Gamma No More - Book 3

It’s been a week and Toni still hadn’t opened the thick envelope, spending her time focussing on the pack, rather than her past.

Toni endured the lecture from Karl and Ezra, her earlier joke about going missing during the Neutral Zone summit not lost on her. But she also accepted that there was no use fighting against the inevitable. Deep down, she knew that being here, as Alpha, was where she belonged.

She hadn’t shut them down, which was her right as Alpha, because she accepted their comments came from a place of concern, rather than control.

Trade between packs was dwindling, small fights were breaking out between close neighbours, and overall, tensions in the werewolf world were increasing which wasn’t a good sign for anyone, but especially for an unregistered pack when she, as their Alpha, almost got taken into custody it gave them every right to worry.

To protect the Veiled pack they had now taken measures to put more security in place on the path through the mountains, for now, she hadn’t raised her concerns with Karl over the vampires annexing the desolate wastes and the implications of that to their pack.

She knows it would be unwise, based on the small size of their pack, to split their defences. They needed to focus on the confirmed threats, and in reality, the risk from the Vampires is low to the pack.

Essentially, it affected her and probably her pups more than the rest of the pack. Wolf’s blood wasn’t desirable in the same way.

Tyra has been growling and complaining to Toni for a few days about her suspicions; making it clear to Toni that in her wolf’s view, the Vampires were trustworthy. Toni’s primary response to her wolf was simple. They have no inner wolf to link with, so she can’t be as reliable in her assessment.

Unless her pack leaves the continent, there isn’t a safer spot to go to, not at the moment, and most of her wolves like the remoteness of this place.

Within the main werewolf territory, packs are closer together and while there are some old abandoned territories, it would put them further at risk of being found.

As she is technically a fugitive in the werewolf world, they cannot set up residence in the Neutral zone because outstanding warrants are enforceable from any of the three kingdoms, which leaves where they are as the final, no scrap that, the only option.

Shaking her head and leaning back in the chair, she chides herself, not sure if her paranoia was from the drugs that had hit her, or a flash of understanding on why vampires would want Lycan’s back.

But, if Alaric had mentioned the annexing of the land they were on, then it had to have already been a topic of discussion, she had only been out for a few hours, but is sure that wouldn’t have been enough time to come up with the plan and that caused her some concerns.

She had reservations about this change in the balance of power, but having worked so hard to get vampires accepted, she needed to ensure she didn’t start a panic among her pack, but try to find out the facts.

The one thing she knew was here, and now in her life, she felt like she was losing control again and couldn’t put her finger on exactly why.

As her fingers traced the outline of the envelope, her thoughts came back to the task at hand. Maybe closing off the past would help her feel more in control now.

She needed to comprehend the reasons behind the ordered murders and uncover the person responsible, if only finally to put that dark chapter of her life behind her and ensure that she was no longer under anyone’s influence.

Ripping the envelope open, the contents spilt onto the desk. Inside were two flash drives and a note explaining that the red flash drive contained information about the payments to Colin and the blue about the payments to Alpha Vincent’s accounts.

Her eyes flick between the two drives.

If she decided on the red drive, then there was a risk of opening herself up to the pain she had felt before, betrayal isn’t a fun emotion to confront and deal with and with her current concerns, it is probably not the one to focus on.

But then the blue drive potentially had information on who paid Vincent to send her to kill on demand, the person really in charge of making her an assassin.

Decision made, she dropped the Red flash drive into a drawer and picked up the Blue drive, along with a standalone laptop that had the program to decrypt any files they sent over.

Their view was that a healthy paranoia wasn’t a bad thing if she had proof of misdoings. Once open, she plugged in the blue drive, watching as the files were unlocked and opened.

Three hours later and she is no further on in her quest to find out why she had to target certain wolves or their packs, but what is clear is she has a list of outgoing payments from the account, ordered from those who have received the most regular payments to the least.

For all the records, she just has a set of abbreviations RRSS, and ETBM totalling 10 entries with the total money paid to the respective accounts.

Rubbing her eyes, she stood up and stretched, going to gaze out of the window. She was, once again, stuck.

Apart from the payments to Alpha Vincent and those going into her fake account, which the hackers had labelled with their names, there had been no other payments in or out of the account on the days she’d had to follow through on Vincent’s orders.

It was clear this person, this hidden figure, was not a go-between, because there was no money entering the mystery person’s account before the kills occurred.

Part of her wished she had given the hackers a broader remit, rather than asking them to concentrate only on who owned the account and tracing any money transfers into it.

From the file given to her, the hackers had hit a brick wall in tracing the actual owner. Whoever it was, they had done so via multiple convoluted, unlinked companies.

But worse, whoever owned this account must have had a reason for the targets, and she had drawn a blank on finding any reasonable link between them.

