Chapter 27: Chapter 27

“It was about a week ago. My mother went missing, but before I could say anything to the Hunter Agency, they called me. They showed me proof of my mum being alive, a live video of her strapped to a chair and gagged. Her vitals were also being monitored. She was at their mercy and they had her bound in chains strong enough to withstand a Prometheus gift. That only told me that she had been ambushed or tricked since her gift is agility. My hands were tied... they warned me not to get any crazy ideas because they had ears everywhere. I didn’t know what they meant at first until they started telling me things that I alone was supposed to know.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

My last option was to hope that your intuition was good enough to pick up on everything that was going on. I was told to put on a good show and persuade a large turnout at the Hunters’ training ground. I didn’t want to, but what choice did I have. Any form of bad acting and my mother would be dead. I had to cause a commotion and lead a large number of civilians...” he couldn’t stomach what he was saying at this point.

“Keep going Shaemus. As long as it’s your mother involved, I can overlook everything you did, nobody died,” Katie said.

“You might be able to overlook it, but I can’t do that so casually when even now they still have my mother and might only be waiting to give me more orders that I’ll have to carry out. I can’t keep going for much longer, Katie,” Katie could shake the feeling of relief and pride for her comrade. As much as he was in pain at the moment, she was only happy that he was still himself... as self-righteous as he had always been.

“Continue, Shaemus,” she told him.

“When we got to the clearing, I wanted to find a way to tell you. The rogues were going to attack and I knew it, but I couldn’t tell anyone. The only person I could trust in the entire school was you and simply because you are a pro hunter. That speaks for itself though I didn’t know that you were a pro hunter until an hour before our meeting in the clearing. My last resort was to burn down the five minutes you gave me, wasting up all my energy, using it to try and relay the one message that I couldn’t relay to you,” he explained, chuckling at the end, “you have such a great intuition. I could see it in your eyes, the caution. The feeling that something was not right and all I needed to do was to help you confirm it.”

“Do you really think they have spies that are always watching us?” he said.

.....

“To prove it, they organized a meeting with one of them, a student in our same class passing as a human. There was no way I could tell that he was a rogue. Even as the student stood in front of me claiming to be a rogue, I couldn’t help but laugh at him like it was some sick joke. That was... until he punched my gut,” he closed his eyes cringing at the enemy, “that skinny boy packed a punch. I know superhuman strength when I see it. I just never thought it would one day hit me and not to mention from a fellow student. From that moment, everyone in the school was a suspect. I had no idea how many they were or who they were. There was even a possibility of being friends with them. The perfect infiltration, they called it.”

“I met one of them. He went through a Prometheus evaluation and passed. He was just a child of fifteen years that I had saved the day before from Dexter. They are able to conceal their presence by suppressing their wolves using some pills. The downside is that the pills only work until they turn eighteen. Quite repulsive if you ask me,” Katie said.

“That boy was still young. He is bound to have less information than the others who have been there for months. Rumour has it that some of them have been there for years,” he said.

“The boy said the seven of them were all that were there and we killed them. I’m hoping he was at least right in that aspect. I have one question though. Why did you choose me?”

“I trust you, Katie. I have been put through hell in the past week. Of all the lessons that you taught me back then, one seemed to come back to me and that was trusting my intuition. The only person I could feel safe handling this information with no chance of being a spy was you. I just had to find a way to get the information to you without risk of anyone hearing us. And the only way that I could do that...”

“Was to frame me and have me brought here so that we can talk about this in private,” Katie finished the statement, the entirety of Shaemus’ logic finally settling into her mind. She couldn’t blame him for trying to save his mother, but she also couldn’t deny the fact that he still went through with the plan with no knowledge of how many of the rogues would be attacking.

“Exactly... I’m glad I could at least tell someone about it. It’s been killing me,” he laid back into the bed breathing out a heavy sigh of relief.

“Did they tell you why they wanted you to gather a group as large as that one?” Katie asked.

“No, they didn’t. They would only say that they wanted the school to get a bit more interesting, but that was a lie, obviously. I came to the conclusion that they were planning an attack on the civilians that I would gather on that day. Once again, I’m sorry for the trouble I caused you,” he said.

“It’s okay... my only aim right now is to get all the facts right and make a full assessment of how much infiltration they went through,” Katie said, “I still wonder why you went through with it. What if they were more of them that attacked us?”

“Even if they were more, they weren’t going to attack at once with a Royal, three alphas and a pro hunter on the scene. I don’t know what their goal was, but it was suicide to attack. One other thing I noticed is that they always kept their numbers a mystery like they were many. This could have just been a smokescreen to keep me paranoid about how they were everywhere. The more I thought of it, the more I saw the chances of the civilians surviving,” he said.

“You call it survival when some of them are in rehabilitation because of the trauma they went through. In that commotion, it was very possible for them to die just from being trampled in the fray,” Katie snapped at him. Shaemus closed his eyes, a painful expression gracing his face.

“I am not saying I justify what I did... what would you have done in my shoes?”

“You and I are very different people... especially when it comes to our power difference. That said, I’d probably hunt down the Rogue king. Something tells me he doesn’t stay too far from the spies he wants to actively control like this. At the rate with which they are receiving orders, he can’t be far,” she surmised.

“Couldn’t he be giving the orders through a phone?”

“That would be a convenient way to do it, but phone calls can be tracked and listened to. If anyone caught wind of a phone call that revealed their plans, his plans would be ruined,” she said.

“You make a valid point, but what you are suggesting is...”

“The Rogue King is not far from here. He could be hiding in a hidden compound deep within the forest well out of hunter territory. And if I am merely overthinking it, he could be in town hiding in plain sight, that is if he found some way to mask his scent from every werewolf in the vicinity,” She said.

“That would be a difficult task to achieve. If suppression of a wolf only works for underage werewolves as you said, it would be hard for him to mask his presence, not to mention the fact that he is among the high ranking wolves,” he said. It was good to see that he could still reason even under all that guilt. The look was good on him, even after that, why couldn’t she wipe the feeling of terror from her mind.

“Something is bothering me and won’t let go of me,” she said before she could stop herself.

“You mean like...” Shaemus was stopped when the rushed footsteps of someone running broke through the silence of the Detention Centre. Keys rattled along with the sound of the footsteps. The person was getting closer to their door. Katie checked her watch and it had only been thirty minutes since she was locked in and not an hour. Her feeling of dread got even more pronounced the closer the person came. She got up to her feet, her body shivering with the urge to get moving. After jiggling the keys into the keyhole frantically, the door swung open, a guard tumbling into the cell and dropping to his knees, completely out of breath that he could not speak even if he wanted to. Someone needed Katie’s help and she wasn’t going to make it in time...