"Very peculiar."

My eyes shot open and I sat up straight on the cot at the sound of an unfamiliar voice. On the other side of my cell was a beautiful mocha skinned woman, with dark eyes and dark hair with silver streaks running through her long tresses.

Her eyes shown with wisdom far beyond her years as she stepped closer to the bars. She eyed me from head to toe with a puzzled expression on her face.

"The alpha sent for me in the middle of the night to travel all the way over here to tend to a huntress, no less, and now that I am here, I find you covered in his scent. Very peculiar indeed."

"Who are you?" I finally asked.

"Yvonne, the healer." She said with a small smile.

"Like I told the alpha, I don't need a healer." I crossed my arms over my chest defiantly.

"Yes, I can smell that your wounds are healing nicely, but I came all this way, so I'm going to take a look at you anyway."

She shoved the key in the lock and slowly stepped into the cell.

"You're not going to try and kill me are you?" She asked and her eyes almost seemed to dare me to try.

"Not today." I said with a smug grin.

She took her time looking over the gashes in my skin and finally inspected my ankle. She grabbed her bag and slowly began to wrap my swollen ankle with a splint.

"You need to keep the pressure off of that ankle if you want it to heal anytime this century."

"Your splint is a little loose." I informed her.

"So it is."

She quickly tightened it up.

"A healer yourself, are you?"

"I am a doctor." I assured her.

She finished her administrations and looked me over once more. I saw her nose twitch slightly and she smiled at me. She packed her bag and left me in the cell without another word.

Lycan's were strange creatures.

~~~

"Do you want to tell me why the main house smells like the huntress?"

Conner entered my office without so much as a knock on the door. The disrespect had me gnashing my teeth and snapping the pencil in my hand in two.

"I didn't realize as the alpha, I had to explain myself to you or anyone else." I said angrily as he walked up to my desk.

"I'm just concerned for the pack, that's all." He said meekly, realizing that he had crossed a line.

"I brought her in the house to get cleaned up and fed." I said shortly.

"Why would you care about her well being? I thought you wanted her dead."

Conner eyed me looking for any clues to my rash behavior, but he wasn't going to find any.

"I do, but not before she has served her purpose." I said and leaned back into my chair.

"What purpose?"

"Bait...She is not the Del Val that I want, but I'm pretty sure that her family is looking for her, they are the ones I want."

Conner smiled wickedly at me. It was true her scent was not among the ones who had tortured and killed my brother, but just because she wasn't there, didn't mean she was not apart of it. No, I would have remembered her scent if I had smelled it before now. It was now forged in iron in my memory.

"I wouldn't want her dying of her injuries before I got a chance to use her to lure her family into my clutches." I say with a wicked smile that matched Conner's.

"I'm glad you said that, because I need to talk to you about that."

Yvonne walked into my office, bypassed Conner without even glancing in his direction and sat down on the left side of my desk.

"Hello, handsome." She smiled at me and sat her bag down.

"Yvonne, always a pleasure. What news of the huntress?"

"She heals quickly, I guess what they say is true, they heal quicker than a normal human. I am however concerned about her broken ankle. It's not going to heal properly in her current conditions. It's too damp and cold in the cellar. I want her moved in the house."

Conner scoffed at Yvonne's suggestion. "Are you mad? You want a huntress roaming freely in the main house?"

"Many say that I am mad and I am inclined to agree." Yvonne's eyes looked at Conner with irritation.

"And I said nothing about letting her run around freely, she should be heavily guarded of course, but she needs to be somewhere drier and warmer."

I didn't know what Yvonne was up to, she was cool and calculating, making it impossible to read her.

"I don't want her anywhere around my weaker wolves. I can't trust her not to hurt one of them." I say, dismissing her proposal.

"She could always travel with me back to my home or I'm sure Conner could keep a huntress in line if she stays with him."

A low growl rumbled in my chest at the suggestion before I was able to cut it off. Luckily, the only one who heard it was Yvonne.

"I didn't think so." She said with a smile.

"Very well, I will set her up in one of the rooms closes to mine. That way I will be able to keep a close eye on her." I say with a final nod.

"An excellent idea." Yvonne smiled and ran her long, slender fingers across my cheek.

"I'm going to check on a few wolves before I head back home."

She said, vacating the spot on my desk and picking up her bag.

"Be careful, alpha, things are not always as they appear."

She left just as quickly as she came. I hated when she did that. Why she couldn't just shoot straight with me and tell me what she knew or what she thought she knew, I would never know.

"Shall I go get the huntress?"

"No." I answered Conner's question too quickly and one of his eyebrows shot up in questioning.

"I have received news that there were werewolves nearby our compound. I want you to go with me to check it out. Send someone else to move the huntress."

Conner nodded once in affirmation and left to do my bidding