Claiming Treasure

Rori King’s POV

Arrowhead Pack House

I sat in the shallow water of our pool, leaning back against Chase’s chest as our babies played with the bubblers. We’d been home and together now for four days, and I hadn’t let them out of my sight. When our plane landed, and I finally saw them, I couldn’t stop crying. Their little hands kept touching my face as if they couldn’t believe I was there.

We’d missed so much in the three months they were gone. Milestones and memories were lost forever for us. I had so much anger for the Council and what they made us do.

I was so grateful to the people who kept them safe while they were in hiding. Possum and Roadkill had made the most of their time with their grandchildren; when Cheryl bumped her head and ran for Possum instead of me, I sank to the ground and started crying. She picked her up and brought her over, letting me kiss her better. “It will go back to normal soon,” she said as she sat by me.

It took a day or two, but it did. The Pack threw a party to welcome back the children, their nannies Brenda and Zoe, warriors Brent and Laura, and Betas Possum and Roadkill the night we returned. I couldn’t thank them enough. The party had gone well into the night, as Chase and I kept watch over the pair as they slept in the pack-n-play.

“Rori, you and Chase have a phone call you NEED to take. It’s your uncle Martin,” the security center linked me.

“On my way.” I waved Brenda and Zoe forward and told them we’d be back soon. I rinsed off in the locker room and quickly pulled on my clothes, meeting Chase on the other side as we walked to our office. “Transfer the call to my office, please.”

“Yes, Alpha.”

The phone rang, and I put it on speakerphone. “Martin, how are you,” I said.

“Rori, I need you to sit down,” he said.

My stomach flipped as Chase pulled me down into his lap on the desk chair. “Go ahead, Martin,” he said as he wrapped his arms around my waist.

“I got a call from the Coast Guard Sector Field Office in Grand Haven, Michigan, a few minutes ago. A fishing vessel saw something suspicious on their sonar and marked the location. The Coast Guard responded and identified it as a crash site.” I was going to be sick. “It’s the plane Charles was in,” he said. “A salvage boat and divers raised the plane. His body has been positively identified.”

My stomach lurched, and I pushed myself off of Chase’s lap and grabbed the garbage can. I lost my lunch, heaving it out as Chase held my hair back. When I had nothing left, I sat back, and he handed me a bottle of water to rinse my mouth out. “What happened,” I said.

“We don’t know yet. The Federal Aviation Administration, National Transportation Safety Board, and FBI are all involved. They won’t tell me anything.”

I let Chase pick me up and take me back to the chair. “What happens with his body?”

“It will undergo an autopsy, and after that, they will release it to me. I plan to have Charles cremated then spread his ashes at his favorite spot on our land.”

“I want to be there,” I said. “For both.”

“I’ll let you know. I’m sorry, Rori. I wish you had more time with your grandfather than you did.” I could tell he was barely holding on.

“I will let Ashley and Colletta know,” Chase said. “Thank you for calling.” He picked me up and carried me back to our home, sending a cleaner to the office to take care of the garbage. He put me in the shower as the nannies returned our sleeping babies to us. I fell asleep with my toddlers by my side, taking comfort in their scents and their breathing.

Brian Steele’s POV

Council Headquarters

Banff Pack, Alberta, Canada

Teri, Rick, and I were powering through a scene in Battlefield: V and things were slowing down. I was getting pissed at the freezing and performance. “Dude, what’s going on with our Internet,” Rick asked over the headphones as he bumped my knee with his.

“I don’t know, but you know how bad the internet speed sucks out here. It’s probably the server in town.” We had a fiber optic line connecting the Pack and Council servers to the telecommunications company serving the area.

“It happens every night at midnight,” Teri said. “Annoying.”

“It’s probably the data backups,” I said. “I’ll check them out tomorrow.”

Five minutes later, the speed went back to normal, and we kept playing until two in the morning. Teri and Rick were mates, and both worked in the building maintenance group for the Banff Pack. Both were in their twenties, and among the few in the Pack who were into computer gaming. Alpha John Coffey was a stickler to isolation from humans; only a few select people allowed to conduct business with them. Gaming wasn’t as fun when you were under Alpha orders not to communicate with other humans. Thus, our late-night gaming parties were the only way for me to enjoy multi-player games.

I was the computer guru for the Pack. I had been the Alpha Geek in the pack since I was thirteen, finding computers to be my thing instead of fighting. The Alpha put me in charge of the Computer Room at fourteen. My duties had expanded when our previous Alpha, Jack Coffey, had become the Chairman of the Werewolf Council. The Council now occupied another building, and I had furnished it with a dedicated server. While construction was going on, I added a third data center for backups. The third center was in its own small building, far removed from the others and with its own power supply.

