Alexander
I paced out to the training field with different scenarios playing out in my head. Fiona had replied to her father’s letter, and it was easy to jump to the conclusion that meant she was working for him.
But I had seen the way Fiona’s father treated her. The day of her wedding, when I found him illegally torturing his own daughter with his Alpha power. But still, this was a well-trained Luna, and her father had been her pack Alpha all her life. How much could she really resist obeying him?
It was possible that Fiona wrote back to her father, rejecting him. She was a strong woman with a mind of her own, and here a man who had hurt her – no doubt more than the one time I’d witnessed it. She would have every reason to stand against him.
But she should have told me. She should have shown me the letter, rather than sneaking around.
I arrived in the West Courtyard and found my men sparring in pairs. I caught Kayden’s eye and motioned for him to come and join me at the side of the field. He gave the soldier he was sparring with a quick instruction, sending him to partner with the new recruit, who’d just re-joined after I released him from my interrogation.
Kayden fell into pace with me, and we walked quickly to the far edge of the field, well out of earshot of anyone. I caught him up on what I had learned in speaking with the two soldiers. He looked very serious as he took it all in.
“And now? What are you thinking?” he asked.
I gave Kayden a hard, probing look. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”
Kayden ran a hand through his thick, dark hair. “Well… there is someone who has regular access to your office, Alexander.”
I needed him to say it. “Who?”
“Ugh.” Kayden hesitated. “My gut is telling me she would not do this. But… there are a few other things that have happened lately, that make me question what could really be going on with Fiona.”
Kayden met my eyes so I could read them. He was being sincere and asking me to believe him.
“Go on,” I told him coldly.
“Well, for one thing, there’s that day she disappeared. When she told you she was at the nursing home with her grandfather, but they said she hadn’t been there. She had you and Nina worried for hours. Did Fiona ever tell you where she was? Give any explanation?”
I shook my head. I was not going to tell him the added information that Fiona had lied and said she was with Nina that whole time.
“And, well, you asked me to do what I could to dig in to find out who gave that leaked info to the press.”
“And?”
Kayden turned his body squarely to mine. “And it looks like it was Fiona’s father.”
My mind searched for an alternative explanation. A way to explain away the likelihood, which grew with every bit of information confirmed, that Fiona was the one behind this breach.
“I wouldn’t stand here and try to implicate Fiona if I didn’t have to,” Kayden continued. “But this is serious, and you need to have all the information.”
I thanked Kayden and told him to return to training and finish leading the rest of the session. He nodded and ran back across the field.
Kayden said his gut told him that Fiona was innocent, and mine did too. And my intuition, honed sharp in years of battle, had never been wrong before.
But the evidence was piling up, and it was my responsibility to at least question Fiona.
Fiona
Alexander, looking like he was badly conflicted about something, asked me to sit in his office with him. I found the request a bit strange. And the energy I was feeling around him was even stranger.
He sat behind his desk and motioned for me to take a seat in a chair across from him.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
He pressed his palms flat against each other and placed his elbows on the desk. “I need to ask you something.”
“Then ask it.”
He nodded, looking me in the eye. “The information that was leaked to the press. I need to find out how it happened.”
My stomach sank.
He meant me. He was about to accuse me of being involved with what was going on in the news.
I would not have expected his accusation to sting so badly, but suddenly the memories of our past few days together went speeding through my mind. How could Alexander believe I could betray him like that, after everything we had just been through together?
He realized I was not going to take his bait, asking further questions or becoming defensive. I remained silent, waiting for him to work up the courage to confront me outright.
“And,” he finally continued, “my sources have discovered that the person who gave the leaked documents to the media was, in fact, your father. Do you know anything about how he could have gotten his hands on them? We believe the files were taken from this room.”
I held a mask of indifference on my face and answered, “I don’t. But my first thought would be that your intruder entered through that hidden passage.” I nodded to my right, at the drapery that covered the door through which Susan, Scarlet’s handmaid, had trespassed to plant the stolen necklace.
Alexander’s eyes followed mine across the room. He frowned and said, “That was my first thought as well. But I rigged that door to trigger an alarm, after what happened last time, and the tripwires have not been activated.”
The energy between us was strained, and I was beginning to feel queasy. What my body needed right now was contact with Alexander. Not to sit across a table from him being interrogated like a criminal.
He may have been reluctant to accuse me plainly, but I was done with beating around the bush.
“I am your Luna,” I stated. “And I’m carrying your child. I would never betray this pack, and I have no loyalty to my father. I even gave over my rights to our family business so I could cut ties with him permanently.”
Alexander kept his eyes on mine. I did not flinch. He was trying to read what was really in my mind, to see if it matched my words. His eyes searched mine but came up empty. I was stronger than that. I never let my face betray my emotions. That was a weakness, one an enemy could easily use against you.
“You say you are not loyal to your father, but do you love him?”
This question caught me off-guard, but I answered. “He raised me,” I said. “He’s a scoundrel, but yes, I still love my family.”
Alexander sat back in his chair and looked at me contemplatively. Then he sighed, leaned forward on the desk again, and cleared his throat.
Finally, he asked, “Do you love your family more than me?”
She’s so fucking stupid , for an ashole father