Free Web NovelChapter 18: LOYAL DOG
DANE’S POV The night was chilly and I could feel the cold creeping in as I scouted down the terrain alongside one of my most trusted men. It had been three nights. Alpha Callum and I decided to do the same thing the traitor was doing ㅡ monitor patterns and work around it. The man beside me, Will, flexed his shoulders absentmindedly, his gaze fixed on the same point as mine as we waited to see if the person would show up today. They hadn’t moved the markers for three days now. Almost like they knew we were in wait for them. The moon climbed higher in the sky and I turned to Will, shaking my head. Suddenlyㅡ His eyes widened slightly and he nodded silently off to the shrubs. A rustle. I remained quiet, my ears perking up as I watched someone sneak out, crouched low to the ground. My blood boiled instantly. That bastard. Without waiting, I went around, sneaking up behind the person before stepping out to the path. "Don’t. Move." My voice was hard and filled with warning. I wouldn’t hesitate to kill him on the spot if he so much twitched. The person tensed, shoulders tight as they they remained rooted to the spot. Will had appeared beside me, his breathing ragged. "Turn around. Slowly." The person didn’t move for a long second as though weighing their options. Then slowly, they turned to face me, harsh lines carved into an all too familiar face. My stomach dropped. "Reed?" No way. I had assigned him specifically to the borders because he knew the layout better than anyone else in the pack. Now, I knew why he knew the borders that well. "Take him." I ordered Will. Reed barely struggled, a seemingly calm mask remained over his face as Will dragged him along the path. We weren’t going to the main square of the pack. Far from it. There was a little cabin off to the east side of the woods. Where Alpha Callum and I had agreed to meet up if we caught the traitor. Will shoved Reed into the cabin and he stumbled forward, catching himself on the edge of the table before Will forced him down into the chair. Callum was already there with a few other wolves who were soldiers , leaning against the far wall with his arms folded. He looked Reed over once and said nothing for a long moment. The cabin was small and cold and the only sounds were Reed’s breathing and the wind howling against the walls outside. "How long?" Callum said. Reed looked at the table. "How long have you been moving those markers?" Nothing. I grabbed him by the collar before Callum had to say it twice and drove my fist into his face. His head snapped sideways and blood burst from his nose instantly, spraying across the table as he crashed against it. Will hauled him back upright and Reed sat there blinking slowly, blood running in a thick stream over his mouth and dripping off his chin onto his shirt. Callum looked at him blankly. "The name." Reed spat blood onto the floor. He ran his tongue over his teeth. Then he laughed— the sound wet, bubbling and completely wrong for a man sitting where he was sitting. "Which one?" He wheezed. Callum’s eyes didn’t move. "The one who sent you." Reed shook his head slightly, looked at the wall. Then something shifted in his face and he said, "Three weeks ago I sold your full eastern rotation to a courier who met me at the ridge." He said it flatly. Like he was reporting it. "Dates, gaps, names of every wolf on the stretch." Callum said nothing. "The week before that—" Reed coughed, blood flecking his lips. "I handed over the patrol commander schedules. The ones you keep locked in the second tier records." "Who collected them?" Callum asked. Reed smiled with bloody teeth. "A courier. Didn’t give a name." I grabbed his left hand off the armrest and bent his index finger back until it snapped. The smile died as Reed seized forward, a raw torn sound ripping out of him as he hunched over his hand, whole body shaking. He sat there for a moment just breathing, teeth clamped together so hard his jaw was white. "The courier had a name." I spat. Reed looked up at me with wet eyes. "I never got it." He said through his teeth. "Swear to goddess I never—" I broke the middle finger. He screamed that time. A real one that was short and ugly, before he bit down on it and turned it into a long shaking groan, tears cutting through the blood on his face as he hunched forward, cradling his hand against his chest. Callum crouched in front of him, his voice very quiet. "Keep going." Reed’s chest heaved. He looked at Callum with his watering eyes and then looked away and continued. "Two months ago I pulled a copy of the border weakness assessment. The full one. The one you and Beta Dane drafted after the last perimeter review." His voice was unsteady now, coming out in pieces between his breathing. "I made a copy and left it under the third marker on the northeast stretch the same night." "For who?" Callum pressed. "I told you. I never got a—" Callum grabbed him by the jaw and wrenched his face up. "You handed over our most sensitive border document and you expect me to believe you didn’t know who was collecting it." His voice had lost its quiet now. "Try again." Reed’s eye found his and his lips pressed together. Callum released his jaw, stood and hit him across the face so hard that Reed and the chair went over together in one crash, hitting the floor with a sound that shook the table. Reed lay on his back gasping, the broken fingers of his left hand bent beneath him at angles that made Will look away. Callum grabbed him by the front of his shirt and hauled him partially upright. "Get up." He said through his teeth. "Get up and finish what you were saying." Reed’s head lolled. He blinked slowly, blood running freely from the gash that had opened above his eyebrow. "The query." He said,his voice barely there now. "Someone flagged a gap in the communication logs. I pulled it from the system the same night before it could be processed." He coughed and blood came with it, spotting his shirt. "Buried it clean. Made sure it wouldn’t show up in any record trail." Callum’s eyes came to mine for one second. "Who told you to pull it?" He said. Reed closed his eye. Fucking bastard. Callum dropped him. Reed hit the floor and didn’t try to get up, just lay there on his side with his chest rising and falling in shallow pulls, his broken hand palm up beside him. I crouched beside him. "Reed." I kept my voice level. "You’ve told us everything else. Every single thing. Give us the name and it stops right now." He turned his head slowly and looked at me with his one good eye. Something moved in it and I thought for one second that he was going to say it. Then it was gone. "Some things are bigger than me. I’m sorry." He whispered. Right. I straightened up. Callum stood over him and looked down at him on the floor for a long moment. The anger was gone from his face now, replaced by something colder. "A loyal dog." He hissed quietly. "Even at the end." He turned to the wolves at the wall. "Remember what you’re looking at." His voice was completely flat. "This is what a traitor looks like in my pack." He looked at Will. "Kill him." He walked out. Will looked at me once, then he looked at Reed on the floor. Reed didn’t beg. He didn’t fight. He just lay there and looked at the ceiling with his one good eye and whatever he was thinking in those last moments he kept entirely to himself. Will’s boot came down on his throat first, a hard crushing press that made Reed’s whole body convulse, his legs kicking weakly against the floor as his good hand scrabbled uselessly at Will’s ankle. The other wolves moved in and by the end Reed had stopped moving entirely and the cabin floor went still. Will stepped back with a stiff bow. Nodding back, I walked outside. Callum was standing a few feet from the door, hands deep in his coat, staring at the dark tree line. We stood there in the cold together and said nothing for a while. "He was protecting someone." I said eventually. "A stupid decision." Callum replied. "They know we’re close now." "Not if we get there first." He muttered before he walked back toward the pack. I stood there alone with blood on my knuckles and looked at the tree line and thought about a name we still didn’t have and a person still sitting somewhere warm tonight who had sent a man to his death rather than be found. Whoever it was couldn’t be a foreign threat. They were close.
