Chapter 121

**ADAM**

Weeks had passed since Rosalie’s vision and Caedmon’s imprisonment, and though the quiet should have brought relief, it left me uneasy. There’s a weight in stillness—a pause before the storm breaks.

Aria was stronger than ever. The transformation had suited her. She glowed with life, carrying our children with a grace and strength that left me in awe every day. Her appetite had returned, her laughter had become more frequent, and the circles under her eyes had vanished. Austin kept himself busy—training with Cassius and Sasha, overseeing security patrols, doing anything that might ease his growing paranoia.
As for me, I had grown too comfortable in the calm. I should have expected it wouldn’t last.

The message came through at dawn, slipped beneath the council hall’s front door. A plain envelope, sealed in wax with a crescent moon and a pair of fangs.

None of us recognized the symbol.

"Encrypted?" I asked Alex after he brought it to me.

"Yes. The paper’s enchanted. The message is bound to a specific magical frequency," Alex explained. "But I’ve cracked these before. Give me a few hours."

I trusted him, but my pulse wouldn’t stop racing.

I spent the morning patrolling the grounds with Fares, noting subtle improvements we’d made—reinforced barriers, upgraded surveillance spells, stronger defensive formations. It was everything we could do to prepare for the unknown, and still, it didn’t feel like enough.

When I returned, Alex was already waiting in my office.

"I got it," he said, holding the now unsealed parchment between gloved fingers. "It’s a message from someone called Taren."

"Taren?"

"A name I’ve only seen in vampire war records. He was a tactician—one of Alaric’s lieutenants centuries ago, thought to be dead. But apparently not."

"What does it say?"

Alex handed me the note. The handwriting was precise, almost mechanical.

The seeds have been planted. The girl is the key. Alaric approaches, and the shield will fall from within. Ensure the hybrids are separated when the fire comes.

Do not engage until ordered. The children must not be born.

My hands tightened around the parchment.

"He’s coming," I said aloud. "And they know about Aria."

Alex’s brow furrowed. "They don’t know she’s already a hybrid, or that she’s further along than they think. That’s in our favor."

"We need to know who this message was meant for," I muttered. "Someone here. Still loyal to Alaric."

Alex nodded slowly. "We can backtrace the enchantment’s resonance. It left a fingerprint. Might take a day, maybe two."

"We can’t wait long. If someone’s planning to sabotage us from within, we need to know who."

The next day, we had our answer.

The resonance signature led to a storage room in the east wing—an old wine cellar rarely used. Alex, Fares, and I entered with caution. We didn’t find a traitor.

We found a hidden compartment behind a loose stone. Inside: another message, older this time, but with the same seal. A correspondence trail. Someone had been in contact with Alaric’s camp for months.

We also found something else—a map. Our territory, but with strange markings. Symbols that corresponded to key power nodes around the community. Ward anchors. Spell focal points.

"They’ve mapped our magic defenses," Alex whispered.

"Which means they’ve either had access to a witch or a very skilled informant," Fares added. "This is bigger than we thought."

I clenched my jaw. Every instinct screamed for action. But charging in blind would put Aria and the babies at risk.

"We need to feed them misinformation," I said. "Use what we know. Lay a new trap."

"And soon," Alex agreed. "That line about the shield falling from within? If they’ve already tampered with our wards, we may not have as much time as we
hoped."

That night, I lay beside Aria, watching her sleep. One hand rested gently on her growing belly, the other curled beneath her cheek. She looked so peaceful, so unaware of the chaos just outside our door.

I kissed her shoulder, softly, and whispered, "I won’t let anything happen to you. Or them."

But deep inside, I knew Alaric wasn’t coming for a fight.

He was coming for war.

***
The morning air was crisp as I stepped out of the apartment, the weight of the intercepted message still heavy on my shoulders. Austin met me in the hallway, his eyes sharp with concern.

"You got something?" he asked.

I nodded. "We need to talk."

Inside the strategy room, I laid out everything for him—Alex's successful decryption, the mention of a planned breach, and the chilling reference to Alaric by name. Austin's expression darkened with each word.

"He's already closer than we thought," he murmured.

"Exactly," I said. "We need to find the leak. Someone’s feeding them information."

Cassius, Sasha, Alex, and Fares joined us shortly after. Once everyone was seated, I recounted the decoded message again.

"We’re looking for someone in this community who’s feeding Alaric’s people intel. If this traitor finds out we know, they’ll disappear," I said.

"So we smoke them out," Fares offered. "Feed false information and see who bites."

"Exactly," Austin agreed. "Something big enough to draw them out, but controlled."

Alex tapped his fingers against the tabletop. "What if we 'accidentally' leak a shipment route for silver-tipped weapons? Something too tempting to ignore."

"We’ll plant the details in a meeting that only a small, trusted group has access to," Cassius added. "Then track where that info ends up."

We decided on the plan. Alex would generate a believable weapons manifest and encrypt it with our usual codes. Only five people in the community would receive the document: myself, Austin, Alex, Cassius, and one wildcard—a chosen observer who we’d include to bait the traitor.

We picked Elian, a junior logistics coordinator. He was smart and observant but not too close to our circle. Perfect for testing trust.

The next 48 hours were tense. Alex slipped the file to each participant, making sure Elian received it during a private update. The others played their parts.

Then we waited.

Alex set up monitoring for any data access or transmission that didn’t come from a secured channel. Nothing happened the first day. On the second, someone pinged an external server with encrypted traffic—too similar to the one used to deliver Alaric’s message.

"Got it," Alex whispered, pulling up the logs. "Encrypted payload, matches our dummy file. IP bounced through three relays but ends here."

He tapped the screen and a name appeared.

Elias Moreno.

Cassius swore under his breath. Fares stood so fast his chair hit the wall.

"He was part of our outer patrol team," I said slowly. "Never on our radar."

"He is now," Austin replied coldly.

We had our traitor.