Chapter 170
Asher
The morning light filtering through Midnight Estate's windows held none of its usual warmth. I stood in the war room on the second floor, staring at the wall of maps and satellite images until my vision blurred.
Forty-eight fucking hours. Kara had been gone for forty-eight hours, and every lead had turned to ash in our hands.
Blake paced near the window like a caged predator, his gunpowder and leather scent thick enough to choke on. Through our bond, I felt his rage like a live wire against my skin—raw, violent, barely leashed. Cole sat rigid in a chair, mint and ozone crackling with the kind of panic that made my own wolf want to howl.
Hold it together, I told myself. You're the eldest. The leader. You hold the line.
But Christ, it was hard. Every second Kara was out there, alone and terrified, felt like someone was slowly peeling my skin off.
A sharp knock broke the tension. One of the perimeter guards burst in, chest heaving. "Three Alphas! Ethan Drake is here. Says he has a major breakthrough in investigation."
My spine straightened, every muscle coiling. "Bring him up."
Blake stopped pacing, eyes flashing gold. "This better not be another fucking dead end."
He knows something, I thought, and felt Blake's predatory interest sharpen through our bond.
I'd deliberately kept Marcus and Victoria downstairs. This was Alpha business now, not family business. After what we'd learned about their betrayal, about the money they'd taken to report on Kara, I could barely stand to look at them.
Within minutes, Drake stood before us. He set his case on the conference table, fingers trembling slightly as he popped the latches.
"Before I play what I found," Drake said, voice carefully neutral, "I need to warn you. This is... difficult to hear."
Blake slammed his palm on the table, making Drake flinch. "Cut the preamble. What did you find?"
The man's Adam's apple bobbed. Blake's gunpowder scent was making him sweat despite the room's chill. "I interviewed Kara's classmates. And... your former girlfriends. I found evidence that Eclipse Court has been surveilling her for months. Maybe longer."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. My ebony scent turned glacial. Through the bond, I felt Blake's barely leashed violence, felt Cole's dread spiking like a fever.
"Explain," I commanded, letting just enough Alpha authority bleed into my voice to cut through Drake's fear. "Now."
He pulled out several old cassette tapes, each labeled with different names. "The three women you broke up with on December 1st—Lillian, Jade, Nina. According to multiple witnesses, they... retaliated against Kara at a party in late January. Natalie's party. January 28th."
Fuck. I remembered that party—remembered Kara's pale face when she'd emerged from the bathroom, remembered thinking she'd just been overwhelmed by the crowd. We didn't ask. We didn't fucking ask what happened.
"What did they do?" Cole's voice was barely above a whisper, but the ozone in his scent had gone sharp enough to make Drake's eyes water.
"I'll let them tell you themselves." Drake set up an old cassette player, hands still shaking. "But first, context. That party was about a month after Kara's first shift. Her scent had just awakened—she was still adapting, still vulnerable. And more importantly..."
He pulled out a tablet, swiping to display two photographs side by side. My gut clenched as I leaned forward.
The left photo showed Scarlett Reeves on a red carpet in Los Angeles, timestamp reading January 28th, 8:15 PM Pacific Time. The right photo was grainier—a social media snapshot from Natalie's party showing a blonde woman in the background, features eerily similar to Scarlett's. Timestamp: January 28th, 11:47 PM Alaska Time.
"That's impossible," Blake growled. "Even on the fastest private jet, she couldn't make it from LA to Anchorage in under four hours."
"Exactly." Drake's voice was grim. "Los Angeles to Anchorage is minimum five hours flight time. When this 'Scarlett' was observing Kara at the party, the real Scarlett Reeves was at an afterparty in LA. We have fifty witnesses and media coverage to prove it."
Dmitri, who'd been standing silently in the corner since his confrontation with Victoria, suddenly went rigid. His silver fang scent flared with recognition and horror. "A substitute. Eclipse Court used a blood magic substitute."
