The Luna's Betrayal

Chapter 12

Austin’s POV

Sierra had just left the room, leaving Aaron and I to talk. My first priority was finding out more about this woman, Heather, and what pack she was from. I needed to give that information to James so he could make sure that she was aware of our plan, at least some parts of it. Being so close to Sierra meant, naturally, I had become close to Aaron as well. I knew he trusted me with her life, which is exactly what I wanted.

"I heard your trip went well for the most part," I started, knowing I wanted to get this information as quickly as possible.

"It did," he replied, sitting back in his chair. "I didn’t really learn anything I didn’t already know, but it was a nice refresher for some old and new strategies. I really think our company needs to start branching out and finding some new voices to publish."

"Yeah, that’s a great idea. Honestly, it won’t be long before Sierra is up there with the top-ranking editors, I think."

"I do too, but she won’t let me put her in that position yet. She’s worried some people will think she got it because of me."

"But we all know that’s not true," I told him.

"I know, but I wanna do what she wants. She’s happy with the position she has. Even if she now has to work with her old boss."

"Yeah, she told me about that. Sounds like a recipe for disaster if you ask me." Putting a little doubt into their relationship before we brought Heather into the equation didn’t seem like a bad idea.

"I’m not sure. She said he sounded sincere in his apology, and I trust her. I’m sure she would say something to him if he took things too far."

"You’re right, I’m just overthinking things. Speaking of taking things too far, she told me you had quite the experience on your last night!" I said, raising my eyebrows.

"Oh, she must have told you about Heather."

"She certainly did. I can’t believe how far she took things!"

"I should have seen it coming. She was more than forward the entire conference and then she invited me down to the bar for drinks on the last night. A bunch of other people were there, so I figured what harm could there be?"

"I’m guessing that only fueled her weird fetish for you?"

"I’m not sure what I did. She banged on my door at like 2 in the morning completely sh*t faced. She ended up passing out where she stood, and I took her back to her room. I had to break the door slightly to get in, but at least I knew she was safe for the night."

"What happened when she woke up in the morning?"

"I have no idea. I left as early as I could so I could avoid seeing her." That meant she was going to have a lot she wanted to talk to him about.

"And Sierra said she’s from a wolf pack also?"

"Yeah, she’s the daughter of the Beta at Blue River in Chicago. We met a few times at other events, but this was a whole new level of weirdness."

"What company does she work for?”

"She works for Insight Press."

"I haven’t heard of them before."

"They’re out in Chicago where her pack is. They’re a smaller company we acquired about 7 years ago."

"Well, I guess she wants what she can’t have," I laughed.

"I guess that’s true. She didn’t show much interest in me before I had a mate."

"Some people are like that. Now, what did you want me to do for this summit?" I had gotten the information I wanted, so I no longer had to pretend to be invested in this conversation.

"Oh right, we’ll as one of our best warriors, I’ll need you to help with the control of the crowd and making sure no one gets out of line. This many Alphas in one place is a fight waiting to happen. Especially when you add alcohol into the mix."

"I can absolutely do that. Should I get Justin involved?"

"Yeah, I’ll have a talk with him first and then I’m sure he’d love your input on a game plan for the evening. I’d love it if you were able to attend the event. As our strongest warrior, and such a close friend, I consider you an honorary ranking member, along with Justin."

"If only he knew how high ranking we are about to be. From warrior to Beta, in less than a day. We still have to find a way to leave this pack once Aaron kills Alpha Cal."

"I’m not worried about that. He’ll be so distracted he won’t even notice. We can come up with some excuse."

"Why don’t I go find Justin and ask him to come see you? I think he’s still in the training facility."

"Yeah, that would be great," Aaron responded. I got up from my chair as my wolf Heeler smiled an evil grin. Getting the information we wanted had been all too easy. Darting into one of the side rooms that was used for conferences or tutoring, I pulled out my phone to call James. He answered after only a few rings.

"I have the information you wanted," I told him.

"Da*n, that was fast."

"It’s easy to get what you need when you’re trusted."

"Well, spit it out!" He demanded.

"Her name is Heather, she’s the daughter of the Beta of the Blue River pack in Chicago and she works for Insight Press. With all that, it should be easy to make sure she’s at the summit. Since her father is the Beta, make sure that they know families are welcome, and once she hears about what we want to do, I'm sure she'll jump at the chance."

"Perfect, you should look on the invite list and see if Blue River is on there. If not, I’ll tell Alpha Connor to send over a revised guest list. I’ll just explain their significance if he asks why they should be invited. It shouldn’t be too hard.”

"Okay, and I’ll find the guest list and get a good look at it. If this all works out, our plan could be in motion in a matter of weeks."

"That means I need to start making preparations and find some place to hold her until we can take her to the black market. They have their own holding cells."

"Make sure to tell them not to sell her until the bid is over one billion," I reminded him.

"You really think someone will pay that for one supernatural creature?"

"I do when she’s the first primordial wolf born in decades."

"You’re right, and we can hold on to her for as long as we need. Aaron’s going to think Cal did it and after he’s dead he’ll try to find her, but he’s not going to be able to."

"Maybe we can make Sierra break their bond, make him think she died?"

"We might have to. That way he stops looking."

"We can talk more about this later. I’m supposed to be going to find and talk to Justin."

"Fine, just keep me updated."

We hung up the phone at the same time. Now I needed to go talk to Justin and send him Aaron’s way. I could have mind linked him, but I wanted to take a few minutes to really think about our plan.

So far, we have managed to gain Sierra and Aaron’s trust, change the location of the Alpha summit, and find out more about Heather. Now I just had to play along until the summit. Play a doubting, trusting best friend until it was time to make my move. My mom would gladly provide anything we needed to take her; I knew that.

When I got to the training facility, I saw Justin sparring with a couple of young warriors. It seemed Sierra’s plan to light a fire under them worked because they looked to be training much harder than before.

"Justin!" I called, attempting to get his attention. He looked over at me, but took a roundhouse kick to the face because of my distraction. "Sorry!" I called as he massaged his cheek, giving me an annoyed look. "Alpha Aaron wants to talk to you."

"Why?" He called back.

"Change of plans for the Alpha Summit. It’s being held here now. He wants to talk to you about security for the day."

"Seriously?" he asked, wiping sweat from his forehead. "Why would they change it at the last minute?"

"I have no idea, but now Sierra and Aaron are trying to scramble to get things ready."

"Alright, Talia, we'll finish this later," he said to the young woman he had been sparring with.

"I can jump in if you want," I told him.

"What are you doing? We need to go with Justin and look at the guest list!" Heeler growled in annoyance. "You're getting too comfortable here, don't lose focus!"

"Alright, alright! I still have a part to play here!"

"That's okay," Talia responded. "I think I'm gonna go spar with Alma." She walked away from us, in the direction of the weights.

"Is there something wrong with us? Why doesn't she wanna train with us?"

"Now who's losing focus?"

"Austin," Justin asked, pulling me out of my discussion with Heeler.

"What?"

"Are you coming with me? I'm assuming Aaron wants to talk to you about this as well."

"Oh, yeah, right." I followed Justn from the training facility, thinking about what we could do the night of the summit to make things easier for us.