Chapter 213: Rhys
Hours. Hours and hours we spent in my office preparing. We had contacted every Alpha that we thought might still have loyalty. I was not going to beg for help, but I was giving bigger rewards than I ever had in the past. I needed her back. Every few minutes, my eyes would find that terrible picture of her, and my heart would start to race again. I needed her back yesterday. I would not fail. I couldn’t. If I lost her forever, I wouldn’t make it. I knew that much.
We had a fairly solid plan now. Maizie and Michael had been able to make a map for us where they assumed the pack was. They said there had been drills growing up on what to do if they were invaded. Lycan’s were told from an early age that the world could not know about them. It made me wonder if there were other ‘werewolf’ packs that were really hidden Lycans, but Maizie had said quite firmly that they had been hunted a long time ago. That’s why they were told they had to be hidden anyways. Hunted by who though I wondered. We hadn’t been able to even find them in history books... Unless they had been hunted by another supernatural creature... Maybe the ones who had written the history books...
“Holy fuck.” I whispered.
“What?” Maizie asked, looking at me like I had lost my damn mind.
“Why were you guys told that you needed to hide?” I asked.
“Just that it would be dangerous if anyone know we existed still...” Michael answered hesitantly.
“Except witches.”
“I don’t understand...” Michael said slowly, sitting up and looking at me with a weird look on his face.
“Witches knew. And vampires too since they’re working with Adrian on experiments.” I responded and looked to Sawyer to see if he was following, but he just stared at me as lost as the others.
“Yea...” Maizie answered slowly. “I never thought about it, but that is weird...”
“There’s something here that we’re missing.” I stated, absolutely sure of it. “And as soon as get Grace back, and Leon, and Caleb, we are going to find out exactly what the hell is going on. Because they are the reason we don’t know shit.”
“That’s a big allegation, Rhys,” Sawyer said hesitantly, and I didn’t miss the way he and Heather exchanged glances before he spoke.
“It’s not an allegation if it’s true.” I responded.
“But we can’t just go to other species and accuse them of tampering with history.”
“But we can accuse them of doing things to harm our pack.” I argued.
“No.” Sawyer answered, shaking his head at me. “At least not yet. We need more evidence. We also can’t be split into a million different directions. We need to be focused on one problem at a time.”
“But every single problem is interconnected!”
“I agree with Sawyer,” Maizie said softly.
I was a little worried about her. She had hardly reacted happily to Sawyer being her mate. She had hardly reacted at all. Did she not like Sawyer? I mean, we had been looking at dead and tortured bodies, and that is a turn off, but mate, in my head at least, outranked that. And then, she had run off crying, which was very unlike her. But I was not worried enough about her to stop myself from what was about to come out of my mouth.
“Of course you would agree with him.” I snapped.
“Because he’s right.” She shot back. “You just aren’t being smart right now.”
I bit my tongue. If anyone else spoke to me like this, they would have been dead. But Maizie was Maizie. And there was something in her bluntness that always appreciated. Plus, it’s her birthday, as upset as I was, I couldn’t be cruel to her on this day.
“If you were anyone else,” I growled.
“Yea, yea,” She waved me off. “I would have been dead like 30 times over, but you aren’t you going to kill me, Rhys, so just shut up. And let’s keep planning on how we are going to get back your mate.”
I glared at her, but didn’t respond, and a knock on the door saved me from having to.
“Kate?” I said in surprise as Michael opened the door, and the warrior woman walked in. “Everything okay?”
“Yea,” she answered hesitantly. “Heather told me to come here.”
I looked at Heather in confusion. We hadn’t discussed talking to Kate at all.
“We need to know if this plan is even plausible.” Heather shrugged. “Kate is the one who is going to be able to help us with that.”
I nodded, and we began to go over the plan in tedious detail by tedious detail. There was no amount of information too small to go over. We had to discuss it all. Kate told us what would work and what wouldn’t, but also how to potentially make it work.
After what felt like an eternity, Kate left, leaving just the usual group left. Sammy clung to me tiredly, and a quick glance at my watch made me realize how late it was. My body and mind did not seem to be on the same page of fatigue. I was tired of sitting. Tired of being stuck in this room, but my mind wasn’t even a little tired. The idea of going to sleep when we were finally making progress seemed like a daunting mistake.
Everyone was packing up for the night though, and I couldn’t find it in me to stop them. It was almost 11pm at night, and we had been going since early this morning. Just because I couldn’t sleep, didn’t mean that I had to force them into a sleepless night too.
A knock at the door startled all of us, and Alana looked at me hesitantly as she moved to open it.
A young girl, who usually worked downstairs appeared looking a little rattled.
“Sir, I’m sorry to disturb your meeting, but you have a visitor.”