They Erased My Name. Now Every Alpha Kneels to Me Chapter 07

They Erased My Name. Now Every Alpha Kneels to Me Chapter 07 – The Case Nobody Could Solve

They gave me Thorne’s caseload.

Director Hale pushed the stack across the table without a word, which is this institution’s version of a coronation and

a punishment at the same time.

“Commander Ashgrove, since this is your first council, allow me to explain how-”

“Please proceed if it makes you comfortable, Your Majesty,” I said. “But I’ve read the arbitration statutes. If something’s unclear, you’ll know, because I’ll ask.”

Prince Soren put his hand over his mouth.

The King opened the second file himself. “Then let’s begin with the one that’s about to become a body count. Two packs. One strip of land. Eleven hundred acres between the Redmarch and Hollowbrook territories. Two years of escalation. Four failed arbitrations. Both Alphas have refused every compromise offered.”

“Locke’s unit worked it,” Hale said. “Twice.”

“We got nowhere.” Locke’s voice was flat with old frustration. “Neither will speak to the other. Redmarch has forty men on the fence line. Hollowbrook has fifty.”

“How long has the land itself been vacant?” I asked.

“…Vacant?”

“Empty. Unused. How long?”

Nobody answered.

“Second question.” I turned my palm up. “What reason did either pack give for wanting it?”

Silence. Seven Commanders and a king, all looking at each other.

The King turned pages, slowly, one after another.

“There’s no reason recorded,” he said quietly. “In two years, nobody asked.”

“Two years,” Nyx said, delighted. “Two years of grown men measuring each other’s fences, and not one of them asked

why.”

“Do you mind if I take a swing at it, Your Majesty?”

He handed me the file without a single question, and I watched six Commanders register exactly what that meant

Locke caught up with me in the corridor.

Up close he’s absurd. Six-two, gray eyes, a scar through one eyebrow, and the particular stillness of a man who has

never once needed to prove he’s dangerous.

“You’ve been living on the other side of my wall for a year,” he said.

“You’ve been calling me ‘he’ for a year.”

“In my defense, you never came out of your wing.”

“In my defense, your unit’s first thought about mine was to ask how many of my women were willing.”

He stopped walking. “Say that again.”

“Reece and the tall blonde. Courtyard, oath day.” I kept going. “You have a discipline problem, Commander. Fix it

before I do.”

“Oh, he’s very confused right now,” Nyx said happily. “He can’t decide whether to be furious or to marry you.”

“Neither. He’s a colleague.”

“Mm.”

Back in our wing, I told my unit about Thorne. The room went dead quiet, and then Nessa started to cry, and Torin put his forehead against hers, and Juno said, “You hit him?”

“I hit him.”

“In front of the King?”

“The King was extremely helpful about it.”

“No need to thank me,” I said, when Nessa tried. “That’s the job. And every one of you hear this: if anyone in this organization puts a hand or a threat on you, you come to me first. Not after. First.”

Then I handed out files, and by evening every Captain had matched their team to a case with a precision that made me stupidly, genuinely proud.

We took the land dispute as a full unit.

Della and Ansel spent the drive digging. Two hours in, Ansel said, “Commander. Those eleven hundred acres have been empty for a hundred and eighteen years. No structures, no grazing, no timber. Nothing. Ceded jointly in 1908 and

neither pack has touched it since”

*1908,” I repeated.

Something moved in the back of my skull. A cold little finger down the neck.

“What happened in 1908?”

“Nothing in the pack records,” Della said. “That’s the weird part. There’s a whole year missing from both archives.”

We stopped at a roadside diner an hour out. Perry, who has no sense of self-preservation, asked, “What were you like

as a kid, Commander?”

I thought about lying. I told the truth instead – my father’s office, the small desk, the phone I wasn’t supposed to

answer and answered anyway.

“Hewwo, Ashgwove house. Who you want?” I said, in a toddler pitch.

Perry’s jaw came off.

“It was my father’s oldest friend. He laughed. I thought he was laughing at me, so I hung up on him.”

By the time I got to the part where my father banned me from the phone and I kept answering it for six more years, half my unit was crying into their fries.

For about four minutes, I forgot I’d been thrown away.

Then we rolled up to the disputed border at sunset, and there were ninety armed men facing each other across eleven hundred acres of empty grass with their hands on their weapons.

Not on my watch.

I got out of the SUV, walked into the middle of that field alone, and heard a hundred and eighty heartbeats change at

once.

“Gentlemen,” I said. “Two questions, and then you can all go home.”