Chapter 19 - What's He Up To?

• Author POV -
• Brian had been right, Ace was not the type of person to allow others any control when he was present, in fact at the moment that Maddie instructed Mark to be let out of the cage for questioning Ace was out on a scouting mission of his own and this time he had learnt from his previous mistakes. This time he had a witch helping him. The witch in question was one he had stumbled upon and saved one night while out trying to gather wolves for his army. For he had decided that if Alpha Sven could replace him as the new heir then he would form his own pack and he would take back Twin Lakes and Cassie, and anything else that he desired. To that end, he had stumbled upon the witch, in a weakened state and she had convinced him that if he helped her, she would in return offer her services. Ace had been reluctant, he hated the weak, he hated their dependency on others, but having a witch on his side could only be a good thing. He took her back to the area he had set up for anyone he managed to bring to his side and after a couple of days of rest she was able to prove her worth, she cast spells on the surrounding area which made it virtually impossible to locate, she also gave Ace a tonic that would make rogues susceptible to him desires which in turn allowed Ace to inflate his camp exponentially. He currently had over 50 rogues all willing to work for him, he had them divided into teams to cover everything that needed doing, he had cooks, he had guards, he had hunters and he had personally selected a group of 5 rogues who are to escort him anywhere he chooses to go. Thanks to the tonic he had the cooks slipping into every meal they were all willing to die for him. Which was just how he wanted them.
• Ace had never seen pack members as anything other than beings made specifically to serve him and his every whim. Their willingness to die in his place just made them handy. He had been growing his pack since he ran, since Alpha Sven had passed his Aura on to the Beta of the Rival River pack, he had known when the power changed that he would be hunted, he had found the caves in his youth and he had known that that was where they had to go, he had brought Maddie and her father with him simply because he knew that Maddie’s father would try to align himself with the new Alpha and losing his backing would make taking the pack back more difficult that if they were together. So he kept Maddie close, he let her think she had control in the pack when he was around and when he was not there he allowed her to control the wolves knowing that their desires were aligned. He would not have trusted her with the control of their ‘pack’ if she was not also ingesting the tonic, the only people immune to the tonic were Ace himself and the witch who had brewed it. Finding the witch mere days after having to run had been a goddess given sign that he was destined to rule, there was no doubt in his mind that she had been sent to him for this purpose alone and he had wasted no time using her spells for his own gain.