12 SPY ON XADEN

"W-what?" I asked in disbelief.

"You've become deaf too?" Luna Maria hissed at me.

I closed my mouth shut and looked down at my hands.

"He will take you with him to his pack." My Father told me, his expression strict. "In a different country. You will spy on him and send word to me do his plans to attack me with the next new moon."

I gasped.

Spying was a criminal offense in any pack and the punishment was death. Instant death.

"But it's a death sentence." I managed to tell him.

"If you're smart you won't get caught." My father told me.

I swallows uncomfortably.

What he was asking me to do.

"Are you contemplating that I, your Alpha and the one who gave you life's decision?" He demanded of me. "Are you thinking of betraying me."

I shook my head quickly my forehead sweating profusely.

"No Alpha Bale." I said.

He snorted at me and then he turned to Luna Maria.

An old woman I had never seen before came into the room.

"Turn around girl." She crooked at me.

Confused, but weak, I did as she told me, and then I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder.

I cried in a pain.

And then it was gone in an instant.

I looked over my shoulder to see what it was.

It was a tiny tattoo, almost impossible to see.

"Because you have not shifted,." Alpha Bale told me. "You would have been able to communicate with me directly, but you aren't. You're just an outcast and a latent wolf. Nothing more. Useless. So better make yourself useful."

"The mark is an owl speaker." The old woman said. "You now have an owl designated to you. You can send it information and it will bring it back here."

I had heard of such stores but assumed it was only a myth.

"All you need to call it's name and it will fly to you after three days." She told me. "It will find you wherever you are during sunset. You will give it, your message and it will fly away."

"What's its name?" I asked.

Then I was scared for speaking because I was worried that they would snap at me.

"Eqiana." She said.

I nodded.

Then I remembered that I didn't know how to read or write.

I had been a complete slave in the pack, there was no reason for me to learn how to be a literate. It was considered irrelevant.

If I told Alpha Bale that I was an illiterate he might kill me at the spot out of anger.

He was right, I was useless.

"You better bring us information." He told me. "If we fall it's at your hands. And Xaden will kill you."

I nodded quickly, well scared of my father.

He took in a deep breath.

"The scars on your back did Xaden see them?" He asked me. "I hope he didn't. Because if you let him see them, then you've ruined us all and our blood will be at your hands."

I swallowed .

Had Xaden seen my back?

The marks? Then it dawned on me if he had then that meant he would be suspicious of the fact that I was not the true daughter.

Why would an Alpha's daughter have marks on her back.

"Tell me you… you creature! Did he see the marks on your back?!" My father snapped in a rage of fury.