The words hung in the air like a death sentence. Through our bond, I felt Blake's fury spike, felt Cole's analytical mind already racing through implications. Blood magic substitutes were forbidden, dangerous, required a living template. If Court had created a copy of Scarlett Reeves...
"Play the recordings," I ordered, my voice cold enough to frost the windows. "All of them."
Drake's finger hovered over the play button. "The first interview is with Lillian. She was... cooperative. Eventually."
The tape hissed to life. Lillian's voice crackled through the speaker, tight with barely suppressed resentment. "I dated Blake for six weeks. He was romantic—flowers, expensive dinners, the whole show. But I always felt like his mind was somewhere else."
Drake's professional voice: "Did you know his mind was on Kara?"
A bitter laugh. "That girl they called 'Carrot'? Impossible. The three of them used that nickname like she was garbage. I thought she was just... the debt slave who did their chores."
Blake's eyes flashed pure gold. Through our bond, I felt his self-loathing like acid burning through my own chest. We'd all used that nickname. All participated in making Kara invisible, unworthy, less than human.
And now we were paying for it. Now she was paying for it.
"We assumed she'd never be Luna," Lillian continued. "Then on December 1st, all three of them texted us simultaneously. Said they'd 'found their destined mate' and dumped us in a parking lot. We were furious."
Drake's voice returned. "So you decided to retaliate at Natalie's party?"
"Hell yes. We knew the triplets would bring her—it was her first social event as 'future Luna.' We had almost a month to plan."
Jade's voice joined in, sharper and more vicious. "We bribed Crystal—the party planner who's always had a thing for the Alphas. She arranged for Kara to use the upstairs bathroom. We waited for her there."
Through the bond, I felt Cole's memory surfacing—Kara's ashen face that night, the way she'd trembled when he'd tried to comfort her. We thought it was just anxiety. We didn't push. Didn't protect her.
Nina's voice, dripping with cruel satisfaction: "I dated Asher. Honestly, I was always jealous of that 'Carrot' girl. When Lillian and Jade invited me to... teach her a lesson... I jumped at the chance."
My hands clenched into fists. My ebony scent had gone sharp enough to make Drake take a step back. Jealous. This bitch had been jealous of Kara—of the girl we'd tormented, isolated, made to feel worthless for years.
"We cornered her in the bathroom," Lillian's voice was almost gleeful. "Told her the 'truth'—that the triplets complained about her constantly behind her back. Said she was fat, ugly, ungrateful. Always moping around. We told her she was only fit to be a maid, that she'd never deserve an Alpha."
Blake's roar shook the windows. His eyes had gone completely black, wolf surging so close to the surface that his bones started to crack. I grabbed his shoulder, forcing Alpha command through our bond. Control. We need to hear this.
But it was Cole's voice, small and broken, that cut through Blake's rage. "Keep playing."
"She went white," Jade continued. "Clutched her stomach like she might be sick. We kept going—called her a 'debt slave failure,' said the triplets only chose her because they had no better options."
Nina's laugh was like nails on glass. "Then she threw up. All over our designer dresses. Ruined everything."
The recording captured their shrill protests, the sound of retching, chaos. I closed my eyes, forcing myself to breathe through the rage threatening to consume me. Kara had been cornered, humiliated, made physically ill by these fucking vultures. And we—her supposed mates—had been too blind, too self-absorbed to see her pain.
"We wanted to chase her down," Lillian said. "But Asher showed up. We had to go clean up. When we came out, we saw her in the hallway, crying in a corner. Asher was trying to comfort her."
I remembered that. Remembered finding her curled up, tears streaming down her face. She'd let me hold her, but she'd been shaking so hard I'd thought she might shatter.
And I'd assumed it was just the overwhelming crowd. Just social anxiety.
I hadn't asked. Hadn't pushed. Hadn't protected her.
Fuck.
"But that's when I noticed the strange woman," Nina's voice turned thoughtful. "She was wearing a silver dress, absolutely gorgeous. Had this... unreal perfection to her, like a doll. She stood in the back, just watching Kara. Her eyes were so cold."