Chapter 303: A Secret Lover...?
Good news? Gertrude was safely secured in the dungeons.
The bad news? Dahlia Elrod was not her cellmate. In fact, she wasn’t in the dungeons at all.
Somehow, Dahlia had managed to evade capture, despite the hordes of werewolves sent out to track her down. According to Milo who was the closest to catching her, Dahlia seemed to dive into the sewers as she transformed into a human, and somehow her scent vanished and the trail went cold.
It was as though Dahlia had simply vanished from existence. Even when Milo took a torchlight and several other werewolves down to the sewers to search for her, they found nothing more than a few new gashes in the sewer tunnels, and a lot more bottles of scent blockers tucked in a corner in a wet moldy box.
With that, Thorton Elrod was also placed on house arrest, awaiting interrogation. We couldn’t completely rule out his involvement in whatever Dahlia was planning.
There was now a manhunt out for Dahlia Elrod. Of course, I had to let Damon and Blaise know about this turn of events, just in case Dahlia had decided to make haste for Fangborne. Hornstead had also gotten the information. If she had common sense, Dahlia would steer clear of both packs, but by now, I had long given up on predicting how Dahlia’s mind worked.
Instead, it was now time to turn my attention to Gertrude, who was a much easier nut to crack than Thorton Elrod.
"Hello Gertrude, it’s nice to see you again," I said as I peered through the bars of her dungeon cell. Gertrude’s eyes flashed with anger as she registered her voice. In her opinion, I was the person responsible for her downfall when I questioned her testimony.
As such, she had spent the past few days keeping mum whenever I visited her.
On one hand, I held a file of incriminating evidence I had managed to scrounge out from her room in the past few days, and on another hand, I held a plate of food.
"Are you ready to talk more now?"
Her haggard face stared up at me, her gaze filled with hatred, yet I could spot the longing in her eyes as she gazed at the plate of freshly cooked spaghetti. She swallowed as she took a deep breath, presumably to inhale the scent of new food. The two werewolves standing guard at her cell flanked my sides protectively, just in case she tried to lunge for me.
However, she made no move to come closer. She couldn’t anyway― there were silver manacles chained to her legs, preventing her from escaping. With Dahlia on the run, Thunderstrike wasn’t going to take any chances. Milo initially wanted Gertrude to be hung to the wall with silver manacles on all her limbs, but Darach had said it was overkill.
So she only got two manacles chained to her ankles, preventing her from doing anything more strenuous than toddling around her cell. Two guards were posted around the clock, to stop her from escaping― or to catch Dahlia Elrod if she decided to visit her accomplice.
"Are you hungry?" I asked as the guards opened her door. "I have food for you."
"You..."
Since Gertrude was a werewolf, she would heal quickly if torture was used. Not that we were heartless enough to use it― Darach was not too keen on injuring his own people, never mind that they were about to betray him.
So we compromised and decided on this technique instead. Gertrude had been thrown in there for the past three days, and given the bare minimum of food and water just to loosen her mouth.
Werewolves could endure pain well, but hunger and thirst were a different story, especially when most wolves in Thunderstrike lack for nothing.
Hopefully, Gertrude would talk now. I didn’t want her to actually die of starvation or thirst - especially not for someone like Dahlia Elrod.
Gertrude’s stomach gave a low, loud grumble that echoed throughout the cell.
"What... what do you want to talk about?" Gertrude finally croaked out, her voice weak from thirst and hunger. "Can... Can I have something to drink first?"
"Get her a glass of water," I instructed the guards, but they protested.
"Charlie Harper, she could be lying to you! You should get the information first!"
"At this rate, I wouldn’t be able to hear anything she says with that voice of hers," I pointed out, and so one of the guards reluctantly brought some water over. Gertrude guzzled it down so quickly I was worried she would choke.
"Feeling better?" I asked when Gertrude was done. Gertrude nodded. "Up to answering my questions?"
Gertrude nodded again, her hands trying to reach for the food. This time, I held it away from her reach.
"Not yet. Not until we’ve discussed the interesting things I’ve found in your room."
After Darach had returned, we ransacked her room to find that Dahlia had effectively been paying Gertrude money daily, presumably for spying on Darach. We found a diary of her detailed observations of Darach’s comings and goings, his preferred foods, and even what was found in his trash bin.
It was very creepy, to say the least.
Gertrude’s eyes lowered and she nodded.
"First things first―" I pulled out the transaction records from Gertrude’s bank account, "We investigated and found out that Dahlia Elrod has been paying you since Darach became the Alpha. Why?"
"Don’t you already know?" Gertrude asked bitterly. "You must have seen everything."
"I want to hear it from you. Why did she pay you?" I asked. It was better to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.
"Miss Dahlia was... angry. That Mr. Darach became the alpha. She kept on ranting about how he wasn’t a good choice... and... and I agreed with her," Gertrude said shamefully, lowering her head and her voice in shame. "Even in the past, Mr. Darach had shown no signs of being an alpha... I thought... I thought if I helped her, she would become the new alpha. She wanted to know everything about Mr. Darach so that she could plan."
"Do you know what she was planning?"
"Not really," Gertrude said, "I only know she seemed to be meeting someone often. It was always at night, so I thought she might have a new lover."
My heart raced. "Someone? Do you have a name?"
Gertrude frowned. "I... I’m not too sure, but I think... it started with an ’A’? Auden? Austin? Or something?"
