Claiming Treasure
Crucial Conversations

Alpha Rori King’s POV

Arrowhead Pack House, Alpha Offices

“They will kill you.”

I thought about what Vic just told me, and he was right. It was worse than that, though.

“Vic, they will kill you too,” I said. “They were in your house. They have your scent, maybe one of them recognized it. The house is in her name, but a simple records search will show the two of you are married.”

“Fuck me sideways,” I heard him say over the phone. “Spider Monkey didn’t just step in a pile of shit. No, that would be easy. She stomped on it before kicking it around the house, then tracked it over the white carpet.”

“Yeah.”

Chase figured it out before me. “You need to get off the road and off the grid now,” he said. “DO NOT go to Cascade Pack; if they have people watching it, and if the Council has a mole there, they will know. The Council has Spider as a human who knows all their secrets. You are her accomplice, with a grudge against the Council because you fell for a human. Both of you will have kill orders against you; I bet the Council is already drafting the order.”

“We can’t let them get away with this,” Spider Monkey answered. “These people are evil; I watched the trials, and they grant Heather asylum in public, then authorize a hit on her in private! If they hurt Heather, nothing is going to stop me from taking them down.”

“I’m not saying we let them get away with anything. I’m just saying we have to be careful how we go about it. You’ve got one phone conversation, gained illegally. How can I use it without condemning myself?” I leaned back into Chase’s chest. “We can’t let this explode into open warfare; too many people will get hurt that way.”

“What do you mean? You WON at trial,” Spider Monkey said. “Two-thirds of the Pack supported you!”

She didn’t understand Pack politics. “I know we convinced two-thirds of the Alphas that I shouldn’t be punished further, but that was vastly different than this. Heather was exposed to us by accident, in a way that was the werewolf’s fault, not hers. You found out under the nose of one of my Pack members. Many will see this as a failing of me as an Alpha and a leader. If I try and protect you, it’s going to be even worse. I don’t know if my family would be enough to protect us.”

Vic didn’t answer for ten or fifteen seconds. “I cannot drag you or the Pack down with me,” he said. “I owe you too much. Let my daughter know I’m sorry I won’t be able to see her again. She can have everything I left behind.”

“You can tell her yourself,” I said. “The Council hasn’t sent out a communication yet, so she won’t be under Alpha command to report your call. Tell Celeste how much you love her, but don’t tell her anything she shouldn’t know.

“I appreciate your loyalty, Vic,” Chase said. “When your chain of command is corrupt, you can’t depend on the institution to police itself. Change has to come from the outside, and justice as well.”

“You are right. Spider Monkey was my charge, and what she has done is on me, not you. I renounce you as my Alphas, and declare myself no longer to be part of the Arrowhead Pack.”

“You can’t join another Pack; none would dare take you in. You’ll be a rogue wolf, hiding from us all,” Chase said.

“I’ll be alive with my wife and our child,” Vic said. “You do not know where I am or what I am doing, and you will not hear from us again. May the blessings of Luna be upon you and the Arrowhead Pack,” he said.

“Vic, I just wish someone would do to the Council and those evil Alphas what we did to the Sons,” I said. If they were breaking bad, they should go all the way. Make those fuckers suffer. “May her blessings rest upon you and your family, Vic.” I wiped away a tear. “Goodbye.”

Chase reached forward and ended the call. I was breaking down in his lap, so he took care of the announcement. “Attention Arrowhead Pack. Former Beta Vic Knightly has admitted that he and his wife Spider Monkey hacked the Werewolf Council server. His reckless and illegal actions have broken the trust of our Pack and our People as a whole. Vic is no longer a member of the Arrowhead Pack. He and Spider Monkey are now fugitives. No member of the Arrowhead Pack may initiate contact with him or his wife, and any contact with them is to be reported to your Alphas immediately. We will discuss this further at a Pack meeting following dinner, so please hold any questions until then. Continue with your work.”

I leaned my head against his chest as the tears flowed. He rocked me in the office chair while his fingers massaged the knot in my neck. “We’re running out of Betas,” I said.

“We’ve got a couple of old bikers,” he teased.

