Free Web NovelChapter 366: Chapter 366 We Have Confirmation
Daniel
The south ridge never feels empty, not even in the early hours when the fog hangs low and the birds haven’t decided whether the day is worth announcing, and I stand just inside the tree line with my tablet braced against my ribs, letting the passive scanners do what they’re best at while I do nothing at all.
Doing nothing, I’ve learned, is often the fastest way to learn everything. Something my father unfortunately lacked the skill to understand. Even to this day it can piss him off when he asks what I have been doing, and I answer with ’nothing much’, because in that nothing much, a whole lot hides.
The courier moves along the ridge path with a practiced ease that suggests training rather than instinct, his pace steady, his posture loose, his eyes deliberately unfocused in the way people are taught when they’re told not to look like they’re tracking landmarks or counting steps, and if I were relying on sight alone I might even believe the act.
I’m not.
The ward hum shifts slightly as he passes marker three, not enough to trigger alarms, not enough to spook him, just enough to register as intentional avoidance, and when my scanner brushes the inner lining of his jacket my archive lights up with a soft confirmation tone that settles straight into my spine.
There you are. I think to myself, smiling at my screen, knowing this is going to be a good morning no matter what now.
I don’t move toward him, don’t shift my stance, don’t give him the courtesy of acknowledgment, because confrontation destroys data and data is the only thing that survives once stories start getting rewritten, so instead I catalog, log, and preserve, watching the sigil resolve across my screen in layered overlays.
It’s old arrogant work, reused too many times by someone who assumes no one is still paying attention, and I tag it carefully; pattern, resonance, degradation rate and the micro-fractures that tell me it’s been activated recently but not maintained properly.
’You seeing this?’ Fallon mindlinks, his presence a quiet check rather than a demand.
’Confirmed,’ I answer, keeping my tone even. ’The sigil matches a sealed archive entry. I want a trail, not contact.’
’Copy,’ he replies without hesitation. ’I’ll ghost the perimeter.’
The courier passes the ridge marker cleanly, doesn’t slow, doesn’t hesitate, and that tells me enough to justify letting him go, because whoever sent him is testing us, not delivering something urgent, and tests always come in pairs or patterns.
I log his direction, timestamp the ward response, and let the fog swallow him again, already building a probability tree in my head as I turn back toward the packhouse, the wards settling into their daytime cadence beneath my feet.
Saving things isn’t glamorous, but it’s effective.
Inside, the packhouse feels different since the announcement, not quieter exactly, but clearer, as if decisions spoken aloud have changed the acoustics of everything, and when I step into the Beta wing Mateo is there, leaning over the counter with his sleeves rolled and his hair pulled back, magic humming under his skin like it has every right to exist.
"You’re smiling," he says without looking up.
"I’m vindicated," I correct, setting my tablet down beside him. "There’s a difference."
He laughs softly and turns, reaching for me without hesitation, fingers brushing my wrist in a way that’s become instinctive, grounding, and when I lean in it isn’t cautious or hidden, it’s open. The bond between us is sealing with a quiet pulse of magic and will that settles into place like it always belonged there.
We don’t announce it, we don’t posture, we simply stand there together long enough that the room notices, and it does, a subtle ripple of attention moving through the nearby wolves as they register the shift, the certainty, the fact that the Beta position is no longer theoretical. Some of them stiffen, wary of the witch who doesn’t smell like them, who doesn’t move like them, whose power doesn’t pretend to fit neatly into pack hierarchy, but Mateo doesn’t care, his chin lifting slightly as if to say look all you want, and I don’t care either, because stability doesn’t require permission.
Later, Allison drifts in with a mug in her hands and curiosity bright in her eyes as she watches Mateo reconfigure a ward lattice without tools, her questions sharp and practical, focused on outcome rather than mysticism, and when he answers with dry humor instead of ceremony she laughs, quick and genuine.
They click almost immediately, the kind of connection that forms when two people recognize competence and refuse to compete over it, and somewhere between shared glances and easy conversation I realize they’re becoming friends fast, the kind built on mutual respect and zero tolerance for nonsense.
It makes sense and makes me absolutely over the moon happy. My best friend is becoming best friends with my mate. Best outcome I could have wished for!
By late afternoon, Mateo and I are back at the border together, his magic mapping scent and residual intent in ways my tech can’t, my scanners filling in what his senses flag, and the picture that forms is precise and unpleasant, unknown wolves moving in coordinated arcs along our perimeter, familiar enough with our wards to avoid tripping alarms but careless enough to leave trace.
"Not pack," Mateo murmurs, crouched low, fingers brushing the ground. "But not alone either."
"And not subtle," I add, tagging the data as it streams in. "Which means confidence, or backup."
Or Lizzy.
We don’t say her name, but it sits between us anyway, an absence shaped like a threat, and when we return to the packhouse we go straight to the triplets and Allison, no delay, no filtering, the evidence projected clean and undeniable across the screen.
Allison absorbs it with calm focus, not rattled but sharpened, immediately assigning additional guards to the borders, her decisions precise and consent-driven, and the triplets back her without hesitation, their trust in her operational judgment already visible.
That’s when I hear his voice.
Alpha Jack’s, sharp and furious, cutting through the corridor just outside the room, and I still because habits die hard and information matters, and my tablet records automatically even as my jaw tightens.
"It was a disgrace," Jack snaps to someone I can’t see. "A disgrace she was ever in the cellars to begin with. I set her free because no one had the right to cage her."
The words land with the weight of truth, ugly and undeniable, and for a moment I simply breathe, grounding myself in the reality of it, because proof is proof even when it implicates the wrong person.
I step back into the room, expression controlled, data already queued, and meet Ethan’s gaze without ceremony.
"We have confirmation," I say quietly. "Lizzy didn’t escape. She was released." freēwēbnovel.com
The silence that follows isn’t shock, not really, just the heavy settling of something that can no longer be ignored, and I save the file, because saving things is what I do, especially when the cost is understanding exactly who put the pack in danger.
