly and I knew she would be down for a while. I decided to head to the cells today to visit my newest prisoner. Quickly leaving a note on the countertop beside the covered meal, I hopped in my jeep and made it to the pack house.
I went across to the old saltbox building, down to the basement, and through the corridor door. Duke was with Blayne as they carried out the investigations. By now the mountain rogues were surrounded and unable to leave the campsite. My elite men hid in areas where they would not be detected and they followed around whoever left the campsite to see what they would be up to.
I could imagine Blayne's cantankerous mood, but Duke would know how to handle being around him. As three best friends, we knew how to deal with each other well.
Rogues were always a problem and that is why I came up with the Rogue Integration System to give them a second chance at having a better life. But for some, their untamed and shyster traits were hard to break away from. So, some members of my pack opposed having that many around.
Becoming a pack member and taking the blood oath meant that they had to obey my orders and live under my reign. Also, as the High Alpha, every single werewolf had to execute my commands. Other packs were monitored by random visits and reporting forums. But rogues, were hooligans that moved in a nomadic fashion.
In the cells, two guards were situated at an iron-barred entrance with a steel gate for entry. I greeted them as they bowed in acknowledgment. One used the keys and opened the door as I stepped through. Guards were posted at twenty feet intervals, they did the routine greetings and I nodded to them all.
I came to her cell and the elite officer, Wade, opened her cell door. She sat on the small bed with her knees upright, clinging to her chest and hands wrapped around them. I looked around the room to see that Blayne gave her some comfort because most times the cells are empty. She braced upwards to sit properly to facilitate my visit.
"Alpha," She greeted stoically with a bow. Judging by her appearance, her blonde bob was down to her shoulders, a little unkempt. Her nose was red and her mouth puffy.
"Cleopatra, you are here under my orders which my Gamma cannot defy." I wanted to clear Blayne's name so that she understands that this is against his wishes. "Because my Gamma cares deeply for you, I am here to get into your head."
Her face distorted with worry, but she quickly scraped the flickering fears aside. "Whatever you need to do to prove that my rogues and I are innocent, you may go ahead, Alpha."
Pleased with the consensus, I pulled out the wooden chair for her and she sat. "This will hurt, especially if you try to hide anything. Just open your mind and let me in."
I went directly in front of her and pushed my wolf forward. Her eyes locked on mine and she whimpered. The energetic force of my wolf's connection to hers, as we dug into her memories, would be equated to a vigorous mind takeover.
On the first attempt, her lips trembled as the silence grew, and she gave little resistance. She involuntarily flung her head back.
I closed my eyes and followed the voices in her recollections, listening to her subconsciousness. The darkness is frigid, and then a dazzling light briefly makes me blind. Cleo's memories start to surface like a movie projector, and we both see the beautiful slides displayed.
She had so many ideas running through her head that they nearly drowned me. She grunted, and I knew that with my intrusion into her cerebrum, she ought to be experiencing a prickling headache. She lived a happy, protected life with her parents and was a member of her pack when I started. She was an omega who had been raped and turned into the Alpha's son's bedtime plaything.
I dug deeper, scouring through and unlocking as many memories as I could. I wanted to know as much about her as I could find through her memories. By the time I finished with her mind, I would be able to say that I know her well.
I saw that she ran away from the pack because there was no one to protect her from the man. Moving from town to town, she made friends along the way until she ran with a man named Eldon. He led her up into the mountains where she joined a few of them. They became her family after she underwent strict training.
She kept in touch with an acquaintance from her former pack, who eventually informed her that the Alpha had killed her parents for failing to reveal where she was. Cleo became upset and vowed to exact revenge while intensifying her training. In an unexpected turn of events, the alpha died defending his pup from a rogue attack.
As a result, Cleo concentrated her efforts on assisting rogue women in particular in finding a place to live. That took place in the Regant mountains, away from humans and other creatures. They were reticent to interact with anybody outside of the mountains and established their own government.
