Beyond Beta's Rejection

(Harper’s POV)

I took the standard case folder from him and opened it to look at the contents. The first thing I saw was a picture. It was obviously a stakeout shot from the angle it was taken. The man in the shot looked to be medium build, with mid-brown hair that had a golden undertone and lightened a bit at the ends. It was one of those short messy styles that are meant to look like they don’t care but probably took longer than my whole morning routine. This was carried into the designer stubble with the slight, oh, I forgot to shave today, stubble. That was where the messy stopped, though. The three-piece suit he wore was obviously tailored to him, and he held himself with a confidence that could be seen a mile away.

“Cute!” I said, and Nathaniel scowled at me.

“Dangerous,” he said sternly.

“Even cuter,” I replied with a wink, and he rolled his eyes.

“His name is Elias Owens,” Nathaniel said as I thumbed through the attached case report, “Not much is known about him, and what we do know isn’t good.” I glanced up at Nathaniel briefly. He seemed genuinely concerned about this guy, which was not normal for Nathaniel at all. I looked back down at the papers.

“Werewolf, Alpha rank,” I read from the front sheet. “Thirty-Five years old, no known information on his family.” And then I saw the list of pack names under the ownership. I counted seven names and looked up at Nathaniel, confused. “Why are there seven different packs under ownership?” I looked back at the list again. “He can’t be Alpha of seven different packs, surely,” I said in disbelief, and Nathaniel shrugged.

“That list isn’t up to date. It’s eight now,” he said

“Eight!” I exclaimed. “How does someone become Alpha of eight packs?” It was not unheard of for Alpha’s to fight over territory. Still, if the victorious Alpha already had a pack, it would normally be a neighbouring territory, and the two would be merged together into his original pack. The pattern of these packs made no sense. I knew of two of them but not the others. The map attached showed that all seven packs were spread across the country.

“And is the eighth pack connected to any of these?” I asked, and Nathaniel shook his head.

“Owens appeared on our radar almost five years ago,” Nathaniel said. “Just out of nowhere, no connection to a pack that we can find, no lineage that we can find” He pointed to the case file, and I passed it back. He searched through before pulling out some papers.

“Ah, here it is,” he said as he thumbed through the report, “Owens rushed the border patrol of the Red Rock pack with around fifteen wolves, all assumed to be rogues. He quickly took control of the pack after killing the Alpha in cold b***d,” I stood up and walked to the window, looking out onto a group of warriors who were mid training session as he spoke. So far, it was all standard.

When a werewolf doesn’t have a pack, he is considered a rogue. Other rogues will gravitate towards him when an Alpha wolf doesn’t have a pack. The only reason it wasn’t considered a pack is the lack of territory. Rogues are considered the lowest of the low, especially to pack wolves, and living in a pack would have you believe that they are not all that common. But the fact is that there are more rogue werewolves than there are pack wolves. They still gravitated towards a pack-like structure, mostly in cities, but were not recognised. So for Owens to have a small assault of fifteen wolves was certainly not uncommon. What was interesting, though, was that he was able to take down a pack with such few wolves.

“This is where it gets interesting,” Nathaniel said, drawing my attention back to him. “Owens then spends approximately six months in the pack before setting up a stage Alpha, someone who holds the title for the pack, but Owens stills holds ultimate control over the pack. He set’s up the hierarchy from a mix of his own men and one’s from the existing pack that seems to pass some sort of test of his. Once he has done this, he moves on to another pack.”

“But he still holds control, and the pack remains as is?” I asked.

“Mostly, there are some movements between packs from what we can see.” He looked back down at the file. “The packs that he attacks all seem to be run down, smaller and more isolated packs,“ Nathaniel continued. “The ones who don’t have alliances to call upon to help defend themselves. And every one of those packs suddenly began to see abundance and revitalisation before Owens moved on.”

“That’s a good thing, though, right?” I asked. Surely a pack doing better would be a positive.

“Yes, in general, the pack doing better is a good thing,” Nathaniel looked up at me. “But we have reason to believe that the sudden upturn in prosperity comes from a not-so-positive source.”

That piqued my interest.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Nathaniel shuffled the papers around and then looked up at me. “We believe that Owens is a high-level member of The Circle” I couldn’t help the look of shock on my face. The Circle was well known within the Council. They were an underground criminal organisation that dealt with trafficking drugs, guns, and people. They mainly worked within the underground supernatural world. Still, it bled into the mundane world, and I had heard stories of female werewolves being taken and sold to rich sick bastards because of the amount of punishment their bodies could take. Or for vampires and certain fae to be bled dry and their b***d sold to the highest bidder for drugs. I knew that the Council had been investigating the Circle for longer than I had been here. There had been rumours that the Circle had infiltrated areas of the Council, so work on those cases was on a strictly need-to-know basis and limited to Council Elders and Councilmen.

“Wait, so why are you talking to me about this?” I asked. Even as an Elite officer, I wasn’t qualified to be working on a Circle case, despite how much I would have loved to be involved in taking these scumbags down.

“We believe that Owens has been using the packs to set up distribution centres and transit routes for the Circle’s activities. I looked back at the map and saw how the layout of the packs now under his control could create quite the opportunity for concealed travel. Some were close to high international traffic areas and some to seaports.

“Ok, sure,” I said. “But again, why am I sitting here discussing this?” I asked.

“Owens is very clever,” Nathaniel said. “Once he takes over a pack, his guards go up, we have tried to infiltrate his operations on numerous occasions, and each time we have been blocked.”

“Nathaniel?” I was starting to get a bad feeling about where this was going.

“You understand that to bring this to someone of your position is a big violation of the rules.” I narrowed my eyes and looked at the map again. “Of course, it would mean that if you were successful in obtaining the information we needed, it would all but guarantee you my last Councilman position.” I looked up at Nathaniel. He knew without a doubt that this would pull me in. I had been hinting very strongly about that position, and it was one that previously had never been filled by a woman. I knew I was good enough, but the position came with the chance of promotion to Council Elder, too, and thus was never given lightly.

“Nathaniel,” I snapped, and he looked at me quietly. “Why am I uniquely qualified for this case?” Those were the words he had used, and now those words scared me.

“Because you have a genuine reason to visit the latest pack he has taken over,” Nathaniel said, his eyes not leaving mine. I felt a drop in my stomach that I hadn’t felt in such a long time.

“And what is that?” I didn’t want to know, even though I already knew.

“To grieve the death of your father,” I shook my head in denial. No, not this, anywhere but there. My father had passed away five months ago. I had received words through Aaron as I hadn’t spoken to my family since that night.

“Harper, the pack he has taken over is the Midnight Moon pack!”