CHAPTER 62

There was a large oak tree that sat at the rear corner of the ranch house, and I perched in one of it's upper branches, crouched and listening, and naked.

The voices and scents of fifteen wolves lingered throughout the interior. One might expect, at this hour, for most of them to have found their way to bed, but that was not the case tonight. Tonight, it seemed, everyone was on edge.

Martha was in the kitchen, the smell of her fresh bread and olive oil and spices permeated the entire house, she was muttering to herself her tone worried and distressed. The sitting area held seven others. I recognized Rutilo and Connor and that was all I needed to know that something bad was going on in the organization. I'd never met the two in person, Rob hated using them because they were brutal and unnecessarily gruesome in their violence. But once in a while he'd deemed the duo necessary. I was never within sight, usually off on my own or completing a different task, but I'd catalogued their scent.

I couldn't help the sting of worry running through my gut, especially given how Anthony had been behaving lately. I nudged my wolf to focus on him. After his alone time with Leanne he'd conducted a meeting with Rutilo, Connor and three others that I hadn't recognized. Now they were alone again. I hesitated to ask my wolf to share what she heard. Mostly because I was positive I wasn't going to like it.

Pushing past my silent reluctance we turned our head toward the northwest corner of the house. They were in the second floor office, the door shut. I closed my eyes, focusing on the sounds from that area, and blocking out the others.

"... doing the right thing," Leanne was saying, "none of this was ever a problem under Rob, they're testing you."

Papers shuffled and Anthony sighed. I could picture him right then, his golden head in his hands, his face crumpled with the strain of whatever was weighing on his mind.

"Why turn on me now?" he questioned.

Clothing rustled and high heels clacked across the hardwood as Leanne turned away from my position, her voice becoming slightly more muffled.

"From their point of view, you are weakened," she told him, "forced from the mansion with half our caporegime's pulling back from operations..."

Anthony growled and I blinked. Half of the Caporegimes had pulled out? That was ominous, the more of them who slipped away the more of them would begin to think going out on their own wasn't such a bad idea. It seemed like Anthony's hold on the Alpha position was not as secure as he'd hoped. Which was probably why the security had increased and Martha was mumbling curses under her breath while making Focaccia and Italian stew.

"Gunner has always been ambitious. He was strong enough to wrestle an independent deal out of Rob, my guess would be that he's spotted the opportunity to one up that."

Gunner? I frowned at the name. The only Gunner I knew was a higher caporegime in the organization. Quiet guy, kept mostly to himself and ran the organization's best weapon supply chain. It would have been where Martha got her new bullets and where most of the guns in the pole shed came from.

"Then why not attack as soon as Rob kicked it? Why wait until I was established?"

Honestly it didn't sound much like Anthony was established to me. He was fighting too hard with people who should have been on the same side. But Gunner? What Anthony and Leanne were talking about, turning on the alpha, that wasn't really his deal. It was why I'd sought out Marcus instead of using the organization's supply route for a new weapon when I'd lost the P365. Gunner would have reported me to Anthony immediately and then apologized for any hard feelings. He was a big brute of a wolf that looked like he should have the intelligence of a caveman and the violent tenancies to match, but really was pretty mild, if he liked you, and smarter that most men running legit businesses. He had a knack for good deals and taking people down in negotiations just as far as they were willing to go, and he had a wide range of contacts and life experience conducive to getting anything under the table from weapons, to some of Martha's rare ingredients.

What he didn't have, was the desire to become alpha, at one point Rob had offered him second and he'd turned it down, so what the hell was going on here?

"Maybe he was afraid of what Rob had in his back pocket? Until lately no one really knew what his little princess was all about. You haven't exactly been silent about her running off. Again."

My fingers crunched bark beneath their grip and my teeth ground against one another. Her voice had filled with derision, enough so that it made me want to leap across the branches of the tree and across the rooftop to the office window and throttle her myself.

We still need her. My wolf reminded, her own tension grating against mine. I didn't bother to acknowledge her, I wasn't going to do anything stupid.

"Raven is not going to enter this discussion. I've settled that matter with you."

"Of course," Leanne instantly demurred. "I just hate how much stress and trouble she has caused you. I wish she could see how much you deserve our support in everything you do."

What was her deal anyway? She was a spy, or a plant for Thostchild, she'd arranged Rob's assassination. What was her goal at this point? Because it seemed to me like she was trying to oust me completely...and take my place? Or, at least the place she perceived me to have?

Anthony drew in a sharp breath, a pained breath, and for a moment I thought my initial fears had been right. That she was going to do to Anthony what she'd done to Rob. But then she spoke.

"Another migraine?" her voice dripped with enough concern to make me gag. "I could get the treatment coil, that seemed to be helping?"

I heard a shift of clothing, as if he nodded.

"Turn off the lights on your way out too, Leanne. And tell Rutilo and Connor that the hit is to proceed as planned."

I stayed in the tree a long time after she'd left the room, listening to Anthony breathe in the dark silence. He was planning a hit and my gut said it was for Gunnar. A completely off the wall move that Rob would never have approved of. An off the wall move that the old Anthony would have advised against. And that was besides the fact that wolves shouldn't be getting migrains. Like Ever.

No. Something else was going on here, and if I didn't do something about it the entire organization was going to crash and burn. And that would be bad for the entire city, because a full out war for control would end in nothing but ashes.