Chapter 208 What Doesn’t Belong

Chapter 208 What Doesn’t Belong
Morning in Crescent Moon looked ordinary.
Sunlight spilt through the windows of the pack house, warming the polished wooden floors as wolves moved through the corridors with the ease of another normal day. 
Laughter drifted from the dining hall. Someone complained about breakfast portions while another argued that the kitchen had finally learned how to cook eggs properly. 
Two younger wolves ran past Rollins, nearly colliding with him before muttering quick apologies and disappearing around the corner.
Life carried on.
Everyone behaved as though nothing had changed and that was exactly what unsettled him.
Rollins adjusted the cuff of his sleeve as he continued toward the office wing, Archie’s words from the previous night refused to leave him alone.
Check your father’s office.
It hadn’t sounded like a suggestion or like advice. It had sounded like certainty.
Still, Archie had never been the type to throw suspicion around carelessly.
When he reached the office door, Rollins hesitated for only a second before wrapping his hand around the handle and pushing it open.
The atmosphere shifted the moment he stepped inside.
The office didn’t feel imposing the way most Alpha offices did. There were no oversized displays of authority or carefully staged symbols of power. 
Instead, warm lighting softened the room, illuminating shelves lined with books and neatly stacked reports. A framed family photograph sat slightly crooked near the window, as though someone had bumped it without bothering to straighten it again.
The room felt lived in.
Comfortable.
His father’s presence lingered there even while he was somewhere else in the pack house.
That was who Alpha Lancaster had always been.
He laughed too easily.
Remembered names everyone else forgot.
Stopped to ask after injured patrol members instead of sending someone else to do it.
He made leadership look effortless.
Rollins hated how easily people mistook warmth for proof of character.
Kindness wasn’t evidence and neither was trust.
He closed the office door quietly behind him.
“Just look,” he murmured to himself.
Just look.
He started with the obvious places.
The top drawers.
The filing cabinet beside the desk.
Shelves containing routine pack records.
Everything appeared exactly as he expected. From Meeting schedules to Territory reports, Correspondence with neighbouring packs and Routine paperwork.
Nothing unusual.
Then his hand paused on a red and grey folder, it wasn't hidden but it was at the back of a few folders. It looked misplaced.
As though someone had slid it behind the rest without intending for it to disappear completely.
Rollins frowned and eased it free.
There was no label on the cover. Every other folder in the office had been marked neatly along the spine.
This one was blank.
He opened it carefully.
A faint scent of old paper and cedar rose from the folder as he flipped back the cover. The edges of the documents were worn from being handled more than once, though they had been arranged with deliberate care. Someone had returned to these records repeatedly, not to archive them, but to study them.
The documents inside weren’t casual records or administrative reports.
Every page had been written with unusual precision, each sentence measured as though the wording itself mattered.
Rollins skimmed the first page.
Then stopped.
His eyes returned to the beginning.
He read the same paragraph again, more slowly this time.
One sentence caught his attention.
Confirmed losses before the formal gathering period.
His brow furrowed. Turning the pages, Different dates, Different packs, different years.
Yet every report circled back to the same idea.
Losses.
Always before a gathering.
Always before something official.
These weren’t public reports.
They read more like private observations collected over many years.
His fingers tightened slightly around the edge of the folder.
He couldn’t explain why the documents unsettled him.
Not yet.
But something about them felt wrong.
Not because of what they said.
Because of how often they repeated the same pattern using different words.
Losses.
Before gatherings.
Before ceremonies.
Before something everyone seemed to accept without asking why.
Rollins continued turning pages.
Near the bottom of one report, a handwritten notation caught his attention.
A four-day window.
He stared at the words longer than he intended.
Four days.
The number tugged at something buried in the back of his mind.
He couldn’t remember where he’d heard it before.
Only that it felt familiar.
He closed the folder halfway.
Then opened it again.
Nothing had changed.
The words remained exactly where he’d left them.
The office no longer felt as warm as it had when he’d entered.
Not colder.
Just… uncertain.
Rollins lowered himself into the chair opposite the desk, the folder resting in his hands.
For a long moment, he simply looked at it without turning another page.
His mind searched for a reasonable explanation.
Old logistics.
Council paperwork.
Historical record keeping.
Anything.
Nothing fit.
That bothered him more than the documents themselves.
Crescent Moon wasn’t careless with its records.
His father certainly wasn’t.
Every file had a purpose.
Every report had a place.
So why keep this one separate?
Why leave it unlabeled?
A burst of laughter drifted faintly through the hallway.
Rollins lifted his head.
His father’s voice.
Relaxed.
Easy.
Completely untroubled.
The sound lingered for a moment before fading again.
Rollins looked back down at the folder resting in his lap.
The contrast unsettled him.
Whatever these documents represented, they didn’t match the man everyone believed Alpha Marcus to be.
Or perhaps…
They didn’t match the version of him everyone was allowed to see.
He exhaled slowly and closed the folder with deliberate care.
Not because he was finished.
Because slamming it shut wouldn’t erase what he’d read.
Rising from the chair, he rested one hand against the edge of the desk and stared quietly at the scattered papers for another moment.
The pieces refused to fit together.
Yet they also refused to leave his mind.
“That doesn’t make sense,” he said softly.
The words disappeared into the empty office.
But the uneasy feeling stayed with him.