"I thought you were dead."
Cain's voice wavered as he spoke.
"I am dead," Jacob scowled, swatting Cain's hand from his throat.
Cain seemed taken back by the ease with which Jacob pushed him away. Jacob however, walked slowly around him to face the audience he had gained.
"I do apologize that you've all wasted your time today," he said, genuinely seeming remorseful. "I will admit that I considered killing you all now since Cain set everything up so perfectly, but I have a plan and that I intend on carrying through to the end."
"Don't worry though," he continued, "you'll all die eventually, but it will be far more climactic than this."
"Why would you come if just to taunt me?" Cain asked.
Jacob laughed.
"I'm your brother, I should think that every opportunity to taunt you should be taken."
The temperature of the room cooled significantly as the revelation was made and those sitting in their seats realized who stood before them.
"Oh well," Jacob said, looking down at his watch. "It's time for me to go, I'm a very busy man these days; you know, places to be and people to kill and all."
Before turning to walk away Jacob stopped to look at the young girl who still sat quietly in her seat. He smiled at her and gave her a wink.
I felt my stomach twist in disgust as she smiled back, not realizing the man who was ultimately responsible for the death of her own father.
As Jacob made his way to the door, he stopped and turned over his shoulder.
"One more thing," he said to Cain. "If you have any sense at all, I know you're thinking about following me. You should know that at this exact moment, the most important Beta of them all—having been unknowingly sedated with a lethal dose of wolfsbane—is en route to a palace belonging to someone in this room where he will be held captive and eventually die. He has less than seventy-two hours to live and should you want to save him, I think it would be best to divert your energy into finding out who in this room has betrayed you."
I saw Cain's shoulders fall.
"Good luck, brother," Jacob said. "For his sake, I hope you find him soon. Wolfsbane will kill him in less than seventy-two hours, but it will make him wish he was dead in the next twelve."
With that, Jacob left the stunned room sitting in silence, not forgetting to close the door behind him as he left.
Almost as soon as the door latch clicked into place, the room erupted into a frenzy. Fingers were pointed as accusations were shouted.
All trust left the room when Jacob did.
Despite the chaos around him, Cain had his back to everyone, still staring at the door as if frozen by the responsibility of choosing between his given options.
I stood up, ignoring Zahra as she tried to pull me back and walked quickly around the commotion to Cain.
"Follow him," I told him quickly, grabbing his arm. "Don't let him get away. We'll find out who has Daniel."
Cain turned to me with a blank expression.
"You heard her, go," a voice said from behind me.
I turned to see the same blond man who had sat next to Cain earlier, the Australian one.
When Cain didn't react, the man grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.
"Go, dammit," he said. "Jai and I will help her find Daniel."
Cain nodded before turning to leave quickly.
"Wait," I said, following him out the door into the dark hallway.
When he turned back to me, I lifted myself up onto my tiptoes and reached up to pull him into a kiss.
Cain's arms wrapped around me like he didn't want to let go, like he was scared of what would happen when he did.
I broke the kiss and peered up into his lavender eyes.
"Be careful," I pleaded.
I saw his jaw clench.
"Find Daniel."
I nodded.
"I will."
With that, he let go of me and stepped back.
"I love you," he told me before turning to run down the hallway, out of sight.
I was so stunned hearing him say it that it wasn't until I had returned to the conference room where Jai was waiting that I realized I'd completely forgotten to say it back.
I was knocked from my trance when Jai gestured towards the blond man he stood next to.
"Ella, I'd like you to meet my father," Jai said.
My eyes widened as the man reached out to shake my hand.
"Beta Jace Eaton of Australia," he said. "I was Cain's father's Beta Superior."
"Ella Schulz," I said, still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that he was Jai's father. "Nice to meet you."
"I look a lot more like my mom, fortunately," Jai said, noticing that I was trying to work through the obvious discrepancies in Jai's Eastern Asian appearance and his father's blond hair, blue eyes and tan skin. Other than his chiseled facial structure and muscular build, Jai looked close to nothing like his father.
Beta Eaton walked around us and closed the doors that we stood in front of.
After doing so, he turned to face us.
Letting out an ear-piercing whistle, Beta Eaton earned the attention of everyone in the room quickly.
