CHAPTER 385: THE PRICE OF LEADERSHIP...

Ramsey

I shrugged, stretching out my hand. "Fair deal."

He shook it and asked me to give him a few minutes to make a call. I nodded and went back into the house. When I entered, Lyla was in the sitting room now with her legs propped up on the coffee table while Miriam was in the tiny kitchen stirring something in the pot.

The healer and the doctor were not with them.

"Hey, babe," I murmured, coming to sit next to her, but she ignored me, increasing the volume of the TV.

I turned to Miriam, who shook her head slightly, mouthing ’leave her alone’. Sighing, I left the couch and went to the kitchen.

"What’s wrong now?"

"She’s cranky, but it’s the hormones. Plus, her body is making a lot of adjustments to carrying a baby. Thankfully, she’s past the first trimester. The bleeding won’t happen again, and the babies are healthy," Miriam said with a smile.

"She wasn’t like this when we first arrived," I sighed, popping a grape on the kitchen counter in my mouth.

"You fought yesterday, right?" she sighed. "You shouldn’t be fighting with a pregnant woman; they bear grudges."

"Noted!" I nodded. "So, how’s Blue Ridge. Luna Vanessa and Alpha Clarissa?" I asked to shift the topic to something else.

"They’re fine," Miriam said with a fond smile. "But we’re waiting for you and Lyla to finish up with your honeymoon and come home for Clarissa’s coronation. She’s doing pretty well as an Alpha only; she’s had a lot of suitors coming for her these days."

"She can get married and still keep her title as Alpha," I said. "Why isn’t she accepting them? Still mourning Nathan?"

"Far from that," Miriam shook her head. "She says she’s never going to remarry and would make the most of her freedom. But it is not good for a woman to be alone for a long time."

Miriam sighed wearily.

"Anyways, enough talk about me. Did you hear that the Hollow Kin visited White Moon? Your Beta, Lenny, is running the entire world like a dictator. Your people miss..."

"Wait, what did you just say?"

She looked up, giving me a teasing smile. "That Lenny is running the entire world like a dictator..."

"No, before that," I shook my head.

"About the Hollow Kin?" She stopped chopping the veggies on the cutting board. "Y-You didn’t know? I thought..."

"When did they visit?" I cut her short, trying not to show my annoyance.

"I don’t know, but I heard from Jemima. We’ve heard so much about the Hollow Kin that we thought it was just a fairy tale to scare naughty children. I’m sorry if you didn’t know."

"It’s fine," I shook my head, managing a smile. "I’m just going to check on something outside."

I made a beeline for the door, trying not to slam it. First, if the Hollow Kin truly visited, why wasn’t I informed? Second, Elias didn’t mention that his people had gone to my pack already.

Crossing the road that demarcated our houses, I reached the front of Elias’ house in two long strides. Ignoring the doorbell, I knocked rapidly on his door.

A second later, he opened up, a phone to his ear, and his eyes widened with surprise. I snatch the phone from his ears, putting the call on speaker. The call was from a human, apparently the Chief of Police, from the conversation.

I tried not to pace as Elias finished with the call. When he was done, he turned to face me. "Alpha Ramsey, is everything alright? You look agitated."

"Do I?" I sneered. "Why didn’t you mention that your people already visited my pack?"

"No!" he shook his head. "That’s not possible. I was sent to track both of you in the human world and try to get you to come visit."

"But they did," I replied, bringing out my phone to dial Lenny’s number. When I dialled the number, the call was hands-free. Lenny picked the third ring.

"Hello!" he said drowsily.

"Lenny, is there something you’re supposed to report to me. Maybe you forgot or something."

There was a slight pause before Lenny sighed. "Who told you?"

"Who told me?" I rattled. "The question should be, why didn’t you tell me?"

"Because I didn’t want to attach importance to it. They came here, insulted you and Lyla. You know me, I don’t know how to entertain the bullshit."

"Still, you would have mentioned it," I sighed. "How are things over there?" I asked.

"Fine, fine," Lenny said. "How did you know?"

