Chapter 97: Scapegoat

"That's hardly the point right now," Greta interjected. "Whether or not their remains were there means nothing. Anything could have happened to them. I don't understand why that small detail implicates them in something."

"I'm not saying that any of this implicates them," Graeme ran a hand over his face. "It's just one more mystery surrounding the alyko and our parents' murders. There's so much we don't know. It's maddening to be on the outside of it."

"Perhaps they should see the files you brought home," August suggested.

Graeme nodded in agreement without responding to it. His eyes were fixed on the table in front of him as it all ran through his mind—a puzzle he didn't have all the pieces to.

"I'll go grab them from the car. Excuse me," August said before leaving to retrieve them.

Graeme let out a deep breath after she left the house. "I fear for her," he muttered the confession. "Is the Goddess not punishing me in some way? I couldn't protect Maggie and the rest of them, and now I have a mate who is in the crosshairs of an ancient prejudice within our kind and a global experiment of which she is a rare success. Will I not fail as I did before?"

He drummed his fingers on the table after reluctantly giving voice to this fear, and the question settled around them like a dense mist that would sometimes move across the forest floor when the earth was warmer than the air. Greta sighed and sat back down in her chair.

"She is here for a reason, dear one," Sylvia reached across the table to put a comforting hand on his arm. "You two are not in this alone. There are many mysteries here, but we will figure it out."

"For all we know, whatever you find in the council is bullshit," Greta muttered.

"On what basis do we assume that?" Graeme asked sincerely. He honestly didn't know what to believe anymore aside from August being his mate.

"On the basis of how open Maggie always was with us. How genuine," angry tears burned in Greta's eyes. "She loved us." She said the words with emphasis, pointing to the table as if it was there, plain for everyone to see.

"The elders are secretive. There is a darkness surrounding them—always. They don't care about Livvy running off—they put in no effort to find her. They don't care about her family who is mourning. That's how they are with any mysterious circumstance. They let it be. They don't investigate," Greta explained.

"What other mysterious circumstances?" Graeme asked, narrowing his eyes.

"The other runaways. The endless string of miscarriages. The families torn asunder and broken. The deaths from… from heartbreak," she glanced at Sylvia. "You have no idea what I have to deal with. What Sylvia has to deal with. Trying to help our pack members who have no one else higher up helping or caring."

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"Why did you never tell me any of this?" he shifted forward in his chair. These issues were news to him. Occasionally Greta would mention something that was amiss, but she never raised any alarms. He had no idea she was dealing with all of this without telling him.

"I didn't want to put more weight on you or make you feel more guilt than you already did. And it's not like all of these things happened at once. It has been a progression of issues that have gradually gotten worse." A tear slid down her cheek, and she quickly wiped it away.

Graeme let out a deep, regretful breath and looked down into his hands. His father's hands. Graeme had left his pack, and they were hurting all this time.

August hurried in through the door with the files, eyes darting to Graeme whose sadness she had felt escalating while she was crossing the front yard. Feeling his sadness like that was like a magnet drawing her to him. She needed to touch him, to comfort him, to ease it.

When she entered the dining room, Graeme was glaring at his own hands, lost in thought. But he quickly looked up and gave her a reassuring smile, so she resisted the urge to run to him. How ridiculous would that look? She laughed internally.

When August set the files on the table, Greta was the first to grab them. She found the one she had requested that Graeme bring—the one about their parents' deaths. Sylvia and Sam each took a folder and flipped through the papers detailing the tales of alyko wrongdoing.

Graeme and August gazed deeply at each other across the table as the others became absorbed with their reading. August was assessing him, making sure he was okay, because the swell of his sadness still remained. But he somehow managed to assure her with the soft lines that crinkled at the corners of his eyes and the gentle, deep warmth he cast her way that always calmed her.

"Just as I thought," Greta said, slamming the folder back on the table and glaring at it. "There is no suitable explanation for how exactly the alyko plotted with strays. Their guilt was an assumption. Killing them was a desperate act based on an assumption just so the council would appear competent. They were desperate to solve it quickly, and the alyko were the perfect scapegoat. Maggie was a scapegoat, Graeme," she emphasized.

August noticed how Sam put a hand on Greta's shoulder as he flipped another page in the stack he was reading.

"I had the same impression," Graeme agreed, but Greta wasn't done venting.

"And afterwards, after they had already blamed and killed the alyko, why would they ever revisit it? To find their error? To find that they were possibly wrong? No, in fact now it seems the opposite is true. They are investing more into this… this fantasy that the alyko are a threat to all," she said, waving her hand dismissively at the rest of the files on the table.

"According to Charlotte, an alyko created the very first lycan," Greta spoke slowly to emphasize each word. "Before lycans, there was La Loba. If we were to assume that all alyko are a threat as they clearly want us to, we would be questioning our own origins. We would be questioning the Moon Goddess herself."

Sylvia sighed. "I agree," she closed the folder gently. "These stories are hardly compelling. That doesn't mean no alyko has ever done wrong," she explained. "But this feels like overcompensation for a history that is absent.. Since there are no written records of the alyko, they are inventing their own."

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