The alpha and his stubborn thief

The thief took in her surroundings, carefully mapping out the guard routes, before jumping out from her hiding place and headed for the elevators of the eighty-floor high skyscraper. It had taken weeks of careful planning, but it was finally time to retrieve the item. The thief jumped into an empty hall as the sound of two guards reached her ears, and she held her breath as they passed, letting the shadows hide her completely. Once the threat passed, she made her way to the elevators and pried open the door. She grabbed a metal bar on the inside and closed the door behind her, careful not to make a sound. It took her half an hour to climb to the seventieth floor, but she didn’t take a moment to rest. She took out a small camera and slid it under the elevator door to ensure the hall was empty. Taking out her small tablet, she made sure to scramble the cameras in the hall before opening the door and getting out of the elevator shaft. She walked through the corridors and made a few turns before arriving at a ventilation shaft. She ensured that the security guard didn’t pick up on her presence and disarmed cameras as soon as she reached them and turned them back on once she passed. She slid into the ventilation shaft, closed the lid behind her, and made her way along the memorized path. --- Joshua sighed and looked at the time on his phone. 03:47 He hated nightguard duty and rubbed his stiff neck as he walked another circle through the room. The room was filled with all kinds of artifacts and heirlooms, and even though it was on the seventieth floor, his father, the alpha, still found it necessary to always guard the room. His father was one of the five werewolf kings, and he oversaw entire North America. With that status came a lot of power and many magical items and relics like those displayed in this room. There were no windows in the room for extra security, and Joshua tried to pass the time by reading about the object he was guarding. Not that it did much to pass the time. His phone rang in his pocket, and he picked it up. “Hello?” “How’s nightguard duty treating you?” one of his best friends, Russell, said with a chuckle. “Boring as hell,” Joshua groaned and leaned up against the wall, since there were no chairs in the room. “I honestly don’t see the point in guarding this place.” “Well, don’t be late for training, and maybe you won’t get another shift soon,” Russell said, and Joshua could hear him grin. “Well, if someone hadn’t dragged me out to the bar last night, then maybe I wouldn’t have overslept,” Joshua said with a low growl. “Hey, don’t act like you didn’t have a good time!” Russell said, “Besides, I wasn’t the one who made you drink too much.” “Yeah yeah…” Joshua said and rolled his eyes. “How about I treat you for breakfast as a peace offering?” Russell offered. “I might be willing to consider that,” Joshua sighed, “But don’t cry when I empty your wallet.” Joshua listened to his friend talking, but his ears suddenly perked up. “Hey, Russell, I’m going to have to call you back,” he interrupted his friend and hung up before he got a reply. Joshua started walking around the room, feeling the hair on the back of his neck stand on edge. He sniffed around but didn’t smell anything different. “Rhys, you catch anything?” he mindlinked his wolf. “I’m not sure,” his wolf said uneasily, “It’s like something’s out of place.” “I feel it too,” Joshua nodded and carefully examined everything in the room. Although it was just a single room, it took over half of the seventieth floor strategically placed in the middle, so there were no windows for easy access. It only had one way in and out, and that was through a metal door that needed a thumbprint and a retina scan to get in. The room itself was about forty times forty meters, filled with display boxes of priceless items, shelves with artifacts, and bookshelves filled with rare and dangerous books if they were to fall into the wrong hands. The shelves were carefully organized to create hallways in the room, and it could be troublesome to find things if you didn’t know exactly where they were. After a thorough overview, he scratched his head, since everything was accountable, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He stopped at the last item in the center of the room. It was a round silver brooch that could fit in the palm of his hand and rested on a dark red pillow. It had a purple crystal in the shape of a moon in the middle and a complex engraving of a wolf around it. It was in a single glass display in the middle of the floor with a light above it, and its pedestal had complex carvings all around, signaling its importance. The alpha used it at important events and when he passed the throne down to his successor. It represented the Crystal Crescent pack, and all the kingdoms had a similar version, but each with its own stone. He sometimes felt jealous that he’d never have the chance to wield it, being the second born, and his brother, Calum, would succeed their father, but he also felt relieved. He may be alpha by blood, but he doubted he’d ever be king material. He sighed and shook his head, unsure why he was so on edge, as nothing was missing. He scratched the back of his head and turned around, but caught a strange reflective glimpse of light from the glass box. Having