Chapter 002 Ballistic
05:30.
The timestamp burned on the corner of my tablet screen. Green digitals against black glass.
I liked this time of day. The pre-dawn silence wasn't empty; it was disciplined. The world hadn't started its chaotic, messy spin yet. In the quiet, variables could be controlled. Threats assessed.
I sat at the head of the briefing table in the main hall—Church, we called it. The wood was new. Everything in the clubhouse was new, smelling of sawdust, varnish, and the lingering, acrid ghost of different explosives than the ones that had leveled the old place.
Iron Valor had rebuilt. We always did.
Stallion sat at the head of the table. Our President. Our Alpha. He didn't look up from his coffee, but I knew he was tracking every micro-movement in the room.
Titan and Gunner were already there, silent monoliths in their cuts. Medic was checking inventory on a datapad, looking tired.
We were waiting for Breach.
My wolf paced inside my chest. usually, at this hour, he was dormant, lulled by the routine. Today he was a caged thing, snapping at the bars of my ribcage.
I tightened my hand on the tablet until the casing creaked.
*Mine. Found her. Go back.*
"Stand down," I thought, the command sharp and internal.
The wolf didn't listen. It hadn't listened since last night, since the second the scent hit me in that club. Vanilla and ozone. Rain on hot asphalt. The smell of a ghost I’d spent five years trying to exorcise.
The door banged open. 05:47.
Breach strolled in, grinning like he hadn't just wasted seventeen minutes of my life. Sawyer trailed behind him, looking like he’d been dragged out of bed by his ankles.
"Ladies," Breach said, dropping into his chair. "Traffic was a bitch."
"You live four miles away," I said. My voice was flat. No heat. Just data.
"School bus," Breach countered, unbothered. He spun his chair once, then stopped, elbows on the table. "Alright, Ballistic. Bring the gloom."
Stallion looked at me. "Report."
I stood up. I preferred standing. It kept the blood moving, kept the wolf from settling into a whine. I tapped the screen, casting the dossier onto the main monitor.
"Target package: Morgantown Pack. Alpha: Waylon Krueger."
A grainy surveillance photo popped up. Krueger coming out of a steakhouse, surrounded by three guys who looked more like Blackwater contractors than bikers.
"Born '86. Took over the pack at twenty-five. Dad was old guard, but Waylon isn't running a pack. He's running a cartel."
I swiped to the next slide.
"Estimated pack size: eighty to ninety. But the core presence in Morgantown is small. Maybe fifteen active wolves. The rest are spread out, enforcing localized rackets."
"Territory?" Titan asked.
"Commercial real estate. High-end. He owns half the blocks downtown, but the crown jewel is *The Eyrie*."
I put the image of the club on the screen. Neon sign. No windows. It looked like a fortress dressed up as a party.
"Strip club," Gunner muttered. "Classy."
"It's a fortress," I corrected. "I ran a localized recon last night. Perimeter is tight. Cameras every ten feet, overlapping fields of view. The bouncers aren't just muscle; they're armed. I clocked Sig P320s under the jackets of the door guys. That's not bouncer carry. That's PMC standard."
Stallion leaned forward, eyes narrowing. "Drugs?"
"Incidental. He moves them, but it’s not the main revenue stream. The money is in the flesh. High-end escorts, private rooms, blackmail. We suspect the VIP rooms are wired for AV. He records the johns—judges, councilmen, local law enforcement—and keeps them on a leash."
My throat felt dry. I grabbed the pitcher of water, poured a glass. My hand was steady. It had to be.
"I tracked his movement patterns for the last month," I continued. "He moves in a convoy. Two armored SUVs, blacked out. Run-flat tires. He swaps the vehicles every two weeks to prevent pattern recognition. This guy is paranoid, and he has the bankroll to fund the paranoia."
"And the other spot?" Stallion asked. "You mentioned a restaurant."
"Savage Garden. Houston. Five-star dining upstairs, but the blueprints show a sub-basement with independent ventilation. Soundproofed. We think it's an underground dining chamber. For the kind of meals you don't serve to humans."
Silence settled over the table. The heavy, pressurized silence of predators recognizing a threat.
"He's infringing," Stallion said quietly. "Moving product through our corridors."
"He thinks we're dead," I said. "Or weak. The explosion took us off the board for six months. He pushed in while we were bleeding."
Stallion nodded slowly. He looked at the photo of Krueger. "This smells like trafficking. Flesh peddling."
"It is," I said.
The image of Sloane flashed in my mind. Not the girl I knew five years ago—the pristine, disciplined dancer in the pink leotard. But the woman I saw last night. The hollows under her cheekbones. The way she scanned the room like she was waiting for a blow.
And the scent. God, the scent beneath the fear.
The word hit me like a physical blow. A somatic uppercut. My wolf snarled, trying to force a shift, trying to tear through the skin suit and run back to that club.
I locked my knees. Forced my breathing to stay even.
"Ballistic," Stallion said.
His voice cut through the noise in my head. He was looking at me. Too closely.
