Delpha POV:
"She actually threatened you? In public? Who does she think she is?"
I stared at Foster, who was miserably stirring his overpriced coffee. We were sitting at a small table in an outdoor café at the edge of the market, but I couldn't relax. My skin was crawling.
He had just finished telling me about his encounter with Arla. My sister. The thought was galling.
"She made me look like a fool, Delpha," he complained, his jaw tight.
I barely heard him. My mind was racing, replaying a flash of movement I'd seen earlier. A glimpse of power and presence that had made my breath catch.
"Alpha Corbin Gilmore was here," I blurted out, my voice filled with a breathless excitement. "At the market!"
Foster looked up, his own self-pity momentarily forgotten. "What?"
"I saw him! Just for a second. He was with his Beta. Do you think he saw Arla? What if she did something—what if that's why he was here?"
The thought was horrifying. Arla, the wolfless nobody, catching the eye of the most powerful Alpha in the region? After what she'd done in that car, nothing about her felt safe anymore.
Foster shook his head. "Corbin Gilmore doesn't look twice at wolfless exiles. Relax."
But he didn't sound sure. And neither was I.
Corbin POV:
"A pair of clowns."
The words were a low rumble in my chest, spoken only to Blake at my side. We stood in the shadows of an alley, watching as Foster Dean and the younger Hancock girl chattered away at their table.
My gaze, however, was fixed on the spot where the other one had disappeared into the crowd.
The silver-haired woman. Arla Hancock.
"Alpha, that woman," Blake murmured, following my line of sight. "The one who just left. That's Arla Hancock. The patrol confirmed it. She was the one driving the car yesterday."
So. The professional driver and the woman who could make Foster Dean, an Alpha heir, tremble with a few whispered words were one and the same.
Interesting.
My inner wolf, a beast I kept on a tight leash, stirred with an unfamiliar flicker of interest. It was a flicker I hadn't felt in a very long time. There was a scent on the air, faint and almost gone, but it had made my wolf lift its head. Rain-soaked forest and something else... wild. Untamable.
I pushed the thought away. It was irrelevant.
"We're leaving," I said, turning away from the pathetic scene. "And Blake? Get me a full report on the Hancock Pack's financial situation. Everything."
Something told me their books held more secrets than just bad investments. And that silver-haired woman was standing at the center of whatever was rotting inside that pack.
Arla POV:
The safe house was a single, grimy room in a forgotten corner of the neutral zone. The lock was old, but the door was reinforced with steel.
Inside, I shed the persona of the weak, downtrodden exile. I was home.
I pulled out a laptop from a hidden compartment under a loose floorboard—my only companion through the long nights of planning, a gift from an unlikely ally in the exile colony. It was an old model, battered and scarred, but inside, its hardware was a custom-built monster.
My fingers flew across the keyboard, the soft click-clack of the keys the only sound in the room. Lines of code scrolled across the screen, a language I knew better than my own. The Hancock Pack's firewalls were a joke, a child's drawing of a fortress. I slipped past them without a sound.
It didn't take me long to find what I was looking for. Delpha's private, off-the-books account. And the steady stream of transfers into it from Andra. Money that was supposed to have been held in trust for me. My mother's money.
A cold, vicious smile spread across my face.
I didn't just drain the account. That was too crude. I wrote a simple, elegant little program. A ghost in their machine. It rerouted the funds through a dozen shell corporations and offshore accounts before depositing them cleanly into a new account I had created. An account that was untraceable.
The total amount was just over ten million dollars.
I closed the laptop, the transfer complete. It was done. It felt like taking my first deep breath after being underwater for five years.
That was step one. Step two was getting into Corbin Gilmore's house. And for that, I'd need to become someone else entirely.
The next day, I walked into the most exclusive boutique in the neutral zone. The sales staff looked down their noses at my shabby clothes, until I dropped a black credit card on the counter.
I walked out two hours later, a different person.
The cheap hoodie was gone, replaced by a tailored black leather jacket, dark jeans that fit like a second skin, and combat boots that were both practical and deadly. I had them cut my hair, shaping the wild silver mane into something sleek and dangerous. For the first time in five years, I looked in the mirror and saw not a victim, but a weapon. A predator, finally stepping out of the shadows.
I wasn't hiding anymore.
I used a portion of the money to buy a motorcycle. A black, snarling beast of a machine, built for speed and power.
I swung my leg over the seat, the engine rumbling to life beneath me with a satisfying roar. I wasn't heading back to my grimy little room.
I was heading toward the Gilmore territory.
My plan was set. It was time for The Surgeon to make a house call.
Delpha POV:
"It's GONE! IT'S ALL GONE!"
I stared at the screen of my tablet, my hands shaking. The balance in my shopping account was zero. A big, fat, mocking zero.
I refreshed the page. Zero.
I refreshed it again. Zero.
"MOM!" I shrieked, stumbling out of my room and down the grand staircase. "MOM, THE MONEY IS GONE!"
My mother, Andra, came rushing out of the parlor, her face a mask of alarm. "What are you talking about, darling? What money?"
"My money! My shopping account! It's all gone! Ten million dollars!" I was sobbing now, big, ugly tears streaming down my face.
Her face paled. She immediately got on the phone with the bank manager, her voice sharp and commanding. After a few minutes of heated conversation, she hung up, her hand trembling.
"The funds were transferred out half an hour ago," she said, her voice a strained whisper. "A legitimate online transaction. They can't trace it."
We stared at each other, the same horrifying thought dawning on us at the same time. Who had the skill? Who had the motive?
"It was her," I choked out, the name tasting like poison. "Arla. It has to be Arla!"
"Impossible!" Andra snapped, but there was a flicker of fear in her eyes. "That wolfless trash doesn't have the brains for something like this!"
As if on cue, the butler appeared in the doorway, his expression flustered. "Madam, Miss Arla... she has returned."
And then she was there.
She sauntered into the living room, dressed in black leather and looking like a vengeful goddess. She was holding a small, ornate silver lighter in her hand, flicking it open and closed with a casual, menacing click.
She looked at our shocked faces, and a slow, terrifying smile spread across hers.
