Bleed The Wolves

Chapter 3: Pine and Ice

Thomas followed, willing his feet in his Beta's tracks while his senses honed in on Harrison.

The scout had a thin face, thin nose, and a moustache he gelled into mismatched curls. The scent came from his jacket; it was tweed, which held onto scent particularly well. It meant he'd been in the holding cell with the smell for a while.

The scent of pine and smoke burrowed under his skin, but with none of the crashing waterfalls and spruce Ridged Fang was known for. It felt like those childhood games, when his nanny would trace a letter on his back for him to guess; the movements familiar, almost cohesive, but the memory fading too fast to name.

"Keep up, Thomas," came Beta's sharp reprimand.

Thomas jogged back to her heels. He vaguely heard Anastasia say something to Harrison and lead him in the other direction. But it sounded far away, underwater.

He trailed Beta a step closer than protocol allowed. "They've come for me?" the question sounded choked.

Beta glanced over her shoulder in reprimand and Thomas retreated the proper two steps of distance.

Not that she looked angry; in fact, Beta rarely looked like she felt anything at all. Smooth-cut eyes with short lashes; black-glass hair clipped an inch below her chin. The only emotional tell was a slight pinch in her round lips. Impatience, probably. She hated when he jumped ahead of her reports with fury and questions.

Without a missed beat in her boots, she turned back to the elevator and began, as she always did, from the crisis' chronological beginning. "Four days ago, a letter was delivered to the breeding office. Inside was a note and a key."

Thomas nodded, but his attention was still unravelling the scent Harrison had trailed down the hall.

It was person, not a Pack perhaps. Someone he hadn't thought of in a long, long time.

"Stay with me, Thomas," Beta ordered, her tone flat enough to be a wrap on his knuckles.

Thomas shook his head and breathed in Beta's scent to set the other aside. "I'm attending."

"Good." Beta pressed the elevator button and stretched out her neck. "By the time breeding office set aside their pride for my assistance, she'd been locked in a flat on the Luna's side of the river for three days. Sick, near starved, practically delirious."

Her voice was crisp in its corners. Charles said Beta had a personal vendetta against the breeding office; she never worked a case alongside them unless she was the last recourse.

"I recognised the mountain smell of her and escalated the situation to one of Pack security." She titled her head in the barest shows of anger. "Before I could so much as ask her name, she demanded a breeding consult."

"Oh." The anger wasn't at the breeding office then.

There were laws in place for a potential's privacy; no wolf would see her now without the breeding office's direct supervision. Sidelining Beta and her wolves for good.

"Hm," Beta said.

They watched the red arrow over the elevators door slowly count down the floors.

Thomas' logic replayed her words. "She's a potential." He rocked on his heels. "In a holding cell?" That went against every wolf instinct there was.

"As clever as she was in thwarting me, she's been doubly so with the breeding office." Beta cocked her head back to Thomas' interrogation room. "Answers all questions with claims of a blood oath we can't prove."