Sold to Bastard Alpha after My Divorce!-Chapter 206

Kael’s POV

The call came in while I was still in the elevator.

Three words from my second-in-command, delivered in that particular flat tone that meant he was keeping himself together by sheer professional discipline: *"Front line. Now."*

I didn’t ask questions.

I was already turning around.

---

The drive took twenty-two minutes.

I spent most of it on the phone. Getting fragments. Piecing together what I could.

Two warriors down. Dead on scene, from what the initial report said. A third in critical condition, airlifted to the medical post at the eastern checkpoint. The attack had happened during the 0300 patrol rotation—the quietest window of the night, the shift-change no one ever worried about because nothing ever happened during shift-change. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

That was the point, obviously.

I put the phone down and watched the city fall away behind us. The buildings thinning out. The road getting rougher. The territory’s eastern ring spreading out ahead—scrubland and perimeter walls and the distant outline of the checkpoint towers against the dark sky.

---

The medical post was a squat, utilitarian building at the far end of the eastern checkpoint complex. Floodlights on. Three vehicles parked at angles out front, like they’d arrived in a hurry and nobody had thought to straighten them afterward.

I got out of the car before the engine fully stopped.

The doc—a gruff, square-shouldered woman named Petra who had been at this post for longer than I’d been Alpha—met me at the door. She didn’t waste time.

"The critical one is stable," she said, walking fast. I matched her pace. "But only just. He took two direct strikes—right side, between the plates of his armor. Whoever did this knew exactly where to aim."

"Meaning they knew our armor configuration."

Her jaw tightened. "That’s above my pay grade. Medically speaking—yes. Targeted. Deliberate. This wasn’t a lucky hit."

We pushed through a set of double doors. The smell hit me first—antiseptic and blood and the particular sharp undertone of wolfsbane-adjacent compounds. My teeth clicked together.

The warrior on the table was a young one. Twenty-three, maybe twenty-four. Big kid, broad-shouldered, the kind who looked invincible until you saw him lying still with tubes running out of his arm and his face the color of old paper.

His name was Bryce.

I knew his face from the training grounds. From his evaluation last spring. He’d scored top marks in patrol coordination. He’d been proud of it.

"He’s going to make it?" I said.

"Probably." Petra said it without softening it either way. "He’s strong. But it’ll be weeks before he’s functional, and I won’t make promises about what he remembers when he wakes up."

I looked at Bryce’s face for a long moment.

Then I turned around.

"The other two," I said. "Where are they?"

---

They were in the east storage bay.

I know that sounds wrong. It was wrong. But the medical post didn’t have a proper facility for this, and moving them before the investigation team arrived wasn’t advisable, so they’d done what they could.

They’d been laid out with care. That was the first thing I noticed. Someone had straightened their gear. Folded their hands. Small things. The kind of things you do when you can’t do anything else.

Vane, age twenty-six. Four years in the perimeter force.

Danil, age thirty-one. Seven years. Had a mate. Two kids.

I stood between them and looked at their faces and let myself feel the full weight of it for exactly thirty seconds. Because that was what you owed them. Not professionalism and not strategy and not the Alpha composure that the situation required—just thirty seconds of standing there and actually letting it matter.

Then I straightened up.

"Damon," I said.

He was behind me. Had been since I walked in. He stepped forward.

---

Damon looked terrible.

Not visually—Damon always looked like he’d just come off a battlefield, that was just how he was built. But his eyes were doing that thing they did when something had gotten under his skin and he was working to keep it from showing. The tightness around his jaw. The way he was standing slightly too still.

He’d known these men.

Of course he had. He knew all of them.

"Tell me everything," I said.

He nodded. Pulled out his tablet. But he didn’t look at it. He’d already memorized it.

"0317," he started. "Standard patrol sweep, east sector seven. Two-man rotation—that’s standard for the overnight shift, nothing unusual. They checked in at 0310. Seven minutes later, nothing. The checkpoint tried to raise them at 0325. No response."

"Response team?"

"Deployed at 0328. Found all three at 0334. Vane and Cho were already gone. Bryce was—" He stopped. Exhaled. "He was conscious for about forty seconds when the team found him. Tried to give a report. Couldn’t."

"He said anything useful?"

"He said: *they came from inside.*" Damon looked up from the tablet. "Then he went under."

Silence.

The floodlights outside hummed. Somewhere down the corridor, a monitor beeped.

*From inside,* Fenrir said.

I knew.

I looked at Damon.

"The perimeter was intact," Damon continued, flat and professional. "No breaches on any of the sensor lines. No triggers on the motion grid. Whoever did this—" He paused. "They didn’t come over the wall. They didn’t cut the wire. They walked straight through."

"Because they knew the access codes."

"Or someone gave them cover."

The word sat between us like something with mass.

*Betrayal.* It had a particular weight, that word. I’d grown up watching my father deal with it—brutally, comprehensively, without mercy. I’d told myself I’d do it differently. More carefully. More strategically.

I hadn’t expected to be dealing with it this soon.

"How many people have access to the east sector rotation schedule?" I asked.

"For the overnight shift specifically?" Damon’s expression didn’t change. "Fourteen."

"Get me their names."

"Already compiled." He held up the tablet. "But Kael—" He hesitated, which was unusual for him. Damon almost never hesitated. "Whoever did this wasn’t highly trained. I want to be clear about that. The technique wasn’t sophisticated. No precision equipment, no advanced tactical approach. If you put this up against the kind of thing we trained for—" He shook his head. "It’s not that."

"But?"

"But they were smart about it. Patient." He set the tablet down on the edge of the nearest table. "They picked the right time, the right location, the right window. They knew exactly how long they had before anyone would miss the check-in. They knew the layout." He met my eyes. "This wasn’t skill. This was knowledge."

"Insider knowledge," I said.

"Yes."

The word landed quietly. Both of us knew what it meant. Both of us knew the kind of investigation it was going to trigger, the trust it was going to fracture, the shockwaves it was going to send through a patrol force that had been functioning on cohesion and loyalty for years.

I pressed my hand flat against the edge of the table.

Breathed out.

"Any physical evidence from the scene?" I asked.

"One thing." Damon reached into his jacket pocket.

He held it out.

It was small. Smaller than I’d expected. A badge—metal, roughly made, like it had been cast quickly rather than crafted with any care. The kind of thing that was meant to be left behind on purpose. A statement. A signature.

I took it.

Turned it over.

The metal was dark. Tarnished at the edges, like it had been sitting somewhere for a while before tonight. The surface was engraved—deep cuts, deliberate, someone had pressed hard enough to make sure it wouldn’t wear off.

I looked at what it said.

And the words stared back at me in the dim light of the east bay, quiet as a death knell, unmistakable in what they were announcing.

**DEFECTORS.**