Chapter 208 ~The Story Behind Tyson~

Chapter 208 ~The Story Behind Tyson~
Darius's POV

Tony returned to my office three days after I'd sent him digging, and the moment he stepped through the door, I could tell from his expression that something wasn't right.
I gestured towards the empty seat available, setting aside the paperwork I'd been half heartedly working through all morning.
He was carrying a thin folder, considerably thinner than I expected given the magnitude of what I'd asked for. He set it down in front of him without opening it right away.
"I did as you asked, Alpha," he started almost immediately, "but I hit a wall almost immediately."
"Explain," I said, leaning back in my chair.
"Tyson's original pack was exterminated a few years back," Tony said. "A rogue attack, a large uncoordinated one, wiped out nearly the entire territory in a single night. There's almost no one left alive who would have known him personally, and the pack records themselves were destroyed along with everything else. Whatever official history existed on anyone there is gone."
I sat with that for a moment, the weight of it settling uncomfortably in my chest. "So there's no way to actually confirm anything he said"
"Not directly, no," Tony said. “What little I managed to piece together came from secondhand accounts, other packs in the region who had dealings with them at the time, old trade correspondence, that sort of thing. It's fragmented at best."
"Could Tyson have been responsible for the attack himself?" I asked. It seemed like an obvious enough question to raise, given everything else he'd proven capable of since I'd known him.
Tony shook his head slowly. "If he had been, I'd expect there to be some record of suspicion at the very least. But nothing I found pointed in that direction. No mention of him being involved at all. If anything, the accounts I found describe him as having narrowly escaped the attack himself, one of a small handful of survivors."
"What did you find on him specifically, then," I asked. "Before the attack. Before his exile."
Tony finally opened the folder, sliding it across the desk toward me. "Same story we already heard about," he said. "Tyson was the second son of the Alpha at the time. By most accounts, competent, disciplined, well liked among the warriors he trained alongside. But his older brother was the designated heir, and no amount of proving himself seemed to change that arrangement. From what I gathered, Tyson spent years trying to earn his brother's favor, hoping it might eventually translate into some kind of real standing within the pack, some role beyond simply being the spare in case something happened to the firstborn."
"And it never worked," I said, already sensing where this was headed.
"No," Tony confirmed. "His brother kept him at arm's length the entire time. Then his brother wound up dead. The official story at the time was that Tyson had been responsible somehow, jealousy over the succession finally boiling over into something violent. He was exiled shortly after, and that was effectively the end of it as far as pack records were concerned."
I leaned forward, scanning through the pages Tony had brought, searching for anything resembling actual evidence behind the accusation. There wasn't much. A few lines noting the brother's death, a brief mention of Tyson's exile that followed almost immediately after, nothing that laid out proof, testimony, or even a clear account of what had actually happened the night his brother died.
"This is nothing," I said, frustration creeping into my voice despite my effort to stay measured. "There's no investigation documented here. Didn't you find any survivors that could give a better account of what happened?”
“I did but no one really remembers the circumstances around it.”
I dragged a hand down my face, staring at the file like it might rearrange itself into something more conclusive if I looked at it long enough. It didn't. The whole account was riddled with gaps, assumptions standing in for evidence, suspicion standing in for a verdict that had apparently never actually been reached through any proper process at all.
"So we don't actually know," I said, more to myself than to Tony. "We don't know if he killed his brother. We don't know if the accusations that got him exiled were true or fabricated."
"That's about the shape of it, Alpha," Tony said quietly.
I sat back in my chair, letting the implications settle over me fully. If the accusations against Tyson had been baseless, built on nothing more than convenient timing and a motive that made for an easy story, then everything he'd told me in that cell suddenly carried a great deal more weight than I'd been willing to give it.
A man wrongfully blamed for his brother's death, cast out without ever receiving a real chance to defend himself and left with nothing but the fragments of a life he'd never actually been allowed to prove himself within properly.
If all of that was true, then everything Tyson had done since made a certain uncomfortable sense. The rogue camp, the years spent building whatever life he could out in the wild with other rogues, the resentment toward pack structures that had failed him so completely, it all read differently now. Less like the actions of someone simply cruel by nature and more like someone lashing out due to concealed anger and pain.
I thought of Aria then, unwillingly, the parallel settling uncomfortably close to home. I had judged her the same way once, taking a convenient story at face value without demanding real proof behind it, because believing the simpler explanation had been easier than actually questioning what I already assumed to be true. I wasn't going to let myself make that same mistake twice, not when I finally understood exactly what it cost the person on the receiving end of it.
"Thank you, Tony," I said finally. "This is more than enough to work with."
He inclined his head, gathering the file back up, though he lingered a moment before turning to leave. "For what it's worth, Alpha, I still think caution is warranted here, whatever you decide to do with him. Sympathetic story or not."
I appreciated the honesty, even if I'd already made up my mind about what came next.