Matt stood at the glass wall and looked down at the gathering below, watching the size of it grow as he opened the mind link to fill Sebastian in.

"They bought it completely. The whole pack is in a panic and I expect our man will not be able to sit still much longer with the seat sitting empty in front of him. We will have him out in the open soon enough." Matt said, and he meant it.

They had been waiting a long time to put a face to whoever had been operating from the shadows, striking carefully and disappearing without a trace each time. Zoe had paid the price once. The Luna had nearly paid it this time. They were done waiting for the person to show himself.

When it had happened with Zoe back then, every kind of investigation had taken place in Silver, yet the culprit remained unknown to the point that not a single camera captured the person behind the shooting. It had made Sebastian suspect that the people working behind the security system might have been involved in it, and he had replaced every one of them and banished them from his pack.

Something similar had happened now. No matter how much pain the men they had captured in Nightshade were put through, nothing useful was coming out of them, just like nothing had come out of the investigation years ago.

"Keep me updated on everything the elders decide. I will keep the link open around the clock." Sebastian said from the other end as he walked the perimeter of the quarter the way Gilbert had advised to keep the muscles in his leg from stiffening.

"Will do." Matt said, and then before the link could close he added, "You only have a few days left before the 30th. Are you still going through with it this time?"

Sebastian’s eyes darkened. "You know how it works. It is out of my hands until we find the sea creature or confirm the prophesied one. Have the men reached the Nightshade river yet?"

"They should be there by now searching the waters. I have also flagged the girl Julia to our men on the ground. If she cooperates she might give us something useful about what really happened to the other twin." Matt informed.

Sebastian hummed in quiet satisfaction. Matt always came through, always had things moving before Sebastian had finished thinking about them, and right now that was exactly what he needed.

"Heads up, by the way," Matt mused. "I sent Gilbert with your suppressants, though I don’t think you’ll need them with your mate there. But just in case you want them and can’t perform well in bed because of your injuries, or your mate gives you a no-go, you can suppress your heat and—"

"Don’t insult me so, Matteo," Sebastian cut him off, knowing his friend was having the laugh of his life. Sebastian had never used heat suppressants during any of his heat cycles, for there had always been a she-wolf available to him until now. But he wasn’t about to give Matt the satisfaction of knowing he might indeed need the suppressants because he and his mate were not yet sexually familiar with each other.

"I don’t need suppressants," he deadpanned. "Keep them for your single ass when your heat season circles around. Virgins like you need them more than me."

Matt clicked his tongue. "Ouch, that burns," he said in mock pain while laughing, because being insulted as a virgin didn’t affect him, not when he was saving himself for the one. Whoever she was out there in the world, probably being a chef like he had always imagined her to be, creating new dishes that would make them compete and click when they finally met.

"Whatever. I already sent the bottle of suppressants. It’ll help you sleep well if you take a double dose," Matt added.

Sebastian’s lips thinned at Matt’s words, and without addressing them, he said instead,

"Don’t forget to send Zoe back to the main quarters. I don’t want her hearing this news and believing it. She hasn’t fully recovered from losing Alex yet, and I won’t have her grieving me on top of it," Sebastian said, the thought of his sister sitting somewhere in the pack believing he was dead settling uncomfortably in his chest.

"Already on it." Matt replied.

"Good. I have to go." Sebastian said, his eyes moving toward the room where Viola was upstairs. "My Luna is awake."

---

While the Silver pack members were panicking about the Alpha’s death, some were delighted at the news.

"I told you so, didn’t I, Mami?" Javier exclaimed, his face lit up with a happiness that was almost uncomfortable to look at. "My dreams always come true and they didn’t disappoint me this time either. I got exactly what I wanted."

Camilla stared at her son with open suspicion as he grinned from ear to ear. If there was one thing she knew about Javier it was that he had a habit of making his so called prophetic dreams come true by doing something behind her back and then presenting the outcome as fate.

"What have you done this time?" Camilla asked calmly. "Are you the one responsible for his death?" She narrowed her eyes at him and Javier’s smile slowly fell as he turned to glare at her.

"What are you talking about, Mami? Would I hide something like that from you if I were responsible? I would be gloating to your face." He said, and then turned it around quickly. "Actually I think you are the one responsible. You set something up without telling me to make my dream come true, didn’t you?"

Camilla pressed her fingers to her forehead. "Don’t take me for a fool and don’t try to turn things around. You have become sneaky lately, moving around at night. I saw you leaving the quarters days ago. Where did you go? What are you hiding from me, boy?"

Javier kept his expression carefully neutral. He couldn’t let her find out what he had been doing, not yet, not until his plans had fully succeeded. His mother had a way of taking over and steering things the way she wanted them to go the moment she caught wind of anything, always pushing him to the side and taking the lead when she should be standing behind him and letting him carve his own path.

"I am not hiding anything from you." He said evenly. "All I want you to understand is that I will use this opportunity to claim what I deserve. That seat belongs to me more than it belongs to anyone else out there and I intend to take it. It shouldn’t matter who killed my cousin, what matters is that the path is now clear. All we need is for the people to get desperate enough to see that I am a more than capable Alpha." He said with a smirk that made his mother uneasy because she knew that particular smile and what it usually preceded.

"Don’t rush toward the seat. Let me speak to the elders first and—"

"I have left this plan in your hands long enough, Mami." Javier cut her off. "Let me take it from here. Talking my brother into betraying his wolfless friend didn’t get us anywhere because he turned you down flat. I am doing things my own way now." Saying that, he turned and walked out whistling to himself, leaving his mother standing there with her mouth open, unable to fully believe he had just spoken to her that way.

Hadn’t she given this ingrate more than enough? If only the other boy hadn’t also turned out to be such a disappointment, she wouldn’t have had all her hopes resting on one who was now talking back at her like that.

What was the boy up to? What had he done?