Violet Ashes: The Blood Ridge Alpha - Chapter 67: Chapter 67

Perry's hands are moving over her keyboard faster than I have ever seen them before. This is insanely personal for all of us. Because of this bitch, Knight was lashed. He took the blame for Red getting away to spare fourteen-year-old Perry from taking that punishment. I sit back and watch her verify the codes.
"Do you want me to secure the codes in place, just in case?" she asks after a while.
"Yes, please. All of it is going to be ours anyway," I sigh. Seriously, Riley?
She glances at me without stopping. I hate it when she does that. What if she gets something wrong?
"Are you upset your human is fucking the hacker that tried to steal from us?" she asks. She pauses and looks up at me. "She's my age?"
"Yeah," I nod. She continues to work quietly for a while. "And no, I'm kind of over the whole thing. Since we're going to rob them blind and everything."
"This her?" she points at the monitor.
A file comes up and I have to double-take. Riley Galaxia. A Lycan aristocrat who walked away from her family because there were two of them. She's far enough away from her sister to appear normal. They're from Croatia. I have to go over the information a few times before my brain catches up.
"What the fuck?"
"There are others like her. The flowers wouldn't be as strong as they are if it weren't for Jordan. Her mate is out there somewhere. That's how she used to do it then. It was before she walked away from killing her sister. She had our speed to be able to keep up. She tried it again, but the code stopped about a third of the way. I've made it more difficult to crack over the years. But it's a match."
"She's two years older than you. It must have been around the time they had to kill one another. Can you imagine what she would have become if she had done it?" I look up at her.
"I should kill one of them," her nose twitches.
"Just give me the order. You're the Queen. That's what the riff-raff is here for," I smirk. "How long are you here for?"
"I told Jonas I'd stay the weekend. Was hoping we could provoke the Hunters a little," she smirks.
"All right, but no fighting. Vince hasn't been having a great month, and the last thing I want is to piss him off by going to jail. Let's hang out. What is Phoebe doing?"
"You haven't spoken to Knight?"
"No, did something happen?"
"Xochtl's trial is coming up for her part in poisoning Ayrie. There are still traces of that in her saliva. Arnold thinks that her wolf might be active inside of her, but knows that Ayrie's body is still too small to shift."
"I still can't believe they did that," I admit. "She's such a cute little girl. If her wolf is active, it's going to have some serious issues when they're older."
"That is Papa Knight's teenage nightmare," she laughs. "Phoebe is proving to be an asset. We've been weaving through the pack's financials because she's got the pack wolves wondering who's alpha kid she is. There is no way that little girl survived on Knight's genes alone. And a female alpha is not exactly common among us. She's of high rank."
"Are you thinking royal guard? Eight families she could have come from. Including yours."
"I think I'd know if there was another Nelson out there," she rolls her eyes.
"We could have avoided this if we had taken care of the problem before it went public."
"With how public Knight's personal life is, Phoebe would have found out. I advised Knight to be transparent with her."
"All he's doing is putting her in danger."
"She's already in danger. She's connected to him, and so are the pups. I had planned not to make it when the King asked me for help. I'm here now and it's my job to protect the King from all the shit I did. I can't do that by lying to him. I'm not strong enough alone. Even if she's not one of us, she's still going to turn. Knight or Arnold will train her. Those pups wouldn't survive without her anymore."
A part of me is getting upset about this. It feels like she's scolding me. Now would probably be a good time to tell her the truth. If only to get it off my chest. She starts shutting down the computers.
I don't know if I agree with her or their choice. This destroyed her and Darren. In the months leading up to his death, things got all twisted. Darren became a threat. He wasn't killed because he was an overachiever. Perry was always the asset required to establish the Syndicate. She was what the wraith needed.
Darren held too much power over her, and with the baby on the way, her attention would have shifted. The company and the syndicate wouldn't have been the success it is now. I'd never sensed fear in the wraith, not until he thought he'd lost her. He lost control and it shook him enough for him to make all kinds of mistakes.
"I'm hungry. Let's go," I chicken out and reach for my purse.
"Hells yeah, me too. You know a place we can trust?"
"Yeah, Barnes owns it," I nod.
"He is all in your grill. You hitting that? I saw the way he was looking at you during the meeting. He looks so ready to eat you."
"Do you remember that girl, Sam, who intercepted us in Cancun back in 2019?"
"Yes! You two almost killed one another. It was the first time I ever saw you cry with relief," she snorts.
"She runs his guns. I was trying to get a look into their compound, and she snuck up on me. The bikers were half-naked, working on these super sexy Choppers. I got away from them. Had them running around in circles."
"Sick," she holds her hand back since she's walking ahead of me. I slap her, and we get into the elevator. "So, weird topic. The King and I discussed offspring last night."
"What?" Why do I get a sinking feeling every time I should be feeling happy?
"Yeah, I was getting a physical and the Doc told me that my body has completely healed. All traces of wolf are gone. That I should be in good shape for the blood moon."
I swallow hard, wishing I could be excited and happy for her. I am, the bigger part of me is, but when she told me the first time, all I felt was dread. I had warned her from the moment she told me that Darren was her mate. I told her to be careful, but up until her life went down the drain, staining everything red, she really believed she could have more than the life her father tried to force her to have.
"Are you ready for that, right now?" I ask, unsure of how she wants me to react. Uncertain of how I want to respond.
"No," she shakes her head once we're inside the car. I let out a heavy sigh of relief. "What?" she laughs. "You don't think I can do it?"
"I know you can do it," I pat her head. "I just think you should work on yourself and your mating before jumping into something that big. You died, Perry. We lost you. I know it's not my place to tell you that, but you're my best friend, and I'm scared that what happened before will repeat itself. I don't want to lose you again."