For a moment, Jasper and Mrs. Bridgers stare at each other, neither one seemingly willing to back down. Then suddenly, Mrs. Bridgers cracks. She starts sobbing, dabbing at her powdered cheeks with the back of her hand.
“Please, Jasper,” she says. “I’ve lost my son and my husband. I don’t want to lose my pack.”
“So you know nothing that can help us find your husband?” Jasper shoots back, stone-cold. “What good are you to your pack?”
Mrs. Bridgers’s tears stop abruptly, like she was in full control of them all along. Is she playing some sort of mind game or simply erratic?
Curiosity gets the better of me, so while Jasper continues to grill her, I decide to do a little recon of my own, reaching out with my mind and slipping into hers.
“There was one thing,” she says, tapping her fingers on her knee. “Walter did once share with me his plan for—how did he put it?—his plan to build a superior pack.”
“What did this plan entail?” Jasper asks.
“He always thought Jericho was too soft. He wanted to expand our territory, amass more power. But knowing he could never convince Jericho and his council to go along with such a plan, he started theorizing about what could happen if he gained his own supporters, if he were to recruit alphas from foreign packs and united them against the Elite Pack.”
“You knew this, and you said nothing?” Jasper growls.
She waves his accusation away like it’s a fly pestering her. “It was all theoretical. Chitchat over cocktails. I never imagined he’d actually go through with it.”
“He has,” I say, stepping forward. All eyes in the room turn to me, and I shrink a little, wondering if I should have said anything. But I think the information I have is important enough to share. “The wolves who attacked the packhouse weren’t rogues, they were pack wolves, only they each belonged to a different pack. If they were working for Walter, like they said, then he must have managed to align a number of packs already.”
“So he’s enacting this plan,” Jasper says, turning back to Mrs. Bridgers. “What else do you know about it?”
She takes a big breath, perhaps finally coming to some sort of resolution about exactly what her husband has been up to, right under her turned-up nose, for the last five years. Then turning to the windows and cloud-filled sky, she says, “He calledit the Axis Pack. In his fantasy it would be a stronghold of power, a place where wolves who shared his ideologies would thrive and where dissent would be stamped out.”
“And how many packs does he plan on uniting against us?”
Here she lowers her gaze, staring at her hands, barely uttering the words that escape her lips. “As many as he needs to destroy the Elite Pack.”
With the interrogation done, Jasper orders Mrs. Bridgers to hand over any and all materials she can find that could give any clue as to what Walter is planning. The guards escort her out and back to her town house on the Upper East Side, where she is required to stay with a guard at every exit for the foreseeable future.
“If Walter is uniting packs against us, we have to act fast,” Jasper says, coming to me.
Salazar steps forward. “How can we know what she’s telling us is even accurate?”
“It is,” I say, warranting a suspicious look from Salazar and a pleading one from Jasper. “While she was talking, I connected with her.” Salazar rolls his eyes ever so slightly. “She was telling the truth.”
“You can read minds, but you can’t find my missing daughter,” Salazar says, a sentiment he’s echoed a few times since Olivia left.
I turn to him, intending to hold my ground. “She doesn’t want to be found.”
“That doesn’t matter right now,” Jasper says, cutting in. “If Walter is amassing power and trying to form thisAxisPack, we need to act right away.”
Salazar nods to Jasper deferentially. “What are your orders, sir?”
“My orders?” Jasper asks, taken aback. “What—what do you mean?”
“With your father incapacitated,” Salazar explains, “the succession of power is clear.”
“Meaning?” Jasper sounds terrified and confused.
I step to his side, slipping my hand into his.
“Meaning, you’re in command now, Jasp.”
His palm is instantly clammy, and his face turns white.
ALPHA JASPER
