The Alpha King And His Chosen Luna novel Chapter 249

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The third finding

(Calus)

Pryor found me in the office two hours later.

I’d left Isla in the library with strict instructions not to touch anything while I handled the correspondence that had accumulated during the Council visit. She hadn’t argued which told me she was still sitting with everything the sealed letter had revealed.

Pryor set a envelope on the desk in front of me.

“From Zeron,” he said.

I looked up.

“That was fast,” I said.

“He sent it before you sent yours,” Pryor said. “They crossed on the road.”

I broke the seal and read it.

Zeron had been thorough. He always was. The report covered three separate findings, each one building on the last in the way Zeron built everything, methodically, without gaps.

The first was the confirmation I’d already suspected. Torvin hadn’t died from the wolfsbane alone. A second dose had been administered after he was already confined and weakened from the first exposure. Someone had gone into that cell knowing exactly what they were doing and exactly how much it would take.

The second finding was the name of the man who had accessed Torvin’s cell in the days before his death. Cael. A Council courier who had served as a formal link between Ashcrest and the High Council for several years before vanishing from every official record shortly after Torvin died.

The third finding was what stopped me.

Zeron had traced Cael’s movements after Torvin’s death as far as the northern border before the trail went cold. But before it did he had found something else. Cael had a patron. Someone providing him with coin and housing well above what a Council courier’s salary could account for. The payments came through a third party but Zeron had traced them back to an account connected to a name that hadn’t appeared in any active record for over twenty

years.

A name that was supposed to belong to a dead man.

The third finding

I set the letter down and looked at the ceiling for a moment.

+25 Pont

Everything Isla and I had found in the library pointed in the same direction. The sealed journal. The letter. The Elder who had wanted her gone rather than hidden. And now Zeron’s report confirming that someone had been operating through proxies and couriers and

Council members for decades.

It wasn’t over when Evander was arrested.

It had never been about Evander.

I looked at Pryor.

“Sit down,” I said.

He sat.

I told him what Zeron had found. Then I told him what Isla and I had found in the library. The sealed journal. The private correspondence. The woman who had carried Isla and believed her dead for however long this had been going on.

Pryor listened without interrupting the way he always listened when something required his full attention rather than just his presence.

When I finished he was quiet for a moment.

“The name Zeron traced the payments to,” he said. “Do you have it?”

I slid the letter across the desk toward him.

He read it once and set it back down.

“I know that name,” he said.

I looked at him.

“Not personally,” he said. “But it appears in Wraithbone’s older records. Twice. Both times in correspondence with Alpha Kings who came before your father.” He paused. “I always assumed it was a clerical error. The dates didn’t make sense for a living person.”

“They make sense now,” I said.

Pryor looked at the letter again.

“He’s been operating for a very long time,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “And he knows we found Evander. Which means he knows we’re looking.”

The third finding

“What do you want me to tell Zeron?”

I thought about it.

+25 Point

“Tell him to follow the northern trail as far as it goes,” I said. “Tell him to look for Cael. If Cael is still in contact with his patron there’ll be a way to trace it. And tell him to look for a woman. Someone kept hidden. Someone who lost a child and was told she died.”

Pryor wrote it down without asking why.

That was one of the things I valued most about him. He understood which questions to ask

and which ones to leave alone.

“Anything else?” he said.

“Tell him to be careful,” I said. “Whoever this man is he’s had decades to build his network. Zeron won’t see him coming if he isn’t looking in the right direction.”

Pryor nodded once and stood.

“I’ll have the response sent within the hour,” he said.

He left and I stayed where I was and looked at Zeron’s letter on the desk in front of me.

The thread was there.

We just had to follow it without letting him know we were pulling.

I leaned back in my chair and looked at the ceiling.

Three hundred years.

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