The door slid open to reveal Ronan, his usual calm demeanor replaced by a tense, weary posture. He held a second datapad, his knuckles white where he gripped it. His hazel eyes found hers, and in them, she saw a reflection of her own turmoil—a messy cocktail of sympathy, frustration, and dutiful resolve.
"Lyra," he said, his voice softer than Kael's ever was, but no less heavy.
"Beta," she replied, the title formal and cold on her tongue. She stepped out into the main living area, the opulent space feeling more like a prison's antechamber. "I assume he's briefed you on my new… assignment."
Ronan's jaw tightened. "He has." He offered her the datapad. "These are the preliminary reports from the raid on the wharf safehouse. Security footage from the compound's perimeter for the last 48 hours. And dossiers on every pack member who had knowledge of the operation."
She took the pad, its weight feeling symbolic. She was being handed the tools to dig her own grave or build her own redemption. "Where do we start?"
"We start by understanding that everyone is a suspect," Ronan said, crossing his arms. He looked tired. "Including me. Including Jax, Valen, Finn. The Alpha made that very clear."
Lyra scrolled through the files, her mind, trained for this very kind of analysis, already clicking into gear. "We need to establish a timeline. Who knew what, and when." She looked up at him. "And I need to see Liana."
Ronan shook his head. "The healers have her sedated. She's not coherent. Seeing her won't—"
"It's not for her," Lyra interrupted, her voice firm. "It's for me. I need to see what my information caused. I need to understand the consequence." She needed to sear the image into her mind, to fuel the fire of her determination. This wasn't an abstract betrayal anymore; it was a broken body.
After a moment's hesitation, Ronan nodded. "Alright. But we do this my way. You don't speak to anyone unless I'm with you. Is that understood?"
The question was a stark reminder of her status. She was a prisoner on a leash, and he was holding the other end. "Perfectly."
---
The pack's infirmary was a sterile, white-walled space that smelled of antiseptic and dried blood. Liana lay on a cot, her face pale and swollen, one arm in a cast, dark bruises coloring her jaw and neck. An IV drip was tethered to her other arm. She was asleep, but her breathing was shallow, her face contorted even in unconsciousness.
Lyra stood at the foot of the bed, her stomach churning. This young woman, a healer whose purpose was to mend, had been broken because of a location Lyra had provided. The guilt was a physical weight, but she channeled it, forged it into a cold, hard purpose. She committed every detail to memory—the angle of the cast, the specific pattern of the bruises. These were clues. The Crimson Paw had a signature.
"She's strong. She'll pull through," Ronan said quietly from behind her.
"Will she?" Lyra asked, her voice flat. "Her body might. But will she ever feel safe again? Will she ever trust her packmates again?" She turned and walked out of the room, not waiting for an answer. She had seen enough.
Back in the command center, which was now buzzing with a different, more subdued energy, Lyra set up at a secondary terminal, Ronan a silent, watchful presence at her shoulder. She pulled up the security footage, focusing on the hours immediately after she had given Kael the location.
"Who had access to the war room during this window?" she asked, her fingers flying across the screen.
"Jax, Valen, Finn, myself," Ronan listed. "A few senior communications technicians, but they only handle encrypted data streams, not raw intel."
"Finn was the one who verified the location, correct?"
Ronan nodded. "He cross-referenced it with his own intelligence network. He confirmed it was an active Crimson Paw site."
Lyra pulled up Finn's dossier. The charming, grinning face stared back at her. Head of Acquisitions and Intelligence. A master of infiltration and cyber-warfare. The man who could bypass any encryption. The perfect person to plant a ghost signal, to warn the enemy without leaving a trace.
"He's almost too obvious," she murmured.
"Finn is fiercely loyal," Ronan countered, but there was a lack of absolute conviction in his tone.
"Loyalty can be bought. Or coerced," Lyra said, her eyes still on the screen. She then pulled up the file on Jax. The cold, calculating strategist. The man who saw her only as a complication. "Jax didn't want me here. He sees me as a liability. Getting me discredited or killed removes a problem and weakens Kael's position. He could make a play for power."
"Jax's loyalty is to the pack's stability. He wouldn't risk a war," Ronan argued, but he was engaging now, his analytical mind joining hers in the hunt.
"What about Valen?" Lyra brought up the enforcer's profile. The scarred, hostile woman who had openly blamed her. "She made her feelings perfectly clear. She believes I'm the threat. What if she decided to orchestrate a situation that would prove her right? Sacrificing one healer to expose a 'traitorous' Luna could be a calculation she's willing to make."
The room felt suddenly colder. They were circling the heart of the pack's power structure, and each potential suspect was a pillar holding it up. To accuse one was to risk bringing the whole structure down.
For hours, they worked, cross-referencing timelines, access logs, and personal motivations. The initial clarity began to blur into a fog of possibilities and dead ends. The frustration was a living thing in the room, and Lyra could feel Ronan's growing agitation. He was a warrior, a protector, not a detective. This subtle, shadowy work was grating on him.
During a lull, as she was re-watching a segment of footage, she became acutely aware of his proximity. He was leaning over her shoulder to see the screen, his body heat a solid presence behind her. The clean, soap-and-leather scent of him was a stark contrast to Kael's dark, possessive aroma. It was safe. Uncomplicated. And in that moment of exhaustion and tension, dangerously appealing.
She shifted slightly, and her arm brushed against his. A jolt, subtle but undeniable, passed between them. It wasn't the electric, consuming fire of the mate bond, but a quieter, warmer current of shared understanding and unspoken attraction.
Ronan straightened up abruptly, putting a few inches of space between them. "We should take a break. Get something to eat."
Lyra nodded, her throat suddenly dry. The look in his eyes had been fleeting, but she'd seen it—a flicker of something that went beyond duty or pity.
They ate in a small, private annex off the command center, the silence between them now loaded with things unsaid. Lyra picked at her food, her mind racing.
"He'll never truly trust me, will he?" she said quietly, not looking at Ronan.
Ronan was silent for a long moment. "Kael… his trust is the hardest thing in the world to earn. And the easiest to lose. He was betrayed before, a long time ago. It shaped him. Hardened him."
This was new information. A chink in the invincible Alpha's armor. "What happened?"
Ronan shook his head. "That's not my story to tell." He looked at her, his gaze earnest. "But what you're doing now, Lyra… this is how you start. Not with grand speeches, but with actions. Prove him wrong. Prove them all wrong."
His faith in her was a balm, a stark contrast to Kael's searing distrust. For a moment, she let herself imagine what it would be like to have that gentler strength beside her, instead of the consuming, brutal passion that both terrified and enthralled her.
The moment was shattered by the beep of Ronan's datapad. He looked at it, his expression grim. "The Alpha wants an update. Now."
As they walked back to the command center, Lyra's mind was clearer. She had a victim, a list of suspects, and a motive. And she had a new, dangerous variable: the growing, complicated connection with the man appointed as her jailer.
She had entered this hunt to clear her name. But now, she realized, she was also fighting for something else. She was fighting for the chance to choose her own path, her own future.
And that made her more dangerous than anyone, even Kael, could possibly imagine.