First off, how did I tell them the Outsider Alpha had shifted into a mammoth chestnut wolf right in front of my eyes—two weeks away from a full moon—without sounding crazy?

A shiver slithered down my spine at the mere recollection of how his razor-teethed smile had glinted in the dark, and the way his lupine gaze glimmered with amusement at the sight of my surprise.

One moment I’d been hunting him with the primal intent to kill, and the next, I skidded to a halt at the impossible sight, only to be ambushed from behind with a knock to the back of my head, and a needle to the side of my neck, robbing me of my Gifts for the rest of the night.

“They planned it,” Ysunra said, hailing me back to the present, confirming what I’d also realized the moment they drugged me. “The male that fired the rifle must have known by angering, then taunting you, you would give chase.”

I searched my memory, but I couldn’t recall having seen the captain outside the walls with us.

“Yron told me what happened,” he explained. As perceptive as always. “By the time I got there, the rogues were retreating, and you’d already been gone a few minutes. Your unit set out right after to go look for you, but their reports came back negative right through the night.”

“The bastards covered me with a heavy cloak that smelled like it had been soaked in salt to mask my scent,” I answered his silent question, my voice low with humiliation at having fallen for the trap they’d set for me.

The captain only nodded thoughtfully, his index finger and thumb rubbing his clean-shaven chin, and his eyes distant but still intent. “And once they took you to an abandoned cottage in the woods, they beat you for a while without asking questions.”

I nodded, letting a confused look cross my face. The same confusion I’d felt as one of the Alpha’s cronies smashed my face in, tied to that iron chair—while he and the masked male from the battlefield watched in silence.

“Then they left you there,” Ysunra said, running the order of events through his mind. Clearly, he was trying to find clues as to why the Outsiders had acted so unusually, and why they would take such a big risk and not even try to glean any intel from me.

It was an effort to not let my throat bob as I nodded in confirmation.

“Whatever they injected you with, to suppress your Gifts, must have worn off quicker than they expected,” he mused. “They likely planned to move you to a safer location for the interrogation after they made certain that those out searching for you weren’t too close.”

I stood and watched as he ran everything through his analytical mind again, putting the pieces of information I’d given him together. The silence stretched into a deafening pitch as his mustard eyes seemed to delve deeper into my soul.

I was just about to fall to my knees and confess to everything when he relented. “We’ll try to figure this out another time,” he said and gave me a rare smile. “And thank you for coming to my son’s aid out there, Blade. I am in your debt.”

My knees almost buckled. Smiling and calling people by their first names were things Ysunra simply didn’t do. Ever. At the bafflement I was sure was written all over my face, he smiled again and went back to his chair.

His stoic expression was back in place as he sat down. “We can talk further tomorrow,” Ysunra said without looking at me, his attention on the letter again, the one he’d been reading when I had entered his study an hour ago.

Recognizing a dismissal when I was shown one, I bowed my head at him again before I turned to leave.

“And Commander Breyten.” It was an effort to keep my face straight as I turned. “Be sure to visit an herbalist for a tonic. Your face…we can’t have our female patrons reconsider their donations in the middle of having our training arena renovated.”

I coughed on a laugh, more from shock than from the boulder still stuck in my throat. A smile, gratitude, a first name, and a joke from the captain, all in one morning? The End Times must surely be upon us.

“Right away, sir.”

The moment I was outside Ysunra’s study, Archer and Dexter jumped from their seats, a mixture of wrath and concern evident in their expressions as they came over to me.

“We just heard, and came here as quickly as we could,” Dexter blurted, studying me from head to toe, choler flashing in those whiskies when they landed on my swollen eye again. “Are you—”

“I’m fine,” I interrupted, more harshly than I intended. The flash of hurt in her eyes was like a double-edged punch to my stomach, and then there was Archer’s withdrawn look of accusation he trained on me as he put a protective hand on Dexter’s shoulder.

The hushed murmurings and furtive glances from the other werewolves in the entrance hall only intensified the sudden need to get out—to be anywhere else but here.

“Sorry, I’ll explain everything later,” I said over my shoulder, already making a beeline for the exit.

I stormed through the double doors of Paladin HQ, and some of the pedestrians passing by outside it gasped and jumped back.Ignoring their stares, I descended the steps to the cobblestone street, and just started walking, though I felt like running.

Even while the sun was bright and warm on my face, my heart was enveloped by a cold darkness as hollow and spiritless as the dead’s embrace.

“My name is Marius,” was the very first thing the rogue Alpha had said to me last night.

I then had to suffer through a series of lies and blasphemies spewed by him after that. It hardly mattered I didn’t believe a word Marius had said. The question remained: of all werewolves, why take me?

I was a Paladin Commander, sure, but so were about a dozen others who had been out there last night. And all they seemed to have wanted was to convince me our whole society had been built on lies. It was absurd.

What difference would it possibly have made, in any case, if one Paladin believed them and turned against his city and Prime Alpha?

This was my second concern. If I’d revealed the whole truth of what had happened, especially with Ace listening in, it would have raised these sorts of questions in everyone else’s minds, too. Even Archer and Dexter would start looking at me differently.

No, this was my mess to figure out for myself.

“Find Doxon if you want to know more,” had been the Outsider Alpha’s final words to me before he’d left me shackled to that iron chair to wait out the paralyzer injected into me. “Ask him about your father. He’s an herbalist inside your city.”

As it so happened, I was in need of one—and a healing concoction wasn’t the only thing I was after. I needed answers, and conveniently, I was in the sort of mood to wring every single last one from this rogue spy if need be.