"I hope none of you had lots of coffee this morning because everyone in this room will remain in this room until we find out where the Beta Superior is."
"You can't make us stay," a bold voice said from the back of the room.
"Well, be my guest and try to leave," Beta Eaton said. "I'd appreciate the opportunity to make an example of you."
"Anyone else riding an adrenaline high that wants to put their foot in their mouth?" Jai asked.
When no one said anything else, he nodded.
"Good. Now, we have two options: the first is ideal and the second is not ideal. Now, I believe I'm speaking for most in this room when I say that I would rather things go as smoothly as possible. This means that whoever is responsible for committing treason against the Alpha Sovereign and his Beta as well as betraying the entire Lycanthrope race should let themselves be known now so we can all be home in time for dinner."
Everyone looked around the room at one another warily, but lips remained sealed.
Jai sighed.
He propped his foot up on the edge of the table and pulled a switchblade from his boot.
"Fine, the hard way it is."
As he and Jace corralled people into a corner and began to interrogate everyone individually, I made eye contact with Zahra, who walked over to where I stood.
"This is going to take too long," she said.
"It won't work at all," I said. "Jacob wouldn't recruit anyone to his cause that wasn't committed enough to die for it. Besides, we don't even know if he's telling the truth."
I shook my head before turning to Zahra.
"You down for a field trip?"
She raised an eyebrow.
I gestured for her to wait a moment as I walked over to Jai, who was in the middle of an intense conversation with a man who boasted a beard so long it grazed the floor as he sat in the chair.
Jai saw me coming and stood to his feet.
"Zahra and I are going to Daniel's hotel. Send me the address."
He looked from me to Zahra.
"What makes you think it wasn't her?" he asked, his gaze returning to me.
"Cain trusted her," I said. "That's saying something, so it's good enough for me."
He took a deep breath before pulling his phone from his pocket and sending me the text.
I felt my own phone buzz in my pocket as the address was received.
"Be careful," he said.
I nodded before turning to Zahra.
As we turned to leave the room, I noticed Cain's car keys laying on the table where he had been sitting.
"I'll drive," I told her.
It didn't take long to get to the address Jai had given me. We knew as soon as we had arrived because the street was lined with emergency responders and law enforcement officials.
I parked on the side of the street, Zahra and I walking up onto the scene to see bags of bodies being escorted from the hotel where Daniel had been staying.
We shared a wary look between us before pressing into the small crowd of pedestrians and news crews who had gathered around. I approached an officer only to have him put a hand out, preventing me from walking further.
Zahra spoke to him in Darija, I presumed to ask what had happened.
She gestured towards me and then towards the building, her tone and body language insinuating that she was trying her hardest to convince him of something.
They both turned to me.
"I told him your husband was staying in the hotel and that you needed to see him urgently. He wants to know what room number your husband is staying in."
I fought the instinctual urge to scowl when as she referred to Daniel as my husband.
I quickly looked at my text from Jai and provided the room number.
The officer's expression changed as he instructed us to follow him.
Zahra and I followed him up the front steps into the hotel. He led us up over to an elevator with several other detectives carrying forensic investigation equipment.
We rode four floors up before the elevator doors opened to reveal a gruesome scene.
There were markers on the ground where bodies once laid. The carpet of the foyer was stained with blood and blood spatter in every arc and direction painted the walls.
I quickly tried to visually gather as much information as I could, coming to the conclusion that at least five people had died, judging by the markers on the floor. I also noticed that there were no security cameras that I could see.
The officer gestured for us to stay put as he walked away to seek the attention of a man standing in the corner, watching the detectives work.
"It smells like wolfsbane," Zahra said under her breath.
My eyebrows furrowed.
Even if I knew what wolfsbane smelt like, I doubted I would have been able to identify it. The scent of blood was overpowering and gave me an instantaneous headache.
"Ya Allah," Zahra muttered. "Ella, your eyes..."
I looked at her in confusion but caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the chrome-plated elevator door as I did so.
My eyes were dark and bloodshot.
"Shit," I said. "It's the blood."
"Cover your face," she said. "He's coming back."
