The Rogue's Captive

3 - Justice

~Tamir’s PoV~

The child hovers behind its mother’s legs, peering at me from its position of safety. I can’t even tell if it’s a boy or a girl, but I can see the curiosity and fear in its eyes, the emotions my appearance always seems to evoke from those who haven’t yet learned how to hide it.

“I’ll send two of my men back with you,” I offer the child’s mother, who’s come to me for help against raids on her farm by the Eastern Moon pack. Her land sits just outside their territory, and some of their wolves on patrol have started helping themselves to food from her kitchen when they pass by, despite her objections. She knows, as we all do, that complaining to the pack’s Alpha won’t do any good. If anything, it might make things worse, so she’s come to me instead. “Once they know you’re not alone, they should back off.”

“Thank you, Alpha.” Her gratitude is so sincere that I don’t bother to correct her about my title. I’m no Alpha, no more than her farmer mate who was killed in a border skirmish two years earlier, probably just after the child hiding behind her was born.

Too many have died. Too many live in fear. I do what I can to help, but it seems like the problems only multiply with each passing day.

Sure enough, as soon as she leaves, another man enters the small meeting room where I do business. This one, though, I already know.

“I’ve got news from the Eastern court,” my head of intelligence announces as he walks in, his heavy boots clomping on the hardwood floor. Like me, he’s dressed as a warrior, since we never know what the day will bring.

I grimace at his word choice. “It’s not a court, Baz. Knox isn’t a king, no matter how much he pretends he is.”

“Are we really going to argue semantics? You know what I mean.”

I do, so I give in, taking a seat at the circular table in the center of the room while he does the same. The house we’re in was abandoned after the last outbreak of war in the region. Knox’s pack of bullies tried to capture the Emerald Glen pack’s territory, just beyond the hills, but they were unsuccessful. That didn’t stop them from burning half the properties in their path, and though this one was spared, the family who lived here decided it wasn’t worth the risk. We use it as a base, one of several we have all around the area. We never stay in one place too long.

Once we’re sitting, I invite Bastian to speak. “What’s the news?”

Looking at him sometimes feels like looking in a mirror. We’re both tall, with wide shoulders and long legs, and our hair is the same shade of black-ish brown. With little time to spend on our appearances, we’ve both let our beards grow out and hair get longer than it ever was back when we were part of a pack. I wear mine pulled back while he usually leaves his down, and there’s the scar across my face, the one the child was staring at earlier. Those are the main differences between us. Otherwise, most people probably wouldn’t know which of us was which.

“Knox is making an alliance with King Christian in the west. He’s sending his daughter to mate with Christian’s son.”

“Fuck.” There’s no better word to sum up my reaction to that news. We knew Christian had been sniffing around for a deal, but I honestly thought Knox was too arrogant to agree to it. Having an alliance with the western kingdom gives the Eastern Moon pack even more legitimacy. It’s a blow to all of us who oppose them, there’s no question. “Christian was willing to take the second daughter? That surprises me.”

King Christian isn’t much better than Knox when it comes to his sense of his own importance. Of the three main kings in our werewolf world, he’s the least honorable.

“That’s where it gets interesting,” Bastian tells me. “It’s not the second daughter. His eldest, Jenetta, is going.”

I’ve missed something. “Just the other day, you told me she was taking the Beta’s son as her mate.”

“That’s what my sources told me, but apparently, things have changed. Now, the Beta’s son is getting the second daughter, but he’ll still become Knox’s heir because the older daughter is going to Christian.”

That’s odd. Knox isn’t known for changing his mind. Something must have forced him to do it, but I can’t imagine what that would have been.

Bastian never comes just to gossip, though. There’s a reason he’s telling me this, so I ask him straight out what it is. “How does this help us?”

“Knox is concerned about security for his daughter’s journey. After we sabotaged that plane last year, he won’t allow her to fly.”

I wince at the reminder. That had been our best opportunity to assassinate Knox and we took it, having one of our spies in his territory plant a bomb inside his small private plane. At the last minute, he decided not to travel, and the explosion only killed the pilot and the pack Delta who had gone in the Alpha’s place.

I’m not proud of it, but I don’t regret taking the chance either. Knox has killed far more people than I can even imagine. He deserves nothing less in return.

“How is she travelling, then?”

“By car, in convoy, through the Horseferry Pass.”

He grins as he says the words, and I know exactly why. Located between the Eastern Moon territory and that of their allies, the pass is currently under our control, though Knox doesn’t know it yet. We’d been planning to barricade it when the rainy season started, cutting off their supply chain, but this is even better.

If we can capture his daughter, Knox will have to listen. Maybe the rest of the world will pay attention too. At last, we’ll make ourselves heard.

I get to my feet, a hundred ideas about how to use this to our advantage already running through my head. “When do they leave?”

Bastian is right there beside me. “In two days.”

“That doesn’t give us a lot of time. We can’t afford any mistakes this time, Baz.”

“I know. We’re all behind you. Tell us what you want and it’ll be done. We’ll get her, Tamir, and then, we’ll have him. After all this time, we’ll get our justice.”