Chapter 157: And You Brought Me In
Seven stopped walking, all the color draining from his face at Rodrigo’s revelation.
“What do you mean… they want to be immortals?” Seven asked, staring at Rodrigo in utter disbelief. “How is that even possible?”
“It seems it is very well possible, seeing how far they’ve gone to get their hands on the Vothraki.”
Goosebumps spread across Seven’s skin. “The late Alpha’s death, your kidnapping… everything…”
For a moment, Rodrigo said nothing. His gaze remained fixed somewhere beyond the courtyard, toward the dark horizon where the mountains vanished beneath the night sky.
Then he nodded.
“That’s why Hades is here,” Seven said, looking at Rodrigo with rising worry. “How many Alphas are with them? If there are more than you think, then… we’re fighting a much bigger war.”
The words settled heavily between them.
Seven shook his head slowly, refusing to accept the reality of it all. If the Alphas of the Northern packs were truly in support of Hades, they were in serious trouble.
“Who else on the council knows?” Seven asked, his voice dropping as his gaze narrowed. “Does my father?”
Rodrigo shook his head. “I don’t think Lord Hogan knows. They wouldn’t risk telling one of my people about it. But it’s obvious—if Lord Vance, who always refused to indulge in pack politics, could sell his own daughter for a chance at immortality, then no one is above being enticed.”
A moment of heavy silence passed.
“The Blood Moon is closing in,” Rodrigo added, “and if they want to get their hands on the Vothraki, they’ll try to kill me, or get me out of the way.”
“Hence the attack at the cemetery,” Seven noted, his hands folding into tight fists.
“There will be more attacks. They’ve come too far to stop now, and they’ll stop at nothing until they get their hands on the book.”
The cold night air brushed against Rodrigo’s face, his hands eerily still by his sides. For the first time in years, he felt a flicker of genuine fear. He lowered his head, drawing a slow, deliberate breath to center himself.
“The Matriarch—does she know about all of this?” Seven asked.
Rodrigo’s jaw tightened, his brows furrowing. “My grandmother, whom I trusted implicitly, has known all along. She left me in the dark.”
Seven went still, his eyes wide with shock.
A dark, humorless laugh escaped Rodrigo’s throat. “She was in cahoots with them until they killed her son and I was kidnapped. Only then did she realize that sacrificing human lives to live longer was wrong.”
Seven could hardly breathe. He grabbed his hair with both hands, pacing back and forth before snapping back toward Rodrigo, his chest heaving. Everything he thought he knew suddenly felt like a cruel joke. They had been nothing more than puppets in a game they didn’t even realize they were playing.
Seven swallowed hard. “What are we going to do? The other Alphas will be here in a few days—how are we going to safeguard the Vothraki from them?”
A strange, suffocating silence filled the courtyard. Even the guards stationed farther away seemed to have melted into the shadows. The wind swept through the stones, carrying a bitter, biting cold.
Rodrigo clenched his teeth, his eyes hardening into flint. “With my life,” he said, pulling the Alpha’s seal from inside his tunic.
Seven’s gaze fell upon the hexagonal silver object.
“The only way they’re getting their hands on the Vothraki is over my dead body.” Without wasting another second, Rodrigo turned and strode forward. “Let’s go.”
Seven hesitated briefly, then hurried after him.
They climbed the stairway of the north wing, where the guards stationed outside bowed as they approached. Rodrigo ignored them entirely as he pushed past. Then, as though a sudden thought had struck him, he paused and looked at one of the guards.
“Go and give Lady Ruri thick blankets to shield her from the cold,” he ordered. He paused, then added coldly, “Don’t let her know they came from me.”
The guard bowed instantly, and Rodrigo turned to move on.
“What if she stays out there all night?” Seven asked, worry etched deeply into his brow.
Rodrigo offered only a brief sideways glance. “That would be for the best.”
Seven’s gaze snapped toward him.
“I know you’re worried about her,” Rodrigo continued, his tone chillingly pragmatic, “but she is a wolf. She won’t die easily. Right now, I need to find out what Hades promised Vance to make him sacrifice his only daughter. There’s something more to this, and let’s see if Vance is willing to watch his daughter freeze before he tells the truth.”
They turned down a side corridor and descended the stairs leading toward the underground pathway.
