Something had been bothering me for days while I’d been at Stonefang, since the last rogue ambush where Simon had died. Though now I knew what Simon had been subjecting Solana to, I regretted the tears I’d shed for him.
I had a gut-deep itch I couldn’t quite place. But now, with the Hollow underfoot again, the bond humming like a live wire under my skin, with both of us ready for it to complete, accepting what it meant, and the scent of pack tension still clinging to every corner…I started to see it.
It was in the timing.
The attacks weren’t random. Wolfe knew that, too, but they were more than just passed notes from scared children.
I slipped out of bed, took the quickest shower, just enough to wash away the evidence of him from the previous night, and got dressed fast. He was still sleeping when I re-entered the bedroom, gently brushing my lips over his forehead as I paused to look down at my mate.
This was right. He and I. I knew it now. Maybe the Goddess had sent more than a landslide after him. Maybe she’d sent him me.
I forced myself to move away; if I lingered, he’d wake up, and I wouldn’t try that hard to resist if he pulled me back down beside him.
I made my way to the pack hall. I passed faces I knew and cared for, yet every shifter I passed that I’d grown up with in the Hollow, I now looked at with doubt in my mind. How strange that the shifters in my pack that I wasn’t wary of were the shifters who weren’t of the Hollow.
I didn’t want to raise suspicion; I knew I would be watched because I knew that the betrayal in my pack didn’t stop with Lewis. I just didn’t know who else.
But I would.
So, for appearances, I paused to spend time with those being trained. I exchanged pleasantries with Brand, who said nothing about the fact that his alpha was still sleeping. I didn’t get one comment from Cody as he joined us, but I saw the changes in them towards me, though they masked it well. While Brand was not exactly softer—I don’t think he knew how to be—he wasn’t as abrasive as he’d been before.
I brushed off Cody’s suggestion that he get Axel to walk with me. The pack hall was within sight of where we were standing, and I reminded them both they could see me.
In the pack hall, I spent time in the kitchens and carefully avoided overreacting to the fact that the kitchen had descended into chaos, and not even well-organized chaos, in my absence. Within an hour, a system was back in place and variety returned to the weekly menus; the only obstacle was getting supplies in and out of the territory if the barrier was maintained. I promised them I would talk to Wolfe about supply runs.
A few hours after leaving Wolfe, I was finally closing the door to my dad’s office where I turned my attention to searching for old logbooks. I found the patrol logs from the last few weeks, written in Wolfe’s neat, almost obsessively tidy handwriting. I flipped through them, scanning the dates, looking at earlier entries, the locations, and the names of those assigned to different posts.
I noted the dates of the attacks and jotted them down. Different points. Different patrols. But always when the perimeter shifted. Always when a new patrol schedule went live.
The kind of information only an inner-circle shifter would see. Only someone trusted.
I sat in Wolfe’s chair, my teeth worrying at my bottom lip as I looked towards my dad’s old filing cabinet.
These weren’t random attacks. They were testing us. Probing the lines. Not to conquer. Not to wipe us out.
To push us.
Splinter us.
Weaken us.
A cold certainty slid down my spine. Someone wasn’t out there waiting to take this territory. It was about creating pressure.
Chaos.
Just enough to strain loyalties and force decisions that fractured the pack further, and they were doing it flawlessly. Which meant one of ours wasn’t just passing along intel—they were working with a tactician. A strategist.
Someone orchestrating it from inside like a goddamn conductor. I stood quickly, determination setting my jaw.
This was more than Lewis, I knew it.
Had Wolfe or the others seen it yet? Maybe they had—and hadn’t wanted to say it out loud. Not because they didn’t wantto trust me, but maybe because they wanted to give me time to adjust?
I didn’t need time, because this wasn’t about rogue strays anymore. It was coordinated, which meant someone was planning for a future where Wolfe and I wouldn’t be leading this pack at all.
My foot tapped against the floor, my finger pressed into Dad’s old desk. Wolfe would have been through every filing cabinet, every journal, log, all of it. I glanced at the door. Would he have known to lookeverywhere?
I left Dad’s office and made my way to the room Dad used to use for meetings with his council. I’d never liked it in here. It smelled of dust, wax, and old blood.
