Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Harper
Wednesday morning, I pulled up to Artemis's property line to find Remy's motorcycle already parked under the big cypress and Silas's truck beside it. Neither of them looked surprised to see me.
"Let me guess." Remy leaned against his bike, arms crossed, that lazy smile not quite reaching his eyes. "You woke up thinking about how exposed her eastern boundary is too."
"Northern tree line." I cut the engine and climbed out, scanning the perimeter by habit. "No clear sightlines. Anyone could approach through there without being seen from the cabin."
Silas just grunted, already studying the same stretch of woods I'd been thinking about.
He had a machete strapped to his belt and mud on his boots like he'd been walking the area since before dawn.
None of us had planned this. None of us had called the others.
We'd just shown up, all three of us, on a Wednesday morning when we weren't supposed to see her until tomorrow, because the thought of her out here alone with Crescent Holdings circling had kept us awake.
"We should walk the whole property." Silas's voice was rough, the most words I'd heard him string together outside of Artemis's presence. "Mark the boundaries. See what they've been doing while she was trapped with us during the storm."
"You think they used the hurricane as cover?" Remy pushed off his bike, that easy charm dropping away to reveal an edge underneath. "Plant more surveillance while everyone was distracted?"
"It's what I would do." I checked my phone—no messages from Artemis.
Good. She didn't know we were here. If she did, she'd probably tell us she didn't need protecting, that she'd handled worse than some development company sniffing around her land.
She'd be right. That didn't stop the itch under my skin, the one that had been there since I drove away Monday afternoon and left her standing on that porch alone.
We fell into formation without discussing it.
Me on point, Silas on my left flank, Remy trailing slightly behind to watch our six.
Military pattern. The kind of movement that happens when men have been trained to navigate hostile ground, even if the ground was just Louisiana swampland and the hostiles were corporate surveyors instead of enemy combatants.
"You served?" Silas asked, not looking at me, his eyes sweeping the tree line.
"Marines. Eight years." I stepped over a fallen branch, still damp from the storm. "You?"
"Army. Special operations." Silas's words were clipped, matter-of-fact, like he was reading from a file. A pause, then: "Twelve years."
Remy made a sound behind us, something between a laugh and a snort. "And here I am, the only one without combat training. Just a pretty face and a guitar."
"You grew up in the bayou." I ducked under a low-hanging branch, holding it back for the others. "You know this land better than either of us."
"True." He moved past me, and I caught his scent—honey and whiskey and a rawness underneath that hadn't been there before the storm.
Grief, maybe. Old pain brought fresh to the surface.
"I know every hunting blind, every fishing spot, every place a man might hide if he didn't want to be found.
" His voice had gone quiet. "Spent a lot of years not wanting to be found. "
We walked in silence for a while, three Alphas moving through land that wasn't ours but felt like it should be.
The morning was cool, mist still clinging to the lower areas where the ground stayed wet year-round.
Birds startled from branches as we passed.
A nutria splashed into a channel and disappeared.
Then Gumbo appeared.
I saw him first—a dark shape in the water, cutting toward us with that prehistoric efficiency that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Nine feet of armored death, and he was heading straight for our position.
"Company." I kept my voice low, my hand moving instinctively toward the knife on my belt before I stopped myself. This wasn't a threat. This was her companion. Her family.
"Oh, fantastic." Remy had gone very still. "My favorite murder log."
Gumbo surfaced ten feet away, those yellow eyes fixed on us with an intelligence that shouldn't exist in a reptile brain. He watched. Assessed. Then he turned and started moving along the bank, parallel to our path.
"He's tracking with us." Silas sounded almost impressed. "Perimeter patrol."
"Or waiting for one of us to fall in so he can eat us." Remy muttered, but he didn't retreat. He held his ground, watching the gator with a mix of terror and grudging respect.
We kept moving, Gumbo pacing us in the water like a scaly escort. The eastern boundary came first—a stretch of land that bordered the old Thibodaux holdings, overgrown and neglected since the family had sold off parcels over the years. I spotted the first camera twenty minutes in.
"There." I pointed to the cypress trunk, to the small black device mounted about eight feet up, angled to cover the approach to her place. "Trail cam. Commercial grade."
Silas was already moving toward it, examining without touching. "Motion-activated. Cellular upload." His jaw tightened. "Been here at least a week. Maybe longer."
"They're watching her." Remy's voice had gone hard, all the charm stripped away. "Tracking her movements." Heat coiled in my chest, dark and dangerous. A growl built in my throat before I could stop it, low and threatening, the kind of sound I hadn't made since—
Since Claire. Since I'd found those messages on her phone and my body had reacted before my brain caught up. This was different. This wasn't betrayal. This was threat. Someone was watching my—
Our. Someone was watching our Omega. Recording her. Treating her home like a target zone for reconnaissance.
"Leave it." My voice came out rougher than intended. "We document everything first. Then we tell her. She decides what to do."
Silas nodded, pulling out his phone to photograph the camera. Remy was already scanning the surrounding trees, looking for more.
We found six cameras by noon. Two on the eastern boundary, three along the northern tree line, one near the old boat launch where Artemis kept her pirogue.