I wanted to tell him about Elias, but decided against it. I turned off the hands-free mode and pressed the phone to my ear.

"I got a text from them."

"Really?" Lenny scoffed. "Those people are so shameless. Enjoy your Honeymoon, Ramsey. I’ve got everything covered here, and ignore Hollow King. Their authority cannot be more than yours."

I smiled at Lenny’s words, taking in a deep breath. "We’ll talk later and keep me abreast with things, okay?"

After the call ended, I turned to Elias.

"What exactly are we dealing with?" I asked. "The threat you were talking about."

"Oh," Elias nodded rapidly. "It’s something that hunts like a werewolf, kills like a werewolf, but leaves evidence that points directly to our kind." Elias’s expression was grim. "Every law enforcement agency in a three-state area is starting to develop theories about ’wild animal attacks’ that are looking less and less like wild animals."

I felt ice form in my veins. "You’re saying someone is deliberately trying to expose werewolves?"

"I’m saying someone is doing an excellent job of making it look like werewolves are systematically hunting humans for sport. And if this continues, it won’t be long before the human government starts putting together task forces specifically designed to hunt us."

If an average human discovered the existence of werewolves, other than believing we were all fantasy, it would only be a matter of time before they uncovered the entire supernatural world. Lycans, vampires, witches—all of us would be at risk.

"How many incidents?"

"Fifty-seven confirmed kills across four different towns, all within a hundred-mile radius of here. All with the same pattern—systematic hunting, ritualistic positioning of the bodies, and claw marks that forensic experts are starting to classify as ’unknown predator.’"

"Why do you need Lyla specifically?"

Elias hesitated, and I could see him weighing how much to reveal. "Because whoever is doing this isn’t random. They’re targeting specific types of people, following patterns that suggest supernatural knowledge. And they’re doing it in a way that’s designed to maximise exposure while minimising our ability to cover it up."

"That still doesn’t explain why you need my wife."

"The Moonsinger’s wolf," Elias said quietly. "Lyla’s two-tailed wolf can track supernatural signatures in ways that even our best trackers can’t. If a rogue werewolf is doing these killings, she’ll be able to identify them. If they’re being done by something else pretending to be one of us..."

"She’ll know that too," I finished grimly.

"Exactly. And right now, she’s the only one with both the power and the authority to identify what we’re dealing with definitively."

I ran my hands through my hair. "How long do we have?"

"The local FBI field office is planning to bring in a specialist team next week. Once federal investigators start looking at this seriously, our window for handling it quietly closes forever, and then there’s this human woman who is going around talking about werewolves. She’s telling everyone that werewolves are the cause. She’s a historian of some sort and has volunteered to work with the police."

"And if we refuse to help?"

Elias’s expression grew even more serious. "Then the human world discovers that monsters are real, and our species becomes enemy number one for the most militarily advanced civilisation in history."

I stared at him for a long moment, processing the magnitude of what he was asking.

Lyla was still recovering from her medical emergency. She was pregnant with my children, who might be the future of our entire species. And now he wanted me to drag her into what sounded like a trap designed specifically to expose our kind.

"There’s something else, isn’t there?" I asked, reading the tension in his posture.

"The timing," Elias admitted reluctantly. "The killings started a month ago, 28 days after news of the death of the Dark One spread through the supernatural community. Someone knows about Lyla, knows about her abilities, and they’re trying to force her into the open."

"You think this is a trap."

"I think this is bait," he corrected. "The question is whether we’re clever enough to spring it without getting caught."

I looked back toward the house where my wife was recovering, every instinct I possessed screamed at me to take her home, to surround her with pack protection and let someone else deal with the human world’s problems.

But if Elias was right, if these killings continued, there might not be a safe place left for any of us.

"What exactly are you proposing?" I asked finally.

"A joint operation. Hollow Kin oversight, your authority as Lycan Leader, and Lyla’s abilities as Moonsinger. We find whoever is doing this, we stop them, and we clean up the evidence before the humans figure out what’s really happening."

"And if it’s a trap? If someone is using these killings to get to Lyla?"

Elias met my eyes steadily. "Then we make sure they regret it."