“Thank Luna we have Ron and Teri coming back.” I sat up quickly. “Oh shit. They’re going to think Teri was in on it too. She’s in danger!”

He looked at the clock. “They’ll be landing in Minneapolis in an hour, and our driver will bring them back. Those people who burned down the house might still be around. What are you thinking?”

“We tell them the truth,” I said. I filled him in on the plan before we made the phone call.

“Chairman Coffey’s office,” a woman answered.

“This is Alpha Rori King, calling from Arrowhead. I need to speak to the Chairman or an available Council member. It’s urgent.”

“One moment, please.”

She put me on hold, but not for long. “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH YOUR PEOPLE, ALPHA RORI,” Chairman Coffey yelled.

“I know who the hacker is, Mr. Chairman. It’s a human, who goes by the name Spider Monkey. She’s the one my Beta Vic got pregnant,” I said.

“We KNOW about your Spider problem. I sent the exterminators your way.”

I looked out the window, where I could still see the smoldering hole where Spider Monkey’s house used to be. “That was you?”

“People loyal to me figured it out Spider Monkey was the hacker eight hours ago.” I could tell he was still pissed.

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“Because I don’t trust you outside a jail cell, Rori. Alpha John says his Beta Brian Steele broke his Pack bond, and now he’s disappeared with your Betas. They never checked out with the team, and no one can reach them.”

“I didn’t direct my Betas to do anything, and I haven’t even talked to them,” I said. That was true since they had called Chase. “Look, Mr. Chairman, I have my own problems to deal with today. I don’t have time for your baseless accusations or secret squirrel antics. Spider Monkey and Vic just got off the phone with me. The ungrateful fucks heard about their house, and they think I did it when I found out they hacked MY server. If I don’t transfer them a million dollars by noon tomorrow, they’re going to release it all on the Internet.”

“SON OF A BITCH,” he said.

“You and I haven’t agreed on coming out to humans, but an old werewolf plus a skilled hacker with a grudge is about the worst-case scenario. I’m going to pay it, I have no choice,” I said.

“Fine.” I heard some people talking in the background. “If Steele shows up with your Betas, give Alpha John a call.”

“Yes, Mr. Chairman.” He hung up without saying goodbye.

“And now we wait,” Chase said.

Spider Monkey’s POV

I-5, Northern California

“I’m sorry, baby.” I’d been crying ever since Vic hung up the phone. I’d ruined everything; my home was a smoldering mess, my friends couldn’t talk to me, and Vic had to give up his Pack and his daughter.

I could see Vic was struggling with it too. “Why?”

I blew my nose, then leaned back against the seat. I’d hidden so much from Vic, and if I kept secrets now, I’d lose him for sure. “When Frank and Colletta stayed with us, that afternoon you went back to work, I saw their computer connect, and they were streaming a video. Since they were on my network, I used their login to see what they were watching. It was the Council trial of Chase and Rori, the live feed.”

“Oh shit,” he said.

“Yeah. I couldn’t stop watching, and my emotions were all over the place. I realized you had hidden things from me, BIG things, but it wasn’t just you. Chase, Rori, Teri, Ron- all of them were werewolves, and nobody trusted me enough to tell me. Not even you, not even after we got married.”

He at least looked guilty. “I couldn’t tell you, not after what had happened with Chase and Rori and Heather. They would have killed you.”

“I figured that out as I watched the trial, and then I wasn’t mad at you. My Big Dog was trying to protect me. I was mad at the Council and those Alphas just for threatening Heather, who hadn’t done anything but love a man. I watched a few of the trials, and then I decided to hack the system so I’d have all the data.”

“And you got caught.”

“Yes. Four days ago, the updates stopped coming, and I got a notification the worm programs had activated. I had those set up to wipe out all traces of my hack, but it didn’t work.”

He didn’t say anything as we drove north. “I’m not sorry I hacked the data. If I hadn’t, we wouldn’t have found out about the plot against Carson and Heather.”

“We don’t even know if the warning helped,” he said. “I need to think.”

His silence hurt more than anything else. When he refused to even look back at me, I went back to work. I had to see what else I could dig up from the archives.