Zane | ✔︎

Chapter Twenty-Seven | Nobody needs to know.

Azalea felt lost while watching the casino burn to ashes.

A part of her seized. Triggered. Played with.

The morning sun did not do justice to her sight, with the roads getting painted with black and grey residue. In her eyes, she felt like colour was losing her. In her eyes, tears wanted to water but they were as dry as a desert.

She let her legs relax against the rooftop of another building, her posture alert, seeing how all the police and paramedics rushed to the scene of the fire, desperately trying to find survivors. The fire had been going on for 3 hours, almost leaving nothing for recovery. She stared at the scene hard. She abhorred the sight.

She saw how 3 other casinos were caught on fire simultaneously, one after the other. It did not just start from a phone exploding in a kitchen. This was a planned attack, and she knew it was a group of rogues who went against Tiras. 

It did not make sense. 

The Black Jack Alpha only targeted the Alphas of the King's Clan. He only pursued people in power, people who were untouchable. Rogues are close to nothing, they only want vengeance. It could make sense that they go after Tiras for killing their Alpha, but their Alphas were hell. All killed Alphas had a history of unleashing tyranny in their packs.

And why target Tiras? He was just the son.

It only gave Azalea more ideas of hating him. She knew how rogues work, they don't settle around to cater to breadcrumbs, and they don't stick around to beat around the bush. They are brutal. They go for their enemy directly, without any fear, without anything to lose. Yet instead of going to the Black Jack Alpha, they went to Tiras.

Tiras did something to the rogues.

What the hell did he do to make them create sheer chaos with fire?

She did not recognize the wolves that attacked Tiras and his people once a few barely escaped themselves, at least not their faces. She couldn't wrap her head around it. 

More than that, she couldn't wrap her head around what happened in the control room.

Tiras had information on her and her wolf before she was a rogue. He had their pictures. He had her fingerprints, DNA, medical history. All before she escaped her pack. All before she ever set out to kill Alphas on her own. 

He could've recognized her, but he didn't, or he pretended not to. 

This was bad. 

For a second, Azalea felt like she didn't have the upper hand.

She had to test him. Play with him more and cross limits that would ensure something from his side. Any intel, any hint, any information about where his father was, she needed to know.

The password of those files was Beda.

How the fuck can it be Beda?

It was too much of a coincidence.

And she knew one thing from Beda's behaviour. Beda still could be hiding something vital to her life, to the success of this mission, or she was silent because even she did not know how this was possible, how this could be a reality.