Page 70 of Heart of the Rebel Mate

CHAPTER 19

ELARA

"You're sure about this?" Zara's voice is low, edged with doubt.

I stare down at the crumpled note in my hands, the words scrawled in a careful, deliberate script. A message left behind, but not for us. A directive. An alarm bell being rung. Evidence that someone inside our ranks is working against us.

"I wouldn't say it if I wasn't sure," I reply.

The wind howls outside, rattling the windowpanes of the small, abandoned office we're in. We left the safehouse an hour ago, needing space and quiet. A place to think without a dozen eyes watching.

The note was a fluke. A lucky break. One of Ethan's men found it slipped between the pages of an old ledger, hidden but not well enough. I would have dismissed it if not for the signature at the bottom—an insignia I recognize.

A Council mark.

Someone at the meeting, someone within our supposed inner circle, is reporting back to them.

"This was meant for a drop point," I say, running a finger over the ink. "Someone inside our ranks wrote this. And it was recent—no more than a day old."

Zara exhales sharply, pacing. "Ethan vetted every single person who attended."

"Then he missed something," I say. The words feel like another betrayal, another crack in the fragile foundation we've built. Ethan is careful and methodical. If he didn't catch this, either someone has been very careful or...

I don't want to think about the alternative.

Zara pulls a chair closer and sits down, arms crossed. "Okay. We know there's a mole. We know they were at the meeting. What we don't know is who they are or what they've already told the Council."

I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. "We have to assume the worst. If they've been feeding information back, then the Council already knows about our summit. About the alliances we're trying to build. They know our safehouse locations, our supply routes, maybe even our strategies."

Zara swears under her breath. "Then we're compromised."

I shake my head. "Not yet. They don't know we found this. If they did, they wouldn't have left the note behind."

"Unless they want us to find it," she counters.

The thought chills me. A trap, maybe. A way to make us paranoid, turn us against each other. The Council wouldn't need to dismantle us with force if they could do it from the inside.

I rub my palms together even though it isn't that cold out. "We need to be smart about this. If we start pointing fingers without proof, we'll tear ourselves apart before the Council even makes a move."

Zara nods slowly, considering. "So what's the play?"

"We wait," I say. "We watch. We lay a trap of our own."

Back at the hideout, the air is thick with unease.

The first cracks in our unity have begun to show.

People move in tight clusters, murmuring in hushed voices. Every glance is suspicious, every conversation laced with tension.

I knew it would come to this. The moment the truth got out, the moment whispers of a traitor spread, the rebellion became fragile. Trust is a fragile thing, and we are bleeding it out by the second.

And then the shouting starts.

"You want us to believe you didn't know? That you didn't let someone in who's been feeding the Council information?"

I turn toward the voices. Two men stand near the main table, faces flushed with anger. Their accusations aren't directed at me—not yet—but I know it's only a matter of time.

"We all had a part in deciding who got to be here," someone else says. "We can't start turning on each other without proof."

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