Small packs, large packs, random targets not always directly related to the Alpha in charge… she couldn’t find the pattern and it annoyed her. She was missing something obvious; she was sure of it. The only anomaly that broke the pattern was a single payment to the account Alpha Vincent used when she had been on pack land.

Against the accounts she had asked them to review, the hacker’s notes of ‘Vincent Davies accounts’ and a corresponding item of ‘Fake Woodfield account’ were times when she had to kill a wolf.

She knew that at no time had she failed to carry out a kill. Conversely, several other kills had no corresponding payment, but she had worked that out to be the difference between people her Alpha wanted dead and those the mystery person had chosen.

This anomaly, though, a payment without an associated death, with money sent only to Vincent’s account. She could find no reason for it, but then she had these other ten accounts. Did that mean ten more assassins were out there somewhere?

The thought turned her stomach; she had to know, so maybe it would be to ask the hackers to dig further.

There’s a light rapping on the door frame to her office. She turns to see Karl leaning against it, with Delta Ezra standing to one side, but it’s Karl who speaks first.

“Toni, you’ve been stuck in here for hours and I feel like your receptionist!”

She gives him an appraising look up and down.

“Well, at least you don’t have well-manicured and painted nails. It seems I must be keeping you busy enough, but maybe wear a skirt now and then, your legs aren’t that bad!”

Karl rolls his eyes as Ezra stifles a laugh before Ezra speaks up.

“Alpha Dimitri phoned, since we met and you were unavailable, he asked to speak to me.

His message is, he’s got a trade agreement with you know who, who is sending his Beta to tie up loose ends and you wanted to know… and it’s happening next week?”

The question in both their eyes is clear.

“Iron Claw pack. I’d asked him to let me know if he had any visitors and specifically Andy… he has a right to know about Theo and Thea.” Her words come out as a sigh.

“Really?

Tell me you are not considering entering the Neutral zone so soon after the fiasco of your last visit?”

Karl moves forward and takes a seat on the sofa, crossing his arms as he looks at her sternly. Ezra is shaking his head slightly in the background.

“I am, mostly for the twins, because they deserve to know their father, so take this as your notice that you need to have a viable plan for me to follow if you don’t want me to go alone.”

She can hear the low grumbling growl that emanates from Karl as she waves Ezra to take a chair. He isn’t as comfortable yet with the informality she has with the leadership team.

“And it better not involve you going. Leah would kill me.” She added.

“She isn’t the only one that will kill you,” he muttered quietly in reply.

Toni raises an eyebrow at Karl with a small smile breaching the edges of her lips. They don’t have the normal hierarchy rules, but this is a personal and not a pack matter in her opinion and he gets less of a say in it.

Karl rolls his eyes, sighing, taking the hint.

“I’ll get the Deltas to hash out some options, but Goddess help me, get caught again and I will hunt you down and kill you myself.”

“Count me in. I’ve already told the Alpha she can’t go AWOL on my watch!” Ezra added.

“Good luck with that. I’m tough to kill and tougher to find… at least normally!”

Toni walked over, grabbed the laptop from her desk while moving past it, and sat next to Karl.

“Things will work out, they always do.” She nudges him with her shoulder in a friendly way.

“You’ll bloody kill me first with your antics Toni,” he shakes his head

“Plus, Leif called four times. You are avoiding his calls!

He wanted to apologise; unaware that Raine was going to spring that on you.

Mostly he wanted you there as a Lycan representative, not that others know about that yet, and thought you may have some insight into the unrest among wolves.”

Toni hums noncommittally before changing the subject, but not without noticing the look of query on Karl’s face.

“Both of you look at that list. I’m trying to work out what the notations mean.”

“What’s this for?”

Karl takes the laptop from Toni, scrolling down the list as Ezra comes over.

“I asked the hackers to trace the account that paid money to the Nightshades Alpha and an account in my name.

They have traced it back through five companies but hit a block on going further, but they gave me a download of the account activity.

I didn’t think to get them to trace any other accounts linked to outgoing payments, I guess I didn’t expect any, and whoever owned it used abbreviations, I’m trying to decide if it’s worth asking them to trace the account owners or not.

There’s something simple I am missing, a key.” She leans back into the back of the sofa.

“Do you ever think we’ll have a simple life?” Toni asked finally.

Karl just laughs, adding,

“With you around… I don’t think so.”

Karl stares at the list on the laptop for a little longer, shaking his head, but it’s Ezra that exclaims

“For the love of the Goddess, it’s so simple I almost didn’t see it.

RRSS… it’s Randall Ridgeway, Shadow Stalkers… which would make this next one, ETBM, Eric Thompson, Blood Moon. ”

Karl stops deep in thought at Ezra’s explanation as he looks at the rest of the list with a fresh understanding before exclaiming loudly,

“Fuck…

The top six in this list are the packs that have been causing issues recently with their neighbours.” Karl turns, shock registering on his face.

