Chapter 6
Chapter six
Ryan
Istood in the doorway and watched Mai sleep.
Moonlight cut a pale stripe across the bed, turning her skin the color of frost against the dark sheets.
Even in rest, exhaustion clung to her. The twins had been restless for forty minutes—two bright sparks humming through our bond since the three-month mark—but still she hadn’t stirred.
“She’s still breathing, you know.”
Thomas leaned in the hall, wearing the look of a man running out of patience with me.
“Her energy dropped after that meeting,” I said.
“It’s perfectly normal for a pregnant woman, especially one carrying twins, to get tired after socializing.”
“Nothing about this pregnancy feels normal.”
“And that,” he said mildly, “is the most normal thing a new dad can say. Blood pressure’s steady. Heart rate’s good. Babies are thriving. Mai is healthy, Ryan.”
“Then why does she look wrung out?”
“Because she’s building two new people from scratch.” He studied me. “When’s the last time you slept more than three hours?”
We both knew the answer was too long, so I kept my mouth shut.
“Right. Your mate is fine. The pups are fine. You, on the other hand, are about two steps away from a nervous breakdown. You need to be at full strength when they are born, Ryan. Mai’s going to need you even more then.”
Thomas could rattle off all the reassurances he wanted—Mai’s healthy, pups are strong, everything’s fine—but it didn’t change shit. One mistake, one hesitation, and I could lose them.
That’s why I went to the ruins and bled on the Dark Goddess’s altar. When she asked why I’d come, I gave her the only answer I had: to protect my mate.
Mai had an unerring talent for pissing off the worst people.
Brock and his army. Korrin, hunting us for revenge for his son.
And then there was ripple chewing through Packs like rot.
Witches screwing with our bonds until wolves doubted their own Packs.
And my wolf? He didn’t handle threats well.
And I knew I would lose Mai if I ever went through with my threat to lock her in a marshmallow room.
So I took the deal. The True Shift—nine feet of claws and fury—in exchange for eighteen years of our kids worshipping her. A price no sane wolf would pay.
But I’ve never been sane about Mai. I wasn’t going to lose her again. Not now. Not ever.
I could feel the Dark Goddess’s power burning inside me—embers under my skin, sharp, restless. Waiting. Daring me to use it.
My phone buzzed. Waylen: Got an update on the Thornwicks. Heading to you now.
“I have to go,” I told Thomas. “Keep an eye on her?”
“Always.”
I glanced once more at Mai—her breath slow, steady—and the sparks of our children fluttering through the bond like wings, then headed downstairs.
Waylen blew through the front door looking like he’d been mainlining coffee for the past ten hours. He had to have been in the enforcers’ building when he texted; Shaw Investigations is twenty minutes farther on a good day.
“Tell me you found something.”
He shoved his crooked lime-green frames up his nose, hazelnut hair doing its best static impression. “Dude, I found a metric shit-ton of something. I’m just not sure what it means, which is fucking weird because nobody hides from the Wizard.”
“Explain.”
He jerked his chin toward the kitchen. I pushed the door and froze.
“Don’t even think about it,” Sylvie said, already brandishing a wooden spoon like a weapon. “I’m test-driving new recipes for Mai—things she’ll want and things she’ll need when the pups arrive. There’s no room in here for business.”
Sylvie—chestnut pixie cut, three purple studs winking in each ear, apron dusted with flour—ran my house like a quiet storm.
Reserved most days, but a goddess in the kitchen.
She’d been lighter lately, ever since she started seeing Maxwell Bishop, but you try bringing laptops into her domain when she was working, and when she killed you, your death certificate would say suicide.
I held up my hands in surrender. There was no arguing with Sylvie when she was trying new recipes for Mai. Since my mate got pregnant, Sylvie had been on a mission—chasing cravings that changed by the hour and pre-loading the fridge with whatever might sound good to Mai at two a.m.
“Study,” I told Waylen.
He followed, jittery energy humming off him. I waved him to the desk.
He unholstered three laptops like weapons and started spinning up windows, fingers tapping a rhythm only he understood—the Wizard in his element.
“So, get this—Glenn Thornwick, Sian Thornwick, Jonas Reeves, Vera Reeves?” He pointed at the screens. “The names are real. The faces that turned up here are not.”
“What do you mean?”
Waylen adjusted his glasses and leaned forward. “I mean, DMV, school yearbooks, and Council Pack rolls all say those four exist. But the photos don’t match our guests. Ages don’t match. Heights are off. And before you ask, yes, I’m comparing against official sources and a few…legal-ish ones.”
My wolf went very still. “So the identities are stolen.”
“Bingo.” He flicked to another window. “And about their story? Three nights ago, someone hit the forested valley that is Thornwick Pack territory. I pulled thermal and optical from a couple of private sats and ran a before/after swipe.”
The image blinked: a green valley alive with roofs and smoke trails a month ago—then the present.
“Here,” he said, zooming. “Burn scars where this house used to be—roof pancaked, foundation lines still radiating low-grade heat. See those straight-edged scorch blocks? Not wildfire. Incendiary.” He panned.
“Perimeter gate blown inward, not outward—breach from outside. Two neat vehicle paths with a wheelbase too wide for pickups, armored transports, most likely.”
He toggled a thermal overlay. “Hot spots along this field—smolder under the ash. No active fires now, but the thermal ghosts are fresh. And here,” he tapped a cluster of pale ovals near a collapsed shed, “heat-neutral human-sized shapes under tarps or debris. Could be bodies. Could be a setup. Either way, it’s bad. ”
“We need boots on the ground,” I said.
“Agreed. I’ll keep scraping, but from up here?” He leaned back, mouth hard. “Somebody hit Thornwick fast and clean. It has the HFD and Morrison’s fingerprints all over it.”
“Morrison,” I repeated, jaw tight.
“Council chatter has been dirty-wording that name for weeks,” Waylen said. “So yeah—the Thornwick Pack got hammered. All evidence points to the HFD. But the four in our guest rooms? Not Thornwick. They’re riding the truth to sell the lie.”
“They must’ve known we’d check.”
“Sure,” he said, mouth tilted. “But maybe they only needed to get in. ‘We survived, please help,’ gets you inside most decent Packs. After that? It depends on what their end goal is.”
I took out my phone and hit Sam’s name. He answered on the second ring, dark circles under his eyes and that new grimness I hated.
“Ryan. Give me good news, bro. Am I an uncle?”
“Not today. Talk to me about Morrison. Methods. Recent ops.”
Sam’s expression sharpened. “He scouts for a week, sometimes longer. Cuts what he has to—power, comms, roads. Then he hits hard and fast. Any survivors are rounded up and sent to camps. New Hampshire and Maine have been hot, and we’ve been getting rumors he’s expanding into Vermont.”
My jaw tightened. “That matches what I’m seeing. I might have a location for you. We need someone to look for survivors and confirmation that it’s the HFD.”
“I’ll go,” Sam said. “Rolling a team to verify. I’ll send you what we find.”
“Thanks. We have four guests using real Thornwick names, said they were attacked. Satellite images confirm their story, but photos don’t match. I’m going to press them. If I don’t like the answers, they’re gone.”
“Be careful,” Sam said. “If they got through your door on the back of a true story, they’re not amateurs.”
“I know. Watch your back, Sam.”
He grunted, “Always.” Then hung up.
I turned to Waylen. “Keep digging. I want to know who these fuckers really are.”
My wolf went still, his ears perked forward as a tug came along our mate bond. I was already running before the sound of Mai’s scream reached me.