This clarified the rationale behind her request that they form a pack. They desired to uphold particular traditions, cultures, and the moral code they had adopted.
When I stumbled on the memories of when we first met, and the mate bond between her and Blayne, I felt her flinch, trying to recede and fight me from getting into them. I bulldoze my way through.
"Ah." She cried as I crumbled the protective walls that she threw at me. I heard her hissing with the seething pain. The truth comes to light as I felt the thrum of desire that she had for my Gamma. The naughty images that she hid in the back spilled forward but I scurried past those quickly. The way she gaped with furtive glances at him when he was not looking was the only thing that I chose to remember.
I saw that she missed Blayne when he didn't pay attention to her but played hard to get her. The fact was that she wanted to be won over and believed that he should prove his worth and that he valued her, not because of the mate bond.
The memories vanish into mist and metamorphose into something else. The most recent ones, which I perused day by day. The majority of her time was spent with her daughter, Zoe, and hiding to evade Blayne.
There was fury because she was not getting the pack she wanted. In spite of that, the silver lining was that soon she would be assuming the role of the Gamma Female, and would be able to better defend her people. She spent the majority of her time in her bedroom at the pack house watching television with Zoe and home-schooling her with lessons from the internet. She even asked Zoe to think of Blayne as a friend.
Just as she was ready to give Blayne his chance with her, we might have blown that opportunity to smithereens when we made the arrest.
Slowly, I retreated with my wolf going to the back of my head, lying down to take his rest. Cleo slouched forward on the chair, panting loudly, her lips twitching with exhaustion. She found it difficult to put up with my violent entry into her cranium. But learning that she was innocent made me joyful.
"I will order for you to have proper meals on time. Zoe will be taken care of until this blows over." I relaxed my body from feeling stunted. Taking some potassium into my system should rectify that. I should have had a heavier breakfast.
Weak and speechless, I knew that she heard me but could not respond. This is what my victims experience whenever I did something like this.
"Bear with me until we can track the real perpetrator and then we can start the integration for your wolves. I have selected a portion of land for them." I studied her frail form, she was shaking and taking deep breaths. "Blayne will take you and Zoe out there and you can note your ideas for landscaping and construction."
"Thank you." She whispered, looking debilitated.
"I'll see you soon." I walked out of the cell as Elite Wade closed the door with the locks. Elite Malik stood to the left and nodded.
"Where were you, Malik?" When I arrived here, he wasn't at his post.
"Alpha, I left for my break." He explained while lowering his head.
"Wasn't that a long break?" I remarked sternly.
He eyed Cleo and then back to me, "While I was on break, Gamma Blayne requested that I go to the kitchen to ensure that her breakfast was not being tampered with."
"So where is it?" I shoved my hands into my pockets as I tried not to strangle him for annoying me.
He went to the wooden table and returned carrying a picnic basket filled with fruit, juice, and water along with the meal. "You were with her so I didn't want to disturb your session."
"Go ahead," I left the dungeon.
The mind-reading session with Cleo made me feel quite pleased. It eliminated her from being a suspect and when she mind- linked her people, everything was also clean. However, because the goal was to frame Cleo, I wanted the nefarious perpetrator to believe that everything was proceeding as planned.
"Blayne," I opened the mind-linked as I quicken my steps across the grass field.
"Yes, Vance."
"I believe you will make preparations for when Cleo goes into heat tonight?" I reminded him, since I sensed the estradiol change in her wolf.
"What?"
Why does he sound shocked? Doesn't he know anything at all about mates? I stopped immediately in my tracks, shaking my head in disbelief.
"Blayne, she will go into heat around the same time every month until you impregnate her." My voice reeked with displeasure at his ignorance.
"Oh," he paused before playing it off, "I knew that."
""Liar," I was not fooled. "You are more clueless than a monkey."
He chuckled and closed the link and I went to my office.