I immediately put my hands over my eyes and pretended to cry. Luckily, Zahra caught onto my act quickly and placed a comforting hand on my back to console me.
She began to speak to the two men while I peeked through my fingers, out the large floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the street. I looked out to notice a bank directly across the street, the roof of which was directly level with the window I stood next to. I took a mental note of all of the cameras that sat on the roof, surveilling the surrounding area.
Zahra began to lead me backwards, back onto the elevator.
"They're taking us back downstairs," she whispered. "He won't let us in Daniel's room because he doesn't want to risk compromising their evidence."
My eyebrows furrowed.
As if he hadn't already cross-contaminated his crime scene by allowing us into the foyer, I thought.
She pulled me away from her to look at my face.
"You're good," she said in a low voice, nodding.
I sat up straight and sniffled as I wiped away the fake tears I'd managed to muster during my performance.
The officer looked at me warily but I ignored him, instead looking around the elevator.
When we stepped back out into the lobby, he began to ask questions that I didn't have honest answers to.
When had I last seen my husband? Why was I not with him in his room? Where had I been in the meantime? Where were we from? Traveling on business or pleasure?
All of these made me more and more desperate to leave.
I made Zahra give him some pathetic excuse that I needed some time to process everything before I could answer questions. We gave him false contact information and turned to leave.
"We need to get into the bank across the street," I told her as we walked out of the hotel doors. "There are cameras on the roof that would have been pointed into the window."
We ran into a group of detectives as we were leaving and they were entering.
Zahra smiled smugly as we excused ourselves and walked into the crowd. I looked down at her hands to see that she had pulled a badge from the belt of one of the officers.
"I think we should be able to get into the bank with this," she said.
And we did.
The manager of the bank had yet to be approached by police yet about the crime that had been committed across the street. He naively offered as much information as he could, including photos taken from their security cameras the night before of outside the hotel.
Unfortunately, the cameras I had seen originally were not pointed in the direction of the hotel window as I had hoped. But we were able to get a good street view of the hotel's entrance.
Leaving as quickly as we could with a file folder full of photos under my arm, we got into the Ferrari where my aluminum cup of blood was waiting patiently.
I drank it all in one gulp as Zahra watched quietly.
"I didn't realize Cain had turned you," she said.
"I'd be dead if he hadn't."
We drove off, back to the meeting spot where Jai and Beta Eaton were still conducting their interrogations.
It didn't look like they'd made much progress as we returned to the room where everyone was held hostage.
"Please tell me you found something," Jai said, walking over to us.
"Only evidence that Jacob wasn't lying and Daniel didn't go without a fight," Zahra told him.
I held up the file folder.
"These are security footage stills that I'm going to look through. Any luck here?"
He shook his head slowly.
"No one seems to know anything, everyone is oblivious."
"They're not all as innocent as they seem," Zahra told him, echoing Cain's words from earlier that day.
I sat down at the head of the table, everyone in the room too distracted by the situation at hand to notice me as I spread the pictures out in front of me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a small movement.
I looked up to see the young girl leaning forward on her elbows as she peered over the table to look at the pictures.
"Want to help me look for my friend?" I asked her, despite knowing she couldn't understand.
She looked at me shyly and I smiled as I gestured for her to come closer.
"We're looking for Daniel," I told her, showing her a picture of Daniel that I had saved on my phone.
She looked from the picture to me and then down at the pictures.
"Baba," she said, pointing down at a picture after a few moments.
I shook my head.
"No, Daniel," I said showing her the picture again.
She looked at me before returning her attention to the pictures.
"Baba," she repeated, grabbing it with both hands.
I looked up to see her chaperone leaning in, his features echoing concern.
"What is she saying?" I asked him.
"Where did you get these photos?" he asked, ignoring my question and taking the picture from the young girl.
"They are security footage stills from this morning," I said. "Why? What's wrong with them?"
The man, now white as a ghost, turned the picture around to so I could see who the young girl had pointed to.
"This is her father, the Beta killed nearly a month ago."
I felt my face drop.
Seeing the photo of the man walking along the sidewalk, I gulped.
"Jai," I said quickly, standing from my seat.
He turned his attention from his father.
"I think I know where Daniel is."
- - -