Ghost of the Alpha

Chapter 17-Pink Carnation

It was a productive meeting with Alpha Deimos, Ronan, and Siphus. The rate of the human population within the city has flatlined to manageable proportions. The prisons were no longer overcrowded, the streets finally safe from Rebel saboteurs. The moment we concluded the meeting, scheduling the next one to discuss tactics to hunt down rebels, a young wolf messenger burst into the room. His words were earth shattering. World breaking.

"Alpha Varath, I'm sorry to impose," the young wolf announces, rushing over to me with urgency in his eyes. "But there is something you must see, immediately in the city surveillance room."

I don't hesitate, as the designated head officer of the city's security forces, I can't afford to. Rushing down the hall, shoes clipping along marbled floors, I make a swift turn to the left and force open the two towering metal double doors. The hundred of screens that line the walls, play different feeds, different angles, different locations. The largest one though, plays a scene that has my heart racing, blood pounding, breath straing in and out of my lungs.

"No," I beg, watching slack jawed at my mate gaping at a figure wearing a black motorcycle helmet. Dead bodies around him, three breathing but unconscious maids on the floor. My Sarah wide eyed, bits of purple glass at her feet. She makes to run, turning before the figure lunges and drives a needle straight into her neck. "Send the nearest security force we have to my residence!"

The messenger scurries off, the tech workers near me dialing phones, switching security feeds, doing everything in their power to help me. To try and help my mate, as the figure that haunts my dreams, as Keres rushes out to a helicopter and places her in it. I'm shifting as it takes off, racing down halls, through doors, out onto the busy streets. Racing against futile time to get back home. A home without my mate.

By the time I make it, there is no sign of the helicopter, only security wolves, crime scene corners bringing out the bodies one by one. I rush in, no one bothering to stop me from investigating the carnage for myself. I smell nothing of my mate, or that horrid Keres, only more and more blood layered over fear and body fluids. But then, my nose picks something up something amidst the remnants of purple glass crushed into dust. Into powder.

It is a heavy clinging scent of roses, lilies, and something else. Just a slight hint of it, but it is enough to send me running out into the gardens and destroying everything flower in sight. For underneath the sweet scent, was the sharp bite of monkshood, of wolfsbane. The very same concoction Keres had poured onto my father's headless body before running away like the coward he is.

By the time I am done, exhaustion pulls me back into human form and sloughing onto the stairs. After a while, Doctor Calise awakens me, shoving a pair of clothes into my hands and a pair of shoes and socks. "Hurry and dress Alpha," Calise utters, helping me up, scrutinizing me for any major injured or abrasions. "Charles has found something that you need to see."

I nod, quickly throwing on clothes and shoes, rushing down to my office where Charles waits. His face covered by freckles, eyes somewhat larger from the thick glasses over his eyes. "Oh thank goodness your here," he begins, standing up from the desk and offering up my chair to me. "The message put on your computer was a red herring, there were a few files that were massively changed and others looked at but not tampered with. I have taken the liberty of having those that were changed, to have paper copies sent to you. Though, it will be about three days before they arrive."

I thank him, order everyone out to give myself time alone. With the reality that my mate is long gone. But for now, even with the urge to again destroy everything around me, I need to learn what this intruder, what Keres has done to my personal possessions. Sitting down, opening all the files Charles tagged that were opened by Keres, a question, and then another question plagues me from what Charles relayed to me.

Why look at files and leave them untouched? I click one that was opened but not altered. There on the screen, staring back at me, is a female, the most dangerous creature that threatens my people's way of life. Moira Kriksus, leader of the Pride. An enemy against wolf kind, their numbers up to 500 hundred thousand, double my kinds forces. A thirty eight year old Siberian Tiger shifter, ruthless, cunning, merciless, and entirely untraceable. Not seen since the outbreak of the war and the death of her consort. Those deep slitted emerald eyes gaze back at me with a feral smile.

I click on the link to her known associates, and it is the two at the top that catch my eye. The first I see is her son. Twenty-six years old, a former human government solider. Tall, brown haired, and named after an old god from ancient human times. But it is the second profile that I see that stops me cold.

There, aged by computer graphic programs, is a face that is familiar yet not. The face of my mate, with the very same eyes as Moira Kriksus. I investigate further, clicking to find the last known picture of this girl, this child of the Pride. A single photo pops up of a smiling fifteen year old beside a younger Apollo Kriksus. Her name, Brenna Kriksus, Moira's proclaimed heir, announced two months before the war began.

I look at the photos in shock. In horror. In brewing anger at what has been taken, at what has been kept from me. I don't need a program to age down Sarah's photo. The resemblance is too perfect. The status of Brenna being alive or dead still set at unknown. It is no coincidence who my mate is. Who she truly is. Of her value. Of how much my mate hid from me, how much she has deceived me. But to what end? And why?