The Wolves and the Vipers

Chapter 30 - A Kindness

You guys are still here? Thirty chapters about flockies later? Geez. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're waiting for a certain rogue to show up ;) rather than actually, like, being interested in the lives of pack wolves. But until then, tell me. Do you think Jace can really get a lesbian to fall in love with him?

It was Bradley and Ryan who escorted the old Beta into the prison. He wasn't handcuffed, but the way they were walking alongside him left no doubt that this was not a voluntary trip. They walked him into the room, sat him down, and then left him there to stew for ten minutes or so.

The door to the observation room opened behind me. I turned my head and blinked a few times upon realising it was Tyler. He came to stand beside me, the muscles in his jaw working away.

"You're going to watch?" I asked him.

"Yep. I am," Tyler confirmed. "And if I find out he's been lying all these years, my fatherly feels for him are going to disappear really, really fast."

I chewed the inside of my cheek. No one expected him to be objective about this, obviously, but it seemed like he was siding with Jace. For now, at least. He might change his mind about that, if the punishment turned out to be more than a prison sentence. Jace had explained to me just minutes ago that the penalty for betraying your pack was usually execution. If this guy had worked with Riverside, he would be facing down a firing squad within a month.

I was suddenly glad of my vantage point. They couldn't see me or hear me, and I didn't have to feel like my every move was being scrutinised. With a job like mine and guards following me around every second of every day, that feeling was a near-constant companion now.

Jace finally went into the interrogation room. He took his time pulling out a chair and getting situated upon it. He had a sheaf of papers that he began to arrange on the desk in front of him. Some of them looked like pictures, while others were photocopies of handwritten documents. I had no idea what any of it was, but I could guess.

"You're really pulling out all the strings here, aren't you?" the Beta mused. "So tell me, please, what this is all about?"

"You already know that," Jace replied. "Well, perhaps you don't know. But you have something in mind — I can see that much. Something you've done that haunts you a little bit. Something you don't want anyone knowing."

The Beta leant back in his chair, a half-smile on his lips. "And how do you figure that? I know you're not in my head."

Jace shrugged at him. "When I put innocent people in here, they're stressed. Lost. Confused. When I put guilty people in here, they're stressed too. The difference is, they hide it. They think it looks less suspicious if they're relaxed and calm. Quite the opposite, actually."

The way they were staring at each other sent a tingle running down my spine. No one else would dare look at Jace like that. Not even me. And if Jace didn't have such a good grip on his wolf, they would have come to blows by now.

"Like you, Jace, I have a job that requires me to hide any trace of stress. Call it force of habit," the Beta said mildly.

I hadn't realised he was clever. Tyler wasn't dim, by any description, but if he had inherited this spark of intelligence, he was doing a very good job of pretending otherwise.

Jace took a moment to collect his thoughts. He straightened a few of the pieces of paper on the table. "I remember a time when you didn't do a brilliant job of hiding your stress, Carl. I'm sure you remember it too. Last week, when I told you about the new security footage."

The Beta lowered his eyes to the table for the first time. He swallowed, waited a moment or two, and then lifted his eyes up again. His chin was held high, but it was hard to miss the frown lines at the corners of his mouth.