I’d made it this far, reaching low Beta status within the Pack at age thirty-five, because I could handle anything with the computers. As I woke up the next morning, the conversation from last night was bothering me. I ran some diagnostics, finding nothing amiss. I did some disk cleanup and archived some files, knowing these would help, but not finding the cause of the problem. I checked the program for the data backup routine on the Council server, and didn’t see anything that would explain the performance. I checked at the third data center and verified all the updates were going on time. I needed to figure out where the problem was, and for that, I went to the Pack server room.

The data backup routine looked fine there too. “Time to troubleshoot,” I told myself. I set the backup time on the Pack server to two in the morning, knowing the Council server was at midnight. The only other explanation was the common data line into town. I’d have to monitor performance in real-time and see where the demand was coming from. Tonight, instead of gaming, I was going to be working.

I went through my duties during the day, taking a nap in the afternoon since I’d be up half the night. It worked out well for me because both the Alpha and the Chairman had been in a foul mood since the trials. I kept quiet and in the back at the daily staff meeting, and generally hid out in the computer rooms. I had no desire to feel the anger of a pissed-off Alpha.

At dinner, I found a quiet table next to Rick and Teri. “I can’t play tonight, but I want you guys to play without me,” I said. “I have some things I need to check to figure out this speed issue at midnight.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Teri said.

“It could be a sign something is wrong, maybe equipment starting to fail or a corrupted program. It’s just one night.”

“Fine. But don’t get pissed when we get this level without you,” Rick said.

“Like THAT will happen.”

“How long is the Alpha going to stay pissed off about Alpha Rori getting away with it,” Rick said over the link. You never EVER talked shit about Alpha John out loud. It was a quick trip to the punishment pole if you did, even the Ring if he considered your words a challenge to his Alpha position.

“It’s hard to tell. I know that he’s been working the phones with other Alphas. It’s got to hurt when two-thirds of the Packs side with a female Alpha over Pack law and tradition.”

“Alpha Rori is badass, Alpha Coral too,” Teri said. “Really. You wouldn’t believe how many Omegas and females are rooting for her.”

“Coral’s been the Omega Goddess since the Battle of the Coral See back at Bitterroot years ago. The Alphas are not going to allow her to keep that Pack for long. A dominant female Alpha goes against everything they believe,” I said.

“I’ve talked to my sister in the Blue River Pack. They lover their Alphas, and there is no way any Alpha wannabe will get the votes to sustain a challenge,” Teri said.

“And that’s why we’ve got a pissed-off Alpha and Chairman, plus the Council,” I said. “Alpha Rori is untouchable now; she has ridden this ‘Luna’s Blessing’ thing to rally two-thirds of the Packs in support, plus she’s the Blessed One. You saw the trial; they wanted to control her and put their own people in place, and instead, they’ve cemented her as the leader of a movement. Honestly, I think Alpha John would face a challenge before Coral or Rori would.”

“Just remember to keep your heads down and not say anything,” Rick said. “It’s way above our paygrade.”

“I wish Banff was on their side; I wouldn’t mind a touch of Luna’s Blessing,” Teri said as she touched her belly. She and Rick were mated twelve years, and her heats hadn’t taken yet. “Now Alpha Coral is pregnant AGAIN, with her daughter just over a year old. It’s not fair.”

Alpha John had shifted and run into the woods in a rage when THAT piece of information came out. He hadn’t come back until the next morning. “Luna Roseanne is on his ass like white on rice about it, too. Sixty years and no heir.”

“Not our business,” I said as I picked up my plates. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I was sitting in the Council server room, with my computer set up to monitor server and broadband performance as it got close to midnight. When the hour struck, the activity levels picked up a lot more than I expected. The file backup program was communicating properly with the backup server, but the internet traffic was through the roof.

I dug deeper, finding the program that was causing the activity and pulling it up. My blood ran cold as I realized what it was doing.

The files were going out over the Internet.

“NO NO NO FUCKKKKK!” I tried to end the program to stop it, but that didn’t work. I unplugged the fiber optics connecting us to town and watched as the transmission ended.

That should have been the end, but it wasn’t. Another program started up, one I couldn’t access, and I watched in horror as files started to disappear.

We’d been hacked!

There was a worm in the system, and it was chewing through the system and eating everything in its path. I jumped up, hitting the emergency power-down button for the room. The servers turned off as I raced up the stairs and over to the Pack building. I ignored the mental sends from Pack members angry at the loss of Internet access, knowing their games or video streaming being interrupted was nothing compared to the security breach going on. Racing down the stairs to the computer room, I could hear the hard drives operating simultaneously as the worm continued to eat its way through. I hit the emergency power-down, then ran back upstairs.

The worm had hit the backup server, and it had been several minutes since the attack began. I powered that down as well.

I took a few deep breaths, then made the mental call. “Alpha, our computer systems have been compromised and I’ve had to shut them down. Someone had access to our servers,” I said.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING, BETA STEELE?”

“I don’t know yet, Alpha. We need to notify the Council that someone hacked their server. I need help figuring out who did this to us and how.”