Mated To The Crippled Alpha-Chapter 176: Investigate

Lewis really does live up to his reputation.

Careful. Precise. Always three steps ahead.

This time, he didn’t just help me slip into the restricted zone he captured everything. Every corner. Every hidden angle. No one noticed a thing.

A direct inspection would have raised alarms. But the cameras? Silent. Watching. Recording. They mapped the entire place without a single pair of eyes turning our way.

"If we go through the footage slowly," Lewis said, calm as ever, "we’ll find something."

I nodded, excitement buzzing under my skin.

I was still admiring the clever mechanism hidden inside his cufflinks when his gaze suddenly dropped to my hand.

His body stiffened.

"Where did that come from?" he asked.

I pulled my fingers back without thinking. "It’s nothing. Just a scratch. A rose thorn."

It sounded small when I said it out loud. But against my pale skin, the red lines looked harsh. Ugly. Like proof I’d been careless.

Lewis didn’t argue.

He reached into the side compartment and pulled out a first-aid kit.

He cleaned the cut slowly, his touch steady but gentle. Not rushed. Not annoyed.

"Be careful next time," he said quietly. "Stay away from things that can hurt you."

"Okay," I whispered.

As he wrapped the bandage around my finger, I felt someone watching.

Julian.

He sat in the back seat, jaw tight, eyes dark. There was pain there but not for me. It was memory.

I knew exactly what he was thinking about.

That time I sliced my finger on paper while he was already halfway out the door. Rushing to meet Anna. I’d been distracted, overwhelmed, flipping through documents too fast.

He’d laughed.

"Seriously? You’re an adult. How do you even manage to hurt yourself with paper?"

The cut hadn’t hurt much.

His words did.

Now, in the same kind of moment, Lewis didn’t mock me. Didn’t blame me. Didn’t make it my fault for being weak or careless.

He simply protected me.

The difference was loud.

On the drive back, Julian said nothing. He kept glancing at me, guilt sitting heavy on his shoulders. The silence between us stretched and tightened, like a bond already cracking.

Before we even got home, Lewis had sent the footage to the pack’s technicians.

By the time we walked through the door, they’d already drafted a full layout of the repair shop.

We spread the plans out and studied them closely.

"This pillar is wrong," Lewis said first.

I leaned in, tracing the shape with my eyes. Then it hit me.

"I know what this is."

He looked at me. "What?"

I grabbed a pen and paper. "Watch."

I connected the outer pillars one by one.

Eight sides.

My breath caught. "It’s an octagon."

Eight pillars forming the outside. One pillar standing in the center.

Lewis zoomed in on the middle support.

One side was white.

The other was black.

Opposites.

Balance. Or conflict.

The space behind the shop had been left unfinished. Rough concrete. Dark lighting. The pillars were thick and tall anyone standing beneath them would never notice the pattern.

But from above?

The design was obvious.

"They didn’t build this place randomly," Lewis said.

I swallowed. "No. They didn’t."

I remembered the stranger I’d seen there before. An outsider. Someone who didn’t belong to any local pack.

Cold realization settled in my chest.

"What if this wasn’t just a trap?" I murmured. "What if it was prepared... for me?"

Lewis’s expression hardened.

I circled a spot on the map.

"If this follows old pack beliefs," I said slowly, "the southwest point is the death gate. Endings. Sacrifice."

My finger trembled slightly as I marked it.

"That stone chamber," I whispered. "That’s where they wanted me."

And someone had planned it long before I ever arrived.

The entrance wouldn’t be in the southeast.

That direction meant blockage. Hidden paths. Dead ends.

It wouldn’t be in the east either. That side carried chaos injury, shock, unrest. Too messy. Too loud.

Which left only three options.

Northwest.

Northeast.

South.

I circled all three on the map with a red pen.

"The northwest is the open gate," I said slowly. "It means beginnings. The kind that invite things in. The northeast is the birth gate growth, revival. And the south is about exposure. Display."

My finger paused on the northwest mark.

"If I were hiding a way down," I said, "I’d choose the northwest."

I kept scrolling through the site photos, my instincts humming low in my chest.

"The repair pits," I continued. "They’re sunk into the ground. Usually covered by cars. No one pays attention to them. If one was altered... it would be the perfect cover."

As the words left my mouth, the cursor hovered over a single bay.

Northwest corner.

My stomach tightened.

"There," I said quietly. "That’s it. That’s the entrance."

Julian stared at the screen like it had just spoken back to him.

"How do you know all this?" he asked.

I didn’t look at him.

"Mr. Woernos," I said. "He respected old systems. Old rules. To earn his trust, I studied them. Late nights. Alone. I didn’t need to master it just enough to speak his language."

Julian went quiet.

He never knew how much work I did behind closed doors. How often I bent myself to fit expectations. How much I carried so others could stand tall.

It wasn’t that things had been easy.

I just never complained.

The silence grew heavy until Lewis stepped in.

"We’ve found the entrance," he said, voice steady. "Now we keep it quiet."

This wasn’t a raid. Not yet.

"That place is their den," he continued. "We don’t know how many are tied to it. Walking in blind would be reckless."

He turned to me. "No rush."

Then he nodded once, decisive. "I’ll have Damian go back. A few times. Acting normal. Fixing cars. Watching patterns."

"Okay," I said.

The plan made sense.

Still, unease crept into my bones.

"This isn’t just about killing," I murmured. "Why me? Why go this far even after death?"

The octagon burned in my mind. Too deliberate. Too precise.

"It feels like they wanted more than silence," I said. "Like they wanted to use me."

The room felt colder.

At this point, logic alone wouldn’t save us.

Lewis’s gaze sharpened. "If that’s true... what else are they hiding?"

I swallowed. "I only saw one stone chamber. That means there are others."

Questions stacked on questions.

My chest tightened.

I pressed my lips together, then whispered the thought I hadn’t dared say aloud.

"Was my return really just an accident?"

The words lingered.

Heavy.

Unanswered.

And somewhere deep inside me, something ancient stirred as if it already knew the truth