Clouds stained pink, orange and red by the setting sun floated beneath me at a leisurely pace.

Stars twinkling against a dark blue sky hovered in the space above me.

It was tranquil sight from my spot beside a window on the jet.

The state of the soon-to-be-sleeping earth calmed my racing mind. After a day of events that seemed to happen in the blink of an eye, I welcomed the slowness of the world around me.

In the moment of quiet, as everyone around me either slept or sat in silent thought as I did, I suddenly remembered what Cain had said to me:

I love you.

Those three words were almost enough to make me forget the hours of uncomfortable silence and days of emotional distance that had preceded.

Almost enough.

Hearing it didn't feel right, but I couldn't decipher if it was because I hadn't expected it or if there was another reason.

The knot that formed in my stomach at the thought of Cain was an uncomfortable mixture of nervous apprehension and lustful infatuation.

Looking down at the earth hiding beneath a blanket of cirrostratus clouds, I wondered where he was in that moment.

No one had heard from him since he'd left the conference room to follow Jacob that morning. Although Jai hadn't said anything pointedly, I knew he worried about Cain. It was evident in the crease that formed between his eyebrows when he talked of him.

I looked over to see Jai flipping through the photos Zahra and I had gotten from the hotel where Daniel had been abducted.

I knew he had to have memorized every pixel on those pages by that time as he had been looking them over for hours at that point.

My attention then turned to Zahra who was sleeping with her head against a closed window shade.

I couldn't help but notice how she slept with a hand on a concealed blade she wore in a strap on her thigh.

After the day she's had, I wouldn't trust any of us either, I thought.

Finally, I looked down at the young girl, Anvi, who was sleeping with her head on my lap.

Covered by a heavy wool blanket, her body laid in the seat beside me with her legs curled up and tucked close to her chest.

Despite the uncomfortable position, she seemed to be sleeping soundly.

Looking at her, I felt nothing but pure and utter sympathy.

She was still mourning the death of her father while being forced into a role she couldn't possibly fill at her age, much less understand. On top of this, she'd just learned of the possibility that her father was still alive.

I had tried to shield her from the rest of the conversation that followed her identifying her father, but I knew it wouldn't be long before she figured out just what it meant that he was still alive:

He was alive because my grandfather hadn't killed him; meaning he was useful for Jacob's cause.

He was the traitor that Jacob had referred to.

It was ironic really, that the only person able to identify the traitor in that conference room was the one who had no idea what was going on.

Genuinely, we would have been there for days interrogating people who were innocent and we never would have suspected that Anvi held the answer we were looking for.

It was because of her innocence that she was still alive.

The same could not be said of her chaperone.

I had learned rather quickly that Jace and Jai were unflinchingly loyal to Cain and his father.

With no solid way to prove himself honest, Anvi's chaperone met a quick end at the hands of Jai. While I saw this as barbaric and unnecessarily ruthless, my only request was that he was killed outside Anvi's knowledge.

Yet despite her youth, she was not a fool. She knew what was happening the moment Jai dragged him from the conference room.

The poor girl hadn't made a sound since.

I looked up from where she slept to see Jace coming out of the cockpit where he had been discussing our arrival coordinates with the pilots.

He walked over to me and began to speak in low tones.

"Priya will meet us at the hangar when we land in Mumbai," he whispered. "She'll take the girl until we know more and can figure out whether the mother is involved."

I nodded, trying to suppress the guilt I felt by looking on the bright side: at least Priya spoke Anvi's language. Maybe she would be able to help explain a few things.

"When do we land?" I asked him, mirroring his quiet voice.

"About twenty minutes."

I nodded in acknowledgment before he walked over to repeat the information to Jai.

I tried to cherish those last twenty minutes, taking in the last few golden rays of the sunlight and the calmness that left me as they left the sky.

When the plane landed that night, there was no evidence of it—we landed under the complete cover of night. Not even the runway was lit.

With murmuring engines, the plane drifted into an empty hangar.

As we disembarked, I noticed the lights weren't even on inside the hangar. Instead, four black cars were pointed at the plane with headlights dimmed.

I recognized Priya instantly when she got out of one of the vehicles to meet us.

"Any news on Daniel?" she asked, almost immediately.

The worried tone in her voice sounded almost identical to Jai's when he spoke of Cain.

Realizing this made it even harder to shake my head.

"Have you heard from Cain?" she asked.

I shook my head again.

I saw Priya's shoulders slump before she caught sight of the young girl standing behind me, peeking around my waist.

Priya sank to her knees and held a hand out towards Anvi.

"Namashkār," she said in a soft voice.

I looked down to see Anvi's mouth gape slightly as she stepped out from behind me.

I saw tears fill her eyes as Priya began to speak to her in Marathi. Anvi nodded slowly, agreeing with whatever it was Priya said, before bursting into tears and falling against Priya's chest to cry.

Priya began to stroke her hair and whisper in a calming tone as she embraced Anvi.

They sat there for a few moments before Priya stood, her arms still around the girl.

"We'll go to my family; they live about half an hour away. She'll be well taken care of there. I'll wait for word on when to bring her back to her family. I'm sure her mother misses her dearly."

I nodded slowly before I felt a tug at my arm.

Turning, I saw Jai standing there, gesturing that it was time to leave.

When I turned back to Priya, I saw tears filling her eyes.

"Don't come back without Daniel," she said, her voice quivering. "Please."

I couldn't do anything but let out a slow, shaky breath as Jai pulled me away.

As Jai, myself, Jace and Zahra got into one of the vehicles, I noticed Priya leading Anvi away towards another.

How do I know I can trust her?

Distrust had begun to be something that flowed through me as freely as oxygen.

