Page 73 of Stargazer

Those words pulled me out of my daze.

“Why’s that?” Griff gruffly demanded, so used to being the leader.

It earned him more than a few glares, particularly from Raven, who had swapped out with Blaze on emissary duty. Bear didn’t look too happy either, but that had been his go-to mood since his mate left over a week ago.

River levelled Griff with a warning look but then cleared his throat and addressed her in a friendlier tone. “What’s going on, Amelia?”

“Well,” she started, “they have another plan for a number of the newly turned. Me included.” She paused for dramatic effect. “They’re going to use us as spies.”

Griffin snorted, leaning back in his chair with his hands behind his head. Carter was also trying to suppress a laugh. The two Knights sitting side by side looking stupidly amused.

A snarl or two sounded at their frequent interruptions, but the hunters paid them no heed.

The strategy room was getting cramped, with the remaining wolves and our task force filling the space. But it was a weirdly nice feeling having everyone together.

“So that makes you what, a Triple Agent?” Zander thought out loud, picking up on what I assumed was also Griffin’s train of thought. Somehow, they seemed to be slowly getting on the same wavelength. And there was not even a single sarcastic comment made at each other today … so far.

Progress.

“Basically,” she answered. “We’ll be sent to various locations; bars, cafes, clubs—you name it—all in an attempt to gather intel on humans. We’re to help the ‘weaning’ process.” She said the word with disgust. “They’re hoping we’ll be able to target the stronger humans this way, the ones less likely to die in transformation and therefore streamline the process.”

River’s look was contemplative. “I can’t tell if that’s civil of them?”

“No,” Griff interrupted. “It’s efficient. The fuckers are being efficient. Not thoughtful or humane. They’re trying to quicken the process and make the most use of their resources.”

“The less trial and error, the less potentials that die on them, the more rogues they make,” Kit added. “And quicker.”

“Fucking clever,” Carter drawled.

“Shit,” Zander swore.

“Well,” Riv breathed out a sigh, “that still means less deaths. Less impulsive attacks.” He deflated in his seat.

“It also means that Amelia will no longer look suspicious. And explains why they haven’t caught on so far. They were probably waiting to see which newbies remained the most civil for the longest and decided they could use it to their advantage,” I added.

“Exactly,” Amelia confirmed. “That’s essentially what they were doing.”

Griff rubbed his jaw, gaze focused on the wall of forest outside the window. “We can use this to our advantage. We’ll know the targets beforehand.”

After another hour or so of strategizing, we split up, most of the Knights heading back to the HQ or out to patrol.

The rest of us made our way to the giant and open space of the pack house lounge where we threw on a movie; a nice light-hearted comedy, since that’s all any of us could stand right now.

Between patrols and meetings and training, we’d all been running ourselves ragged and needed all the downtime we could muster up. The dark circles under my eyes were a testament to that.

Bear had gone to relieve the brothers of sentry duty for the night and Zander would be joining him shortly, but in the meantime the Beta and Skylar were whipping up some dinner in the kitchen, the enticing aroma wafting into the lounge. It was quite late in the evening now and my unconscious salivating and painfully empty stomach reminded me that we had not eaten in a while.

Kit and Billie were currently on Knight patrol, and Axel, Aubrey, Blaze and Tanner were out liaising with the other packs. That left River, Griffin, Carter, Sage, Raven and myself at the house. Though Riv had dozed off where he sat on the far edge of the couch into what seemed like an extremely restful and much-needed sleep. Knowing him, he likely felt more comforted and relaxed having people around—such was the life of a wolf.

We were joined soon after by Dalton and Koda.

The boys bounded into the house with an alarming amount of energy considering they’d just come from a shift and basically threw themselves onto the couches among us. Somehow, they didn’t wake up the Alpha.

We paused the movie to update them on what we’d learnt from Amelia, trying to keep our voices down even though it seemed River’s sleep was thriving on the noise and chaos of his pack.

Beside me, I felt Griffin’s unease grow once again at the topic of our conversation and it took only a few minutes before he seized the opportunity to blow off some steam with a late-night training session, forcing Carter to be a not-so-willing participant.

The Maddox brothers, always so full of life and constantly struggling to sit still, were more than happy to join them, leading Griff out to the already dark backyard.

---