“Could it be they are being paid to cause unrest?”

“I hope not. Blood Moon holds a friend of mine and her mate; I’d hate to think they were involved.” Toni chews her lip deep in thought before continuing.

“I haven’t heard rumours about issues with Blood Moon. Are you sure?”

Karl nods

“My brother Jacob is Beta in the Eventide pack and even though I am banished, we still keep in touch. He didn’t agree with the Alpha, but I told him to keep his head down, no point shaming the whole family.

Blood Moon warriors raided them, claiming their pups crossed the border, but couldn’t provide proof, but took some of their winter rations as ‘payment’ for the incursion.

They aren’t a big pack, luckily, they have some good trading routes and the money to replace them, but Jacob was positive no pup had left their borders, let alone crossed over to another, there’s a good thirty miles between their borders.”

He pauses in thought

“The Deltas have been collecting information on the unrest. Even before your meeting, we wanted to find out how much of it was close to us.

These top six are involved, I’ll let you have the details later, but I’ll investigate these three as well, although I don’t recognise the last one, JENH as any combination of Alpha or Pack name.

These other three are probably too small to cause unrest, for fear of being wiped out, like this one, ELA, that’s the Evergreen pack, Leo Archer is the Alpha, but it has some strategic value, I guess.

We may have someone who was originally from those packs or has a contact in one. I’ll ask some questions and speak to my brother on the sly.” He muses over the information.

“Think one of these is hiding the missing witch?” Ezra asked.

Toni thinks about it for a while before answering

“No, but I think the person funding this could well be.

If you are making waves so publicly as these packs are, warding won’t help, but this person, the owner of this account, has gone to extreme lengths to hide who they are, getting others to act in their stead and leaving false trails.

That’s all behaviour that I would say stinks of a person who has the motivation to ward their house, but it’s not something they can do in the middle of a pack without it being noticed, which is an interesting conundrum.

The question is, who has this much money to throw around, other than those who’ve been around for a long time like vampires?”

“The King?” Ezra suggested.

“How would he benefit from causing the unrest, though?” Karl queries.

“Someone in his immediate family may, like the exiled Prince?” Ezra added hesitantly.

“Maybe, but so soon after his exile seems too obvious,” Toni answers before deciding their next steps.

“Ok, so we need to compile a list of all those with these kinds of funds, regardless of species, so let’s not pre-judge who should or should not make the list, and that’s where we look for the witch.

Someone from their species should deal with any non-wolf, but use all the contacts we have in the Neutral Zone to get the list together. No one is exempt.

It’s not impossible to believe that a human or vampire may benefit from unrest on our lands.

Let’s also look deeper into the three that haven’t caused issues, but are on this list and also, conversely, who isn’t on the list that is causing issues, in case Tane controls that pack.

Between all of that, we may get a clearer picture of who is behind the civil unrest, and why, but let’s not focus solely on the wolf population.”

Karl looks at her for a while.

“What are you not telling us, Toni?

You appear to have suspicions outside of our race. Care to share?”

Toni shakes her head

“I just don’t want to make assumptions.”

She can tell Karl doesn’t believe her, but for now, she’s happy not to raise her doubts, if she’s wrong, and she hopes she is, it could destroy all the groundwork they have put in place to build relations with the vampires.

“Let’s meet in a week to discuss progress and make sure Brendan, Di, Tommy and Laura are all updated on the situation. We’ll need their input.

But for now, I want to limit it to those people only.

We also need a plan for increasing our defensive capability. If there’s going to be a civil war, let’s be prepared and ensure the pack remains as safe as we can.”

I can see you judging me, and yes, I have a bitter taste in my mouth assuming that someone who may have helped me in the past is involved, Leif and to some extent, Prince Einar have become almost friends, but I’d be foolish to exclude them for that reason alone.

A part of me has always known that they are probably happy to trade with me for my blood, but if they have been setting me up to get involved in all of this to control me, then I have to be wary.

Starting with myself, I know I’m not involved so the circle of trust starts with me, then three-quarters of my pack were rogues at one point or another, so it’s unlikely any of them are behind it, the remaining members are family or friends that migrated over.

So that’s my starting point, my circle of trust, my pack, and everyone else has to work to get into that list.

I’m used to not trusting people. I guess it’s my default position for most of my life, so I think that choosing to include my entire pack, since Tyra has assessed each one, is a huge step forward for me.

So that’s what I’m starting with… until I can prove otherwise.

Even you, yes you, I see you looking away; you aren’t exempt, I’ve seen you following me watching how I work. If you are rich enough, you are making my list!