With every step down, the light faded and the air grew stale. Seven snatched a torch from a wall sconce and lit it, illuminating the damp stone ahead. At the end of the dark corridor, Rodrigo stopped before a blank wall. He reached out and pressed his palm flat against a specific stone block.
A faint click echoed through the hall.
The stone shifted inward, and a narrow section of the wall ground aside to reveal a hidden passage beyond. A steep flight of stone stairs plunged down into total darkness.
“Have the men been assembled?” Rodrigo asked as they began their descent.
“Yes, Alpha,” Seven replied. “They’re on continuous patrol. The Vault won’t be left unguarded for a single second.”
Rodrigo nodded silently.
The stone passage swallowed them whole. The familiar sounds of the pack house faded away, replaced only by the steady rhythm of their footsteps echoing off the walls. Down and down they went, flight after flight, as the temperature plunged.
Finally, the stairs ended.
Standing before them was an enormous set of ancient double doors. Taller than any entrance Seven had ever seen, they were carved from pitch-black stone and covered from top to bottom in intricate, swirling runes. Twelve Lycan soldiers stood guard before the threshold, standing so still they looked like statues.
The moment Rodrigo stepped into view, the guards bowed as one. “Alpha.”
Rodrigo gave a curt nod and approached the threshold. The guards immediately stepped aside, clearing the path.
Reaching beneath his cloak, Rodrigo withdrew the hexagonal Alpha’s Seal and aligned it with the matching indentation at the center of the dark stone doors.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then—a deep, resonant vibration thrummed through the floor beneath their boots. Glowing blue light erupted from the runes, coursing across the surface of the doors like veins of pure energy. Seven instinctively took a step back as the ancient symbols blazed brighter, filling the dark cavern with a brilliant luminescence.
With a deep, grinding groan, the massive stone doors slowly slid outward into the walls. A cloud of ancient dust burst into the air as the opening widened, revealing the dark void of the Vault beyond.
It was shrouded in utter darkness.
Rodrigo took the torch from Seven and stepped inside, with Seven following close behind. Rodrigo pressed a hidden stone just inside the entrance, and the massive doors ground shut behind them, sealing them in. He then touched his torch to a small bowl mounted on the wall.
In a rapid chain reaction, lanterns hanging along the perimeter sparked to life one after another, throwing warm golden light across the vast chamber.
Seven’s breath caught in his throat.
The room was monumental. Sprawling shelves stretched from the flagstone floor to the vaulted ceiling, crammed with ancient leather-bound books whose covers were cracked and blackened with age. Glass display cases stood between the aisles, holding ancient relics—ornate weapons, jeweled crowns, strange glowing minerals, and forgotten artifacts pulled from ancient ruins.
Seven gasped as his eyes landed on a pair of massive, preserved wolf fangs sitting inside a velvet case. He reached out an impulse hand toward it—
“Don’t touch anything,” Rodrigo warned, his voice echoing in the cavernous space as he walked deeper. “Some of those relics are laced with rare poisons capable of taking down a Lycan in seconds.”
Seven snatched his hand back, swallowing hard.
Rodrigo’s throat tightened as memories surfaced. He remembered his father bringing him down here as a boy, explaining the history of each artifact and how they had been preserved through centuries of war.
He drew a slow breath. His father had certainly possessed his shortcomings—marrying his wife’s closest friend being chief among them. Yet he recalled his father telling him that Charlotte had already been carrying a child, a child the healers confirmed was his. His father simply hadn’t wanted his son to grow up without a father.
Rodrigo let out a bitter, dry laugh. Who could have guessed that the very son his father fought so hard to protect would grow up to tear down everything he had built?
“This place is incredible,” Seven murmured, looking up. “They look as old as time itself.”
Rodrigo nodded grimly. “The first Alphas began gathering these centuries ago. Spoil from ancient wars, relics seized from conquered covens…”
Seven shook his head in awe. “How did they manage to keep all of this hidden from the rest of the world?”
Rodrigo stopped and looked back at him, his expression unreadable. “Well, a good start was by never letting anyone inside.”
Seven blinked, the weight of the moment hitting him. “And you brought me in?”
Rodrigo was quiet for a long second. He walked over, stood beside Seven, and placed a firm hand on his shoulder.
“Because I trust you.”