"You went to The Eyrie last night for recon?"
"Affirmative."
"Did you make contact?"
"Negative on verbal. Visual confirmation only."
Stallion tapped a finger on the wood. "This Krueger... he's messy. If he's recording politicians, he's got leverage, but he's also got enemies. If we move on him, it has to be surgical. We can't start a war in the city limits without knowing who he owns."
"Agreed," I said. "I need forty-eight hours to map the network. Breach can crack their encrypted comms. We need to know who's on his payroll before we strike."
Stallion stood up. Meeting over. The air in the room shifted, relaxed slightly as the brothers moved to stand.
"Ballistic," Stallion said. He waited until the others had started drifting toward the coffee pot. "If you see something—if there's a personal angle—you bring it to me. Immediately."
He knew. Or he suspected. Stallion had instincts that rivaled the wolf inside me.
I looked him in the eye. I could tell him right now. *My mate is in there. She's a dancer. I need to get her out.*
But if I told him, it became club business. A vote. A strategy. And if the club decided the risk was too high, or the timing was wrong...
I couldn't risk the vote.
"Roger that," I said.
I didn't offer more. I saluted, sharp and crisp, and turned on my heel before the lie could show on my face.
***
"Office. Now."
I grabbed Breach by the shoulder of his hoodie as he passed. I snagged Sawyer’s sleeve with my other hand.
"Ow," Sawyer complained. "Hardware, man. Watch the hardware."
I ignored him and marched them into the back office. It was a small room, soundproofed, used for sensitive financial discussions or disciplinary beatings. On the wall hung a Texas flag. It was tattered, stained with smoke, and punctuated by a single bullet hole through the white star.
I’d pulled it out of the wreckage myself.
I shut the door and locked it.
Breach rubbed his shoulder. "Okay, Mom, what's the damage? Did I forget to flush?"
"Shut up," I said. I paced the length of the room. Three steps turn. Three steps turn.
Sawyer leaned against the safe, crossing his arms. He looked better than he had a few months ago. Dying and being resurrected by an Angel King took a toll on the complexion, but the color was coming back to his face.
"You're vibrating," Sawyer noted. "You look like you're about to shift."
"I might."
Breach stopped smiling. " Jade. What is it?"
He used my name. My real name. That meant he was listening.
"The club," I said. "Last night."
"The Eyrie? Yeah. You said it was a recon op."
"It was. Until I saw the headliner."
I stopped pacing. I put my hands on the back of the chair and squeezed until the leather groaned.
"It's Sloane."
Breach stared at me. "Sloane? Who's..." He trailed off. His eyes went wide. "Wait. The rich girl? The ballerina?"
"Julliard girl," Sawyer clarified. He knew the stories. We’d gotten drunk enough a few years back for me to spill the history. "The one from five years ago?"
"She's there," I said. The words tasted like bile. "She's stripping. Headliner set. She goes by 'Silver' or some shit, but it's her."
"You're shitting me," Breach whispered.
"I wish I was."
"Maybe it's a lookalike," Sawyer suggested gently. "Five years is a long time, man. Memory plays tricks."
"I smelled her, Sawyer."
That shut them up. Intelligence, data, photos—those could be debated. Scent couldn't. Biology didn't lie.
"Does she know you're Iron Valor?" Breach asked constantly.
"No. She knows me as Jade Regan. The mechanic's kid. The low life loser." I spat the words out, hearing her father's voice in them. *Stay away from my daughter, you low-life loser. You're dirt.* "She doesn't know about the MC. She doesn't know what I am."
"Is she... did she see you?"
"I don't know," I lied. I thought she had. For a second, when the lights swept the crowd, her eyes had locked on my table. My wolf had howled then, a primitive, claiming roar that nearly shattered my eardrums. "I left before the set ended."
"Why didn't you pull her off the stage?" Sawyer asked.
"Because one lone wolf starting a brawl in a room full of heavily armed contractors and opposing shifters gets us all killed," I snapped. "And because I need to know why. Why makes a Julliard prodigy end up on a pole in a shifter bar in Dairyville?"
"Daddy cut her off?" Breach guessed.
"Daddy was worth twenty million," I said. "You don't get cut off and land here. You land in a condo in Austin. You land in a teaching gig. You don't land in *The Eyrie*."
I walked over to the flag. Traced the edge of the bullet hole.
"She never really left," I said, my voice dropping. "Not from here." I tapped my chest. "Five years, and the bond is still barbed wire. If she's in trouble..."
"If she's in trouble, we burn it down," Sawyer said simply.
"Stallion doesn't know," I said.
Breach sighed. "Of course he doesn't. Because you have a pathological need to handle everything yourself."
"Because I need intel before I bring a war to his doorstep. Stallion will act, but he'll act for the club. I need to know if I'm acting for *her*."
Breach stood up and cracked his neck. "Alright. Let's go to my place. The servers here are logged. If we're doing off-the-books digging on the President's orders, we do it on my rig."
***