When I turned my attention to the other passengers in the car with me, I saw it written on their faces as they also watched Anvi get into the car with Priya.

"I don't like this," I said.

Jace grit his teeth.

"None of us do."

As soon as the rest of the crew had piled into the two other cars, we drove out of the hanger with the headlights off and merged onto a busy highway before turning them back on.

"So, what's the plan?" I asked. "We're just going to go to Beta Agarwal's house, bust down the door and tell anyone who gets in our way that we know the Beta is alive and that he's holding Daniel captive?"

Zahra shrugged and I gave her an irritated glance, unamused.

"I was being sarcastic."

"We'll wait at the port for them and catch them as they try to flee," Jai said confidently.

Zahra's eyebrows furrowed.

"How exactly do you know they'll flee if they don't know we're coming?"

I narrowed my eyes at Jai as the realization hit me.

"They know we're coming," I said.

Jai nodded.

"Telling Priya to meet us here wasn't just for the sake of the girl," Jace said.

"You think Priya would have forewarned them?"

"Not Priya," he said. "There is someone else."

I raised an eyebrow as Jace hesitated to elaborate further.

"I talked to Cain's father from the plane," he admitted. "He and Evelyn had no clue that Jacob was still alive and I doubt they would have believed anyone who told them that he was; even Cain."

"So, they're not part of this scheme," I said as if it were obvious. "Did you think that they were?"

Jace shrugged.

"Someone had to be," he said pointedly. "Jacob was only seven when he died. He wouldn't have just gone into hiding on his own... he wouldn't have been able to survive."

I tried as hard as I could to think of someone who had been around long enough to have known Jacob as a boy and still be an active part of Cain's pack.

"Who else could it be besides his parents?"

- - -

Narrative P.O.V.

Cain walked down the long hallway.

The pristinely clean floor shone like glass and reflected the bright, overhead lighting back into Cain's face. The bright lights paired horridly with the overwhelming scent of disinfectant; the hospital wing had always felt like an attack on Cain's senses.

He held in his hand a file folder that was a symbolic final piece of the puzzle.

Ironically, it had been sitting in his office for over a month.

After Jacob's scent had been lost, Cain was left in the middle of northern Morocco with just his thoughts. While a scent was useful for tracking Jacob, so were the leads left behind in his wake.

Cain had known for days—specifically, since his conversation with Jai in the stairwell after leaving Zak on the rooftop—that something didn't add up.

There was no conceivable way that Jacob had flown under the radar for that long without someone knowing that he was alive.

It couldn't have been his parents; Cain had watched them grieve, both publicly at Jacob's memorial and privately behind closed palace doors.

He had a hard time believing that mourning a dead child was an act easily performed. It was because of this that Cain knew his parents were oblivious to their youngest son's survival.

Cain could only think of one other person who would have been there, in those moments, as Jacob died.

As he rounded the corner into Dr. Zosak's office, he saw the old man sitting in his office chair expectantly.

Cain threw the folder on the doctor's desk.

"The man whose head I ripped from his shoulders at the train station a week ago was not Hans Weber," Cain said. "Hans Weber has been dead for thirty years, but someone stole his name and has been using the false identity to get away with medically turning humans and Lycanthropes into Vampires. Any idea who?"

The old man took a deep breath and removed his glasses.

"If you didn't already know, you wouldn't be here," he said.

Cain felt his jaw clench.

"Who was the man I killed?"

"A scapegoat that wasn't paid nearly enough to die the way he did," Dr. Zosak said honestly.

Cain fell silent as he stared at a man he had known his whole life as a friend but now knew to be a traitor.

"Why?" he asked.

Dr. Zosak looked at Cain with eyes full of sadness.

"Your mother conceiving you was nothing short of a miracle," the doctor noted. "You were born around the time that a man I was friends with in medical school died. Originally, I assumed his identity to be able to research what it would take to convert a Lycanthrope infected with Vampirism back into a pureblood. But, then your brother came along—and he was perfect. A pureblooded Lycanthrope without so much of a trace of that horrid disease. And I thought you were a miracle child..."

Dr. Zosak scoffed before continuing.

"I knew that the Alpha Superior lineage would stay pure as long as Jacob could take the title from your father. But then you killed him and your parents didn't know any better than to believe that he was dead. After all those years of research, though, I knew he wasn't gone completely."

Zosak leveled his gaze at Cain.

"For a long time, I thought Jacob would be the first Lycanthrope I was ever able to cure of Vampirism."

"And?" Cain asked.

Dr. Zosak sighed.

"Jacob ran away before I could complete any conclusive research. I was so ashamed of what I'd done that I never told your parents. It would have killed your mother and then your father would have killed me. I didn't expect to see Jacob ever again. I continued my research, using those who believed as strongly as I did that the Alpha Superior bloodline needed to remain exclusively pureblooded."

"Like Ella's grandfather," Cain concluded.

Dr. Zosak nodded.

"Jacob contacted me almost a year ago and told me that he had found a cure and that he was ready to take his place as Alpha. He agreed to share the cure with me in exchange for my cooperation in committing treason against the title and aiding in the plot to kill you."

He sighed before looking down at the file folder on his desk.

"So far I'm the only one who has held up his end of the bargain."

The room was silent for a few moments as Cain felt his blood begin to boil.

"You let me believe for this long that I had killed my brother," Cain said. "You watched my entire family fall apart and you said nothing..."

Dr. Zosak looked at Cain with a suddenly furious expression.

"Your parents were fools to give you the title; your father should have remained Alpha Superior... I do not regret what I have done."

Cain turned to look over his shoulder to see his father standing in the doorway.

"You will," Adam said, his teeth gritted.

"And you'll die for it too."

- - -