I may call James my bro, but he has alway been my brother, and when he found his mate I was almost as happy as he was. I know what it was like for him waiting and searching to find her. I was by his side through everything just trying to find our better halves, and he managed to find his first. Dammit when will I find my mate! He did say he was giving up, but I knew he would turn into a love sick puppy once he found her. I have been wanting to give him crap about how he went from Mr Grumpy-Pants to Mr Romance. I have been trying to leave him alone to hang with his new boo, but I have been working so hard to pick up his slack. I know everyone thinks it would be awesome to be the Alpha, but he has to do sooo much work.

In fact, I am going to tell him right now that he needs to step up, and start doing his Alpha responsibilities. I mean there is a reason the Alpha and the Beta are two people; there is too much to do for just one person. Even though I am lazy, I still step up and do my work. However, doing double the work?! That is just a no. Just as I am about to pop his little love bubble, the door opens and I am face to face with my second brother from another mother.

"Owen, what's up? How have you been? Wait- why are you coming out James' room?"

"I actually need to talk to you. Can we talk in your office?"

~~~

"You've gotta be kidding me. Fu..." I slam my hand down on my desk. "Okay, so if I get this right..." I have to calm my wolf, Jax "someone poisoned food that was meant for our Alpha, and then our Luna got poisoned." a small growl escaped, "and to save our Luna, James marked her which weakened him. So now the two most important people in our pack are weakened by wolfsbane!" I didn't mean to yell, but it happened.

"Yes, and for the sake of pack-safety we should keep it under wraps. We don't want to cause a panic."

"I agree with you. How long until they are healed?"

"James should be healed within a day or two, but Pennelope will take a while longer."

"Thank you. Can you please tell Nancy to come up?"

With a nod Owen left me to do even more work. I gotta say, having your mate get poisoned is a selfish way to get out of work. Jax growled not enjoying me disrespecting my friend and Alpha. I know he didn't poison her, I am just angry and stressed that I have even more work to do. Before he could respond, I hear a small knock on the door,

"Hello Beta, is there anything I can do for you?"

"Nancy, you know you can call me Noah. Please come in I need to ask you about the snack you made earlier for the Alpha." her face drained of all color.

"Oh golly! I completely forgot. I was going to make him something, but Shelly had to train, so I picked up my grandson, and completely forgot to make him anything. I can go cook something now for him."

I cut on her rambling, "So you didn't make any brownies for him?" she shakes her head, "was there supposed to be any other cooks in the kitchen earlier?"

"No, I was the only one who was supposed to be in the kitchen today, but I just got in I was watching Philip, my grandson."

"Okay thank you Nancy. Do not worry you are not in trouble, family comes first."

"Okay thank you, Beta Noah."

"Just Noah!" I call after her.

Nancy did not make the brownies, and she wasn't in the kitchen. Literally anyone could have made that. Anyone could be the one who attempted to poison our Alpha. Now I have to slowly comb through every file on every pack member trying to figure out who is the traitor. It kills me to think that any of our pack members would be capable of going against our pack. Treason is a big deal in the werewolf world. When the traitor is discovered they will be exiled making them a rouge. Rogues can be accepted into packs, but once you are exiled and turned into a rouge it is highly unlikely that you will ever be accepted into a pack ever again.

I was about halfway through the files when I was mindlinked by the border patrol unit. Our pack warriors work in shifts guarding the border of our pack. With the recent movement of rogues in the area we have increased the amount of warriors on patrol. I quickly sprinted to the eastern boarder. I see evening shift of warriors standing around the dead bodies of the afternoon shift. Jax takes over growling. A whole section of our border was unprotected for hours.

"How did no one know about this?"

"We just arrived we don't know what happened."

"Okay we are doubling the amount of guards, and we will have check-ins every hour on the hour. I expect the border guards to be in constant communication with each other, and if there are any threats let me know."

I leave to go back to the office to work out the paperwork. The fact that the guards were killed means anyone could have snuck in poisoning our Alpha. I am increasing pack security, and am increasing the number of training sessions. If the pack of rogues were the ones who attempted to poison the Alpha then it might be the start of a bigger plan. Out of all the times for James to be out of action, this is the worst. He has two days to get better because I can't do two jobs, and welcome his sister home. Hopefully he doesn't even need two days.