The Rise Of The Betrayed Luna (Amorah and Holmes) novel Chapter 169

Chapter 169: Woman Holmes Wanted

Bethany POV

I woke up to pain. My shoulder burned where the wound had reopened during the night.

Every muscle in my body ached from sleeping on a concrete floor inside another temporary safehouse. Three months ago, I would have considered this place beneath me.

Now I was grateful for four walls and a locked door. Survival had a way of changing a person’s standards.

The rogue healer who had stitched me up the previous evening knocked twice before entering. She carried a tray with water and medication balanced carefully in her hands.

“You need to leave before sunrise,” she said. Her tone carried the kind of urgency that couldn’t be ignored.

I sat up slowly and tried to suppress a wince. “Did someone find me?”

“Not yet,” she replied. Her expression remained grim as she set the tray down.

“But they’re getting closer.” The warning hung heavily between us.

I already knew who she meant. Holmes had never been the kind of man who accepted losing control of a situation.

Not Holmes alone, either. The wolves who still followed him remained just as dangerous.

Some were loyal enough to follow him blindly. Others were simply too afraid to walk away.

They still treated him like an Alpha instead of a man slowly unraveling. That made them unpredictable in ways that worried me more than Holmes himself.

I swallowed the medication and chased it with water. “How far behind are they?”

The healer hesitated before answering. That hesitation told me more than her words ever could.

“Close enough that I wouldn’t stay here another day.” Her gaze met mine steadily.

That was answer enough. If someone like her was nervous, then the threat was already too close.

An hour later, I was moving again. The underground transport network stretched beneath several territories through forgotten tunnels and abandoned supply routes.

Illegal passageways used by rogues for generations connected places most wolves didn’t even know existed. It was a hidden world beneath the one everyone else saw.

I sat inside the back compartment of a cargo vehicle while/it traveled through an old mining tunnel. Darkness surrounded us on all sides.

The lack of distractions gave me too much time to think. That was becoming one of the most dangerous things in my life. Because every time I thought about the past, I saw Amorah. Not the woman she was now, but the woman I helped destroy. I thought Amorah was simply an inconvenient wife standing between me and the future I wanted. I never realized she had already been a target long before I entered the picture.

I never understood that powerful people wanted her erased before Holmes ever rejected her. By the time I learned the truth, the damage was already done.

The vehicle finally stopped with a sharp jolt. A knock sounded against the metal wall a moment later.

“We’re here,” someone called from outside. Relief and dread twisted together in my stomach.

I climbed out carefully and immediately regretted the movement. My body protested every step.

The pregnancy rumors about Arnorah had spread even into rogue territory. Sometimes I found myself thinking about them when I couldn’t sleep.

The safehouse waiting for me looked abandoned from the outside. Inside, however, it contained something far more valuable than comfort.

Information was the reason I had risked coming here. Information was the only weapon I had left.

A contact met me near the entrance. He was an older rogue wolf with gray hair and permanent suspicion etched into his features.

“You Bethany?” he asked.

Successfully unlocked!

“Unfortunately,” I replied. The answer earned the latest twitch of amusement from him.

At least somebody still appreciated sarcasm. It was becoming a rare quality these days.

alt

Chapter 169 Women Holmes Wanted

He led me through several locked rears before stopping beside a rusted steel door. The metal looked old enough to have survived a war.

“The archive is inside,” he said. His voice echoed softly in the corridor.

I frowned arid glanced at the door. “That’s it?

“That’s it.” He shrugged without interest.

“Whatever you’re looking for is older than most people using this network” The statement did little to calm my nerves.

I pushed the door open and stepped inside. Dost immediately filled the air.

Rows of storage drives lined the walls from floor to ceiling. It looked less like an archive and more like a graveyard for forgotten secrets.

Old records waited in silence. Old lies waited with them.

I spent hours searching through damaged files and fragmented records. Transport manifests and encrypted communications filled screen after screen.

Most of it was damaged beyond recovery. Some sections had been corrupted so badly that only scraps remained.

Still, enough survived. Slowly, pieces began fitting together.

The succession purge wasn’t simply about bloodlines. Money appeared everywhere I looked.

I opened another file and then another. Patterns began emerging faster than I could process them.

The same names appeared repeatedly throughout the records. Families connected to council leadership showed up again and again.

Families connected to corporate alliances appeared alongside them. Families connected to old succession disputes completed the pattern.

All of them were tied together through wealth. Not power, but wealth. Suddenly, a notification appeared on the screen. New file recovered.

My pulse accelerated instantly. I opened it without hesitation.

The document looked different from the others. It was older and protected by heavier encryption.

Several sections remained damaged. Enough survived to read

I scanned the opening paragraphs quickly. The first section described evacuation procedures.

The next section listed transport priorities and emergency/routes. Then I reached a paragraph highlighted in red. My breathing stopped. “No way.”

I read it again and then a third time. Every theory I had built collapsed instantly.

Every assumption was wrong. Every explanation I believed shattered.

The original purge had a primary target. A specific target important enough for entire operations to be organized around eliminating them.

I stared at the screen in disbelief. Amorah wasn’t listed anywhere. Neither were the twins. The mysterious fourth child wasn’t listed either.

The name appearing throughout the document belonged to someone else entirely. Someone whose existence explained everything.

The transport convoy finally made sense. The hidden records and protection network made sense too.

The missing files and years of secrecy suddenly fit together perfectly. Every mystery pointed toward the same conclusion.

A noise outside snapped me back to reality. My wolf growled immediately. Footsteps echoed through the building. There were too many of them.

I shut the system down and grabbed the storage drive. Another sound followed almost immediately.

Voices drifted through the hallway. Male voices were getting closer. My heart started pounding. Holmes had to be behind

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