Victoria's POV
The abandoned warehouse smelled like rust and old motor oil.
Victoria stepped out of her car and scanned the empty parking lot. No one following her. No pack scouts watching. She'd been careful about this meeting. She'd told Cade she was going to see her family on pack business. Had even arranged for fake phone calls to prove she was somewhere else.
He was too distracted about the omega girl to notice anyway.
She pulled a folder from her car and tucked it under her arm. Inside were papers that shouldn't exist. Maps of pack territory. Security protocols. Details about the protection spells Cade had paid witches to place around the border. Everything the rival packs had been dying to know for years.
Everything she'd spent three months stealing piece by piece.
The warehouse door opened and Silas Cross stepped out into the sunlight.
He was tall and lean and had the kind of dangerous energy that made people nervous around him. The Cross Pack Alpha was older than Cade by seven years. Hungrier. Less interested in playing by rules. He'd been trying to take down the Stone Pack for a decade and had never quite managed it.
Until Victoria.
"You came," Silas said, moving toward her with a predator's walk.
"I said I would." Victoria didn't smile. Smiling was for people who needed to win others over. She didn't need to do that. Silas was paying her family for this information. That was transaction enough.
"The documents?" he asked.
Victoria opened the folder. She could see the moment Silas understood what he was looking at. His eyes widened. His hand reached out to touch the papers like they were made of gold.
"This is..." he started.
"Everything," Victoria finished. "Security measures. Patrol routes. Where the protection spells are strongest. Where they're weak. The cave network under the eastern border that Cade thinks nobody knows about. All of it."
Silas flipped through the pages slowly, carefully. Reading. Understanding. Beginning to see the destruction he could cause with this information.
"How did you get these?" he asked.
"I'm his Luna now. I have access to every room in the pack house. I went through his office. His files. He wasn't careful because he didn't think anyone would betray him." Victoria watched him read without emotion. "He's arrogant. That's his weakness."
"How long do we have?" Silas looked up from the documents.
"You need to attack within three weeks. After that, his security will change. He'll rotate the patrol schedules. He'll add more protection spells. Right now there's a window. Three weeks. That's all."
Silas nodded slowly. Then he pulled a bag from his jacket. Fat. Heavy. He set it on the hood of Victoria's car.
"Payment," he said. "Half now. Half when the attack succeeds and Cade is dead."
Victoria looked at the bag and felt something shift inside her chest. Not guilt. She didn't feel guilt. Guilt was something for people who had family that loved them. She had that, but love wasn't part of it. Her family loved what she could do for them. They loved that she could infiltrate packs and steal their secrets and help destroy their rivals.
They didn't love her.
"The attack needs to be coordinated," Victoria said, pushing the bag back at him slightly. "You can't just come in guns blazing. He'll hear about it and he'll fight back. You need to make it look like it's coming from multiple directions. That's the only way you'll catch him off guard."
"I know how to run an ambush," Silas said coldly.
"Do you? Because the last three times you tried to attack Stone Pack territory, you failed. That's why my family sent me in. That's why I'm here. You need my help to win."
Silas stepped closer. There was a moment where Victoria thought he might hurt her. Might decide that a dead spy was less of a risk than a live one. But then he smiled.
"You're right," he said. "Which is exactly why I'm paying you. Which is exactly why your family is going to get what they want. And which is exactly why Cade is going to die."
Victoria took the money. She didn't count it. That would be insulting to both of them. She just held it and looked at Silas and felt the weight of what she was doing settle over her like a second skin.
"Phase one is complete," Silas continued. "You've given me the information. Phase two is the attack. In three weeks, my scouts will flood Stone Pack territory from four different directions. By the time Cade realizes what's happening, his pack will be burning. His people will be dying. And he won't be able to stop it because he won't see it coming."
"What about the girl?" Victoria asked. "The omega?"
"What about her?"
"She ran away after the ceremony. Cade has been searching for her. When the attack happens, will she come back? Will she interfere?"
Silas shrugged. "If she does, we kill her. If she doesn't, we never see her again. Either way, she's not a problem. Cade is the problem. Cade and his arrogance and his strength. Once he's dead, the pack fractures. The leadership crumbles. And the Cross Pack takes over everything."
Victoria nodded. This was the plan. This was what her family had sent her here to accomplish. She'd done her job. She'd done it perfectly. Cade would be dead in three weeks and the Ashford family would be richer and more powerful than they'd ever been.
She should feel satisfied.
Instead she felt empty.
Victoria got back in her car and drove away from the warehouse. She kept thinking about Cade's face the night of the ceremony. About the way he'd looked at the omega girl even while he was kissing Victoria. About the way his wolf had been screaming inside him the entire time.
He'd been miserable. That was the weird part. He'd gotten what he wanted and it was destroying him.
Her phone buzzed as she was pulling back onto the main road.
A text from an unknown number. A number she knew was her family.
"Phase one confirmed. The attack is scheduled for three weeks. The Cross Pack will be ready. Don't get attached to the wolf, Victoria. He's only valuable dead. Finish the job."
Victoria read the message three times.
Then she deleted it.
She should have felt proud. She should have felt like she'd accomplished something important. Instead she just felt tired. Tired and hollow and like maybe her family didn't understand that you couldn't spend months pretending to be someone's Luna without it changing you a little bit.
The three weeks stretched ahead of her. Three weeks of sleeping next to Cade. Three weeks of watching him search for the omega girl. Three weeks of knowing that in exactly twenty-one days, Silas Cross was going to burn his world down.
And Victoria was the reason it was going to happen.