Chapter 269: Rhys
I stared at my old friend trying to wrap my mind around what was happening. This didn’t make sense. There had to be a good reason that he was going through my stuff. I had trusted him as one of my most trusted advisors for so long... At least until I had brought Grace back... He had always treated her with respect up until we agreed to keep the Lycan kids... Then things had started to change between us, but I didn’t think there was any reason not to trust him... I just thought he was scared. He had been burned before, so I had given him grace, but now I was questioning everything.
“What are you doing here, Arlo?” I asked after what felt like an eternity of just staring at each other in surprise and horror.
“I was looking for you,” He stuttered uneasily, stepping away from my desk.
“Funny because when you saw me, you said, ‘you’re not supposed to be here’,” I retorted in irritation. I hated liars, and I had been surrounded by too many of them lately.
“Rhys? You okay?” Grace’s mindlink called out to me. It was so faint I could barely hear her, but it was nice to know she was paying a bit of attention to me.
“Yea, why?” I asked as Heather entered into the room to see what was going on.
“I just felt your anger.” She replied.
“I’m just dealing with something right now. I’ll mindlink you in a bit, okay?”
“Okay.”
And then I turned my full attention back to Arlo.
“I-”
“Don’t bother lying to me.” I cut him off. “I don’t want a lie. I want to know what the hell you are doing in my office, going through my things, and it’s clear that you’ve ripped up quite a bit of our research too, I see. You’re working for Adrian, aren’t you?”
“You have to understand...” Arlo stammered, putting his arms in the air as I stepped closer to him and he cowered in the corner.
“I didn’t have a choice! He would have killed me!”
“I gave you safety. I unbound your wolf! I would have protected you if you had only come to me.”
“You don’t understand!” Arlo cried out again. “He has more power ! He has been building his army for years! Like years and years. Alpha Andrew wanted to be able to take your spot as King. He said he was the more powerful species. His father wanted it for him. And then he had two daughters, one a bastard. He watched his mistress die. And because of that Luna Ava never wanted to have any more kids. So, he brought in Adrian. Adrian was only a werewolf, but Andrew knew how to change him to Lycan. Adrian used Andrew’s trust to start building an army of Lycan’s. Some changes didn’t go so well, and Andrew wanted to stop... But Adrian, he was too power hungry. He would never stop. He hid his plans. Keeping Andrew in the dark. He conspired with Kinsley, and they claimed to be fated mates, but a lot of people doubted that. Andrew suddenly fell ill, and it was speculated that Kinsley and Adrian had something to do with it. But fear had always been the way the Red Blood pack had been run, even before Adrian got involved, so no one said anything. But his army grew with his experiments. He started running out of people to try and make the perfect species, so he started bringing in Witches and Vampires and Humans. His army is bigger than yours, Rhys. You can’t protect me. You never could.”
“You have lost your right to call me, Rhys." I growled, my wolf fighting me, wanting to just rip him to shreds.
All those months of not having a fucking clue about what was going on, and here Arlo was knowing exactly what was going on. Knowing exactly who the fuck Grace was. Knowing everything that we didn’t.
“Who bound your wolf then? Was it them?” I demanded.
“I-I didn’t lie a-about that.” He stammered. “I did get it taken away from me for gambling and debts. It’s just I was in Adrian’s army. They decided to use me as bait. They thought you’d take me in. They said you were the kindest king there was...”
I heard the insult. Kindness was a weakness to most of the world, but to me, it had always been the thing I held onto. I might have done some terrible things at times, but I also knew that I had tried to balance it with mercy and grace where I could. Kindness to those who joined me. But maybe he was right. Maybe I had taken it all a little too far.
“So, you’ve been spying on me ever since? Reporting back to the Red Blood pack all these years?”
“Well... Yea... But it got hard to do once Grace got here. They tried to use me to bring her in and keep my spot... But every attempt at that failed. And then those stupid Lycan kids got involved and you trusted them more than you trusted me. It wasn’t fair!”
“Those Lycan kids have proven to be more trustworthy than you’ve ever been,” I snarled, and I could feel Heather’s anger radiating off of her as soon as he had started to talk about the kids. I knew she had mindlinked for support and just outside the door was help for whenever I needed it.
“Michael betrayed you to his father!” He tried to throw the poor kid’s mistakes back at my face.
“Because he’s a scared kid trying to protect his siblings.” I said calmly, even though I didn’t feel calm.
“They ruined everything!” He shouted and lunged at me.
I had known it was coming. Despite coming from the Red Blood pack, he was only a werewolf. We were on equal playing fields with that one, and I was stronger and smarter than him, even if he had pulled this over on me for years. I had made a mistake in trusting him. It was him who had nearly gotten Grace taken or killed at the bookstore all those months ago. Grace had been right not to trust him around the Lycan kids. I should have trusted her judgement more. But this would make me a better king now. He had been a man in need at the time, I didn’t regret saving him. But I did regret ever trusting him.
I easily predicted his movements and pinned him against the desk. I then handed him over to the guards, and said “Throw him in the prison cells, and let him rot there till his dying days!”
Before heading upstairs to make sure the kids in my care were okay.