walked past the box multiple times, he felt something was wrong. Peering his eyes as he walked another circle around the box, he carefully examined every corner and surface area. “Strange,” he muttered as he saw a thin line on the far-right corner of the class, right at the edge and too small for the average human eye to catch. As he gently dragged his finger down the line, his face fell as the glass cut his finger. Someone had been trying to cut the glass to get into the box. His body stiffened, and his senses heightened as he quickly looked around the room. “I don’t smell or sense anyone,” Rhys said, alarmed. “Doesn’t mean that we’re alone,” Joshua thought back and took out his phone. He quickly opened his contacts to send his father a message, but before he could press send, his phone went flying from his hands as someone kicked it away. The attacker followed with a roundhouse kick to knock him out, but Joshua raised his hand to block it and punched. Somehow, the attacker dodged by bending almost unnaturally fast to the side and jumped a few steps back. Joshua stood bewildered and took in the attacker he hadn’t seen coming. He was about 1,6 meters tall and had a small build, making Joshua’s 1,8 meter and athletic body almost feel gigantic. The attacker wore a full black leather bodysuit with a black hood, and a black mask covered his face. A navy-blue cross on the suit started at the left shoulder and reached down to the hip and across his chest. He wore a small utility belt around his waist that was also strapped around his right thigh. The attacker stood there and leaned his head to the side, almost like he was observing Joshua with interest. “I suggest you surrender now if you don’t want to get hurt,” Joshua growled warningly and got into a fighting stance, but as he raised his hands, his head started to feel lighter. “I don’t feel so good,” Rhys said groggily, and Joshua felt a tingling sensation in the arm he had used to block the kick from the attacker. He looked down and could see something poking out of his jacket and pulled it out with his other hand. It was a tiny dart with a long sharp needle and seemed to hold some sort of liquid. Or at least the remnants of one. “Wolfsbane…,” Rhys said with a pained voice, and Joshua’s eyes widened. “How did you…,” Joshua said weekly, and although he tried to fight it, he fell to his knees. It wasn’t a lethal amount, but it was enough to immobilize him, and he could feel his body start to sweat, and his breathing became shallow as he tried to fight off the infection. The attacker walked around him like Joshua didn’t matter anymore, and Joshua glanced over his shoulder. The attacker pulled something that looked like a pen from his belt, but once he pressed it up against the glass, Joshua could hear a soft sizzle. It didn’t take long for the attacker to cut through the glass, and he expertly took out the cut piece without so much as a sound. He placed it on top of the display box, reached in, and took the brooch. He admired it for a moment, then put it into one of the pockets on his belt. “No, you don’t!” Joshua groaned loudly and forced himself to stand up. The thief seemed surprised that Joshua had managed to stand up so quickly, probably not aware that alpha’s had better resistance to wolfsbane, but he only took a second to take in that new variable and turned around and ran. Joshua cursed under his breath and took off after the thief, already hearing the speech his father was going to give him if he’d let him escape. They ran around the room, and Joshua thought he was heading for the door but was surprised when the thief ran in the opposite direction. “How the hell did he get in here in the first place?” he thought to himself as he tried to catch up to the thief, but the wolfsbane was keeping his senses down, and he almost crashed into a bookshelf when the thief took a sharp turn. “Son of a b***h,” he cursed as he noticed the open vent at the corner of the room, and he couldn’t help but stare wide-eyed as the thief disappeared into a vent that he had believed only a small child could go through, but he was proven wrong. Cursing more, Joshua turned around, ran for the door, and opened it as quickly as possible. He wasn’t sure where the vent opened on the other side and ran around the floor as fast as possible. “Where the hell is he?!” he growled, but stopped once he felt his ear perk up at a slight sound that came from around the corner. He bolted and quickly ran around the corner and noticed the thief standing up after getting out of the ventilation shaft. The thief looked him in the eyes and gave him a small salute with two fingers raised before turning around and running away again. Joshua ran after him, the strength returning to him gradually, and he was starting to close in on him. He grinned as the thief turned around the corner since he was heading down a dead end, but the thief didn’t slow down and ran straight towards the window at the end. The thief pulled something from his belt and threw it at the window, making it shatter instantly, and jumped through. Joshua stopped and grabbed the side of the window, looking down, but growling once he saw the person gliding away in a wing-suit into the city. “s**t,” he growled as the cool wind blew in his face, and he watched the city below swallow the thief.