The Alpha's Mistake

-Chapter 19-

"Knox, hand me your letter."
Mia burst into the young werewolf's room, at a time much later than midnight.
The young she wolf had questions, many questions, and was seeking answers.

"What? Mia it's literally two in the morning, let me sleep!" Knox grumbled and went back to sleep.

"I don't care if it's two, show me the letter Ari wrote to you." Mia demanded, her stubborn nature taking over as her need for answers intensified.

"How did you even get in? All the doors are locked!?" Knox queried in shock, wondering how on Earth must Mia have entered his house.

"You think I don't know that? I have my ways. Now if you could pass me the letter?" Mia replied, briefly checking out her nails in a manner of boredom.

"Look, come back in like a few hours and I'll happily go through the letter with you." Knox spoke, shoving his head under the pillow so as to block out the noise of Mia's demands.

"I don't have a few hours. This time is crucial- we can either find Ari and bring her back, or we can lose Ari and...and we might not ever get her back." Mia explained and Knox, out of his sleepiness now, realised the truth in Mia's words and felt guilt for thinking sleep was worth more than searching for his beloved sister.

"You're right, but what good will going through the letter even do?"

"You make it sound like we're going to read it and toss it aside."

"Wasn't that what you meant?"

"Knox, Knox, Knox. Who's there? Clearly not a single braincell. Clearly not a single braincell, who? Clearly not a braincell in your brain actually functions."

Knox looked taken aback at Mia's mean version of the knock knock joke, with Knox not being the butt of the joke, but rather the entire joke itself.

"What?" He questioned, squaring up his shoulders to make himself look tougher but dropping them once Mia pinched the bridge of her nose in impatience.

"We're going to analyse it."

"Since when do you teach English lit?" Knox hit back at Mia, who scowled in return.

"Remember that human children movie? The one where their uncle or something gets murdered so he leaves the two children and an infant a note and each capital letter in the note had a message of its own?"
Mia paused to let Knox sunk in her rushed summary of some human children's movie, when he nodded she continued.

"So I spent the last hour analysing mine. Here's all I came up with;
Number one- Ari is left handed. Yet there weren't any smudges on the page which is strange because the letter is written in an ink pen and seems rushed.
Number two- Obviously, there's no way Ari would write what was in the letter. She couldn't hurt a fly let alone say all this to her best friend."
Mia stopped to take a breather and continued once she had sufficient air to live and speak.

"Number three- I took the liberty of breaking into Lunar Moon High School and stealing a few of Ari's old essays and some of her notebooks from her room where she wrote all those notes. In the essays she wrote, her handwriting is very rushed due to her scrambling to finish her essay on time. In all her notes, her writing is neat and immaculate." Mia once again stopped to take a breather, having said much of her clues all in once and consequently running out of breath.

"If these letters were the last she wrote to us, then why were they so rushed? Surely anyone would slowly write the last words they'd have to say to their loved ones before they go and disappear of the radar!? And let's take the likely idea that she rushed the letters because she was in a hurry to leave- why are there no smudges on the page? Either she suddenly became right handed, which she did not, or someone else wrote the letter." Finished Mia.

"Who could it be?"

"That's what we don't know, but I'm getting to current suspicions." Mia replied to the confused young were-teen.

"Anyways, number four- we don't know the exact time space she left at. All I know is that the last time I saw her was yesterday evening, and she was on her way to the pack house. I asked the twin guards Brett and Matt if they had seen her but they said no."

"What do Brett and Matt have to do with this?"

"That's where it all ties in. Brett and Matt weren't supposed to be guarding the Alphas office because Dmitri wasn't there. So the question is why did they continue to stick around for three hours in a place they weren't supposed to be guarding?"

"True, it makes no sense to me. But why was Ari going to the Pack house anyways? I thought she wanted to avoid Dmitri?"

"She went because..."

"Well?"

"She's pregnant. I thought you knew? Is there nothing mentioned of her baby in the letters?"

"What?! I swear on the Moon Goddess, I will personally CRUSH Dmitri's windpipe and-"

"I had the same reaction as you from the very first day I found out he rejected Ari. But that's not the point, I went up to him yesterday morning when we realised she was gone and he didn't remember rejecting her."

"What?! How do you not remember rejecting your mate and your pup?!"

"Again, I have the same questions as you so we really need to get started on putting together a timeline, and analyse your letter and your parents' letter."

Knox nodded in response and ran off to his parents room to sneakily get their letter, not before passing his own one to Mia.

Mia read Knox's letter and was now entirely convinced that the letters weren't written by Ariana.

Hey Knox,
Where do I start, you annoying piece of shît? Well let's start with the double standards. You're always allowed to do what you want and I can barely step out of the house without explaining in detail what it is that I need to do. You can always have friends over and here I was stuck with Mia all these years because Mum and Dad knew everything about her. There's so much I could write but if I started writing it all- I'd never finish. So that's why I'm doing you a favour by stopping here.
Bye bîtch.

As much as Ariana would sometimes complain about Knox having it easy, she would NEVER say stuff like this. To her, Knox was practically her own child, having seen him as a baby and having played a huge role in his upbringing. Ariana would always joke about how Knox should give her a Mother's Day gift too, because she's 'practically raised him'.

"I can't find it." Knox whispered.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I can't find it." Whisper shouted an exasperated Knox who had scoured his parents' room in search for the letter, as silently as he could, only for it to not be there.

"What do we do now?"

"I'm still thinking." Was the response of Mia, deep in her thoughts about what to do next.

To be fair, they didn't really need to see the letter wrote to her parents because since they were somehow calm, it probably meant Ariana wrote that letter. If they weren't calm, which they aren't, then that would mean Ariana didn't write the letter. It was a no-brainer.

The most the two could do right now was to chase after Brett and Matt and try and see what they know. Mia had a friend in security who could let them go through the surveillance cameras, they could try and pick up the time frame of Ari's journey and use that to help understand how exactly she left.

As a now happier Mia explained her plans to Knox, their troubles seemed solved- even if it was just for a second. But a while away and a few hours ago, in the confines of the eery clearing, something bad had happened. Bad enough to shake the entire town if they found out.