All positioned to track movement onto and off her land.
All professional grade, expensive, the kind of equipment that cost real money and indicated real intent.
We also found survey stakes. New ones, driven into the soft ground along what would be prime waterfront if someone wanted to develop. Orange flags that hadn't been there a week ago.
"They moved fast." Silas crouched by one of the stakes, reading the numbers stamped into the metal. "Survey company out of Baton Rouge. Probably contracted through a shell company."
"Crescent Holdings." I'd done my research after the first time Artemis mentioned them. "They've been buying up waterfront land all through the parish. Quiet acquisitions, nothing flashy. But there's a pattern. Someone's building toward a bigger play."
"Resort development." Remy had his phone out, scrolling through something.
"I heard talk at the bar last month. Big plans for eco-tourism along this stretch.
Kayak rentals, luxury cabins, maybe a restaurant.
" He looked up, his amber eyes gone cold.
"Her land sits right in the middle of what they'd need for boat access. "
The growl came from all three of us this time, a low harmonic rumble that seemed to vibrate through the ground itself. Gumbo, still pacing us in the water, made a sound of his own—a deep, prehistoric hiss that said he understood threat even if he didn't understand commerce.
"We should check the rest." Silas straightened, his hand flexing on the machete at his belt. "Make sure there's nothing closer to the cabin."
We circled the entire property over the next three hours.
Found two more cameras, both positioned to watch the main approach to her home.
Found tire tracks near the back access road—fresh, probably from the day before the storm hit.
Found a torn piece of orange surveyor tape caught on a branch near her garden.
By the time we finished, my shirt was soaked through with sweat and their scents—pine and whiskey and the sharp ozonic edge I was coming to recognize as Silas. We'd been walking close, moving together, our scents mingling in that unconscious way packs did when they worked as a unit.
Pack scent. Forming whether we'd chosen it or not.
"We need to tell her." Remy wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a streak of mud across his brow. "She's going to be pissed."
"Good." The word came out before I could think about it. "She should be pissed. They're treating her like prey."
"She's not prey." Silas's voice was quiet, but there was steel underneath. "She's never been prey."
No. She wasn't. She was an Omega who'd built a life alone in the swamp, who'd raised a nine-foot alligator, who'd stared down three Alphas and demanded terms instead of submission. Artemis Bordeaux was a lot of things, but prey wasn't one of them.
"Tomorrow." I made the decision without consulting them, and neither argued. "We tell her tomorrow, when we're all there for dinner. Show her the photos, explain what we found. Let her decide how she wants to handle it."
"If she decides to handle it alone?" Remy asked, his fingers drumming restlessly against his thigh.
"Then we let her." The words hurt to say, but I said them anyway. "It's her land. Her choice. We're not here to take that from her." Silas made a sound that might have been agreement. Remy just nodded, respect flickering across his features—or maybe understanding.
We walked back to the vehicles in silence, Gumbo still tracking us in the water. The big gator had caught a nutria at some point during our patrol—I'd heard the splash and the brief, violent struggle—and now he swam with the lazy contentment of a predator who'd fed well.
At the trucks, we paused. Three Alphas standing in the dappled shade of a cypress tree, covered in mud and sweat and each other's scents, none of us quite sure how to end this.
"Same time tomorrow?" Remy's smile was back, but it was different now. Less performance, more genuine. "I'll bring whiskey. We can tell her over drinks."
"I'll bring the photos." Silas patted his pocket, where his phone held documentation of every camera, every stake, every sign of intrusion. "And a map of the placement patterns."
I looked at both of them—the pretty musician with grief in his eyes and the scarred soldier who spoke more to animals than people—and felt a piece slot into place in my chest. A piece that had been missing for a long time.
"I'll handle the talking." The words came out rough, but right. "If she's going to be pissed at anyone, it should be me."
Remy laughed, short and surprised. "Look at you, taking one for the team." He shook his head, curls falling across his forehead.
"Someone has to." I opened my truck door, then paused. "Remy. You good?"
He blinked, caught off guard by the question. For a moment, the mask slipped—I saw the exhaustion underneath, the weight of whatever he'd been carrying since Monday. Then he pulled himself together, that easy grin sliding back into place.
"Better than good, mon ami." But the way he said it was honest. "Getting there, anyway."
Silas just nodded at both of us, climbed into his truck, and drove away without another word. Remy followed on his motorcycle, peeling out with more noise than necessary because that was apparently how he processed emotions.
I sat in my truck for a long moment, staring at Artemis's cabin in the distance. The windows caught the afternoon light, glowing warm and golden. Smoke rose from the chimney—she was home, probably brewing tea or reading those tarot cards she thought we didn't take seriously.
Tomorrow, I'd tell her that strangers were watching her.
That the land her aunt had left her, the only home she'd ever felt safe in, was a target.
That the three of us had walked her property without asking, claiming it with our presence and our scents because we couldn't stand the thought of her facing this alone.
She'd be furious.
I was counting on it.
I started the truck and headed home, Gumbo's yellow eyes tracking me from the water until I turned onto the main road and disappeared from his view.