Chapter 28
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Lina
A buzzing sound broke through my nap.
I blinked, scowling at the noise, my brain still fuzzy from sleep.
The panic room was warm and comfortable, Knox’s body pressed against mine, his arm draped possessively over my waist. For a moment, I didn’t want to move.
Didn’t want to acknowledge the outside world intruding on our little sanctuary.
But the buzzing continued, insistent and annoying.
The sound was coming from Knox’s phone on the nightstand, vibrating against the wood with an urgency that made my stomach tighten. Before he could wake up to answer it, the buzzing stopped.
Then my phone started ringing.
Huh.
I reached for it, frowning at the screen. I had an alarm set for when we needed to pick up the twins from kindergarten, and it hadn’t gone off yet. We weren’t late. I checked the time. Half an hour before we needed to leave. So it couldn’t be that.
Had something happened to Blake?
My heart stuttered at the thought. She was with Sarah and Serena, surrounded by guards, completely safe. But the fear was there anyway, irrational and consuming. Ever since the threats started, ever since the coma, I couldn’t shake the feeling that danger was lurking around every corner.
Hunt’s name flashed on my screen.
Not Sarah. Not Serena. Not any of the guards assigned to our baby.
Hunt.
I shook Knox awake with one hand while answering with the other, immediately putting the call on speaker.
“Hunt? What’s wrong? I’m with Knox,” I said instead of hello.
Knox was alert instantly, his gray eyes sharp despite having been dead asleep seconds ago. He pushed himself up on one elbow, leaning closer to the phone, his body tense. I could feel the shift in him, the way his wolf rose to the surface at the first hint of trouble.
Hunt sounded out of breath on the other end of the line. “You were right, Lina.” His voice was strained, urgent, like he’d been running. Or fighting. “You were fucking right about him.”
My blood ran cold. I knew immediately who he was talking about. There was only one person I had asked Hunt to watch.
“I kept an eye on him just as you asked,” Hunt continued, the words tumbling out fast. “Followed him when he left the pack building this afternoon. He went way past our guard posts, deep into rogue territory where no one likes to go. That’s why he hadn’t been caught yet.
He knew exactly where our blind spots were.
And I saw him meeting with Mira Bennett-”
A grunt cut him off.
The sound was violent. Sudden. The kind of noise someone makes when they’ve been hit hard and unexpectedly.
Then the phone clattered to the floor. I could picture it, skittering across concrete or dirt, the screen cracking on impact. Muffled voices followed, too distant to make out clearly, overlapping with sounds of struggle.
“Hunt?” I said, my voice rising. “Hunt, what’s happening? Are you okay?”
Knox was fully upright now, his hand gripping my arm, his face a mask of controlled fury. We stared at the phone, helpless, listening to the sounds of a fight we couldn’t see.
“I’ll make you regret this,” a woman’s voice said, closer now to the phone. Mira. It had to be Mira. The voice was cold and cruel, dripping with satisfaction.
“I don’t want to hurt you, girl.” Hunt’s voice, defiant even in danger. I could hear the strain in it, the pain. He was injured. “But I will if-”
Another grunt. Heavier this time. The thick, meaty sound of a body hitting the ground.
“HUNT!” I screamed into the phone.
Silence.
Then footsteps. Someone walking toward the fallen phone. The scrape of it being picked up off the ground.
“Is this fucking thing on?” The woman’s voice was right there now, speaking directly into the microphone. Casual. Almost amused.
Rage flooded through me, hot and blinding. My hands were shaking, my whole body trembling with fury and fear. “If you touch a single hair on his fucking head, I swear to god-”
The woman snorted. “Too late for that.”
My heart stopped.
“Bye,” she continued, her voice light and mocking. “Enjoy what’s next, bitch.”
The line went dead.
For a long moment, neither of us moved. The silence in the panic room was deafening, broken only by our ragged breathing and the distant hum of the climate control system. The phone sat between us, dark and silent, a useless piece of technology that had just delivered the worst news imaginable.
Hunt was down. Maybe dead. Mira had him. And whatever was coming next, she wanted us to know it was going to be bad.
Then we exploded into action.
Knox was already out of bed, yanking on his pants with jerky, violent movements. His jaw was clenched so tight I could see the muscles jumping under his skin. His eyes had gone dark, almost black, his wolf fighting to break free.
I scrambled for my clothes, my hands trembling so badly I could barely get my shirt on straight. My mind was racing, thoughts tumbling over each other in a chaotic jumble.
“What the hell was Hunt talking about at the beginning?” Knox demanded as he pulled his shirt over his head. “What did he mean, you were right?”
“I asked him to keep an eye on Lucio,” I said, struggling with the button on my jeans. My fingers felt thick and clumsy, like they belonged to someone else. “After that meeting, when the twins came in and I saw the way he looked at them. I told Hunt I thought Lucio was hiding something.”
Knox froze for a split second, his hands stilling on his belt. Then his expression darkened, fury crossing his features like a storm cloud.
“You suspected him?” he growled.
“It was just a hunch! I didn’t have any proof!” I threw my hands up in frustration, tears pricking at my eyes. “Hunt said he would watch him but that they’d already checked his background. He said I was probably just stressed. I thought maybe I was being paranoid. I thought-”
“You weren’t paranoid.” Knox’s voice was hard as steel. “You were right. Your instincts were right. And now Hunt is down and Mira has him and that fucking traitor has been in our home, around our children, and we didn’t - fuck. FUCK.”
He slammed his fist against the wall, leaving a dent in the concrete. The impact echoed through the panic room, a sharp crack of violence that matched the chaos in my chest.
I grabbed his arm, pulling him back. “We need to move. We need to get the kids. Knox, we need to go NOW.”
He nodded, forcing himself to focus. I could see the effort it took, the way he pushed down the rage and the fear to make room for strategy. For action. This was the alpha in him, the leader who had kept his pack safe through countless threats.
“We pick up Blake first,” he said, his voice steadier now. “Then the twins. Then we bring everyone back here to the panic room. I’ll contact Ryder and Noah, organize a search party. The trackers might have found something by now. We can coordinate from here once everyone is safe.”
“Okay. Okay.” I took a shaky breath, trying to steady myself. “Let’s go.”
We ran.
Up the stairs, two at a time, my lungs already burning from the pace. Through the tunnel, the LED lights blurring past us as we sprinted. The ten minutes it had taken to walk down here felt like an eternity now, every second stretching into an unbearable wait.
Knox pulled down the red lever and we burst through into the kitchen. The counter sealed behind us with a soft click that felt like a gunshot in the silence.
We didn’t stop. Didn’t slow down. Just sprinted out of the house and toward Sarah’s place.
The streets of Ravenshollow blurred around me. My feet pounded against the pavement, each step jarring through my body. I could barely feel my legs anymore, couldn’t tell if the burning in my chest was from exertion or terror.
What if we were too late?
The thought kept circling in my head, a vulture waiting to feast on my hope. What if Lucio had already done something? What if Blake was hurt? What if everyone was-
No. I couldn’t think like that. I had to focus. Had to keep moving.
Guards saw us running and snapped to attention, their expressions shifting from surprise to alarm.
Some of them fell into step behind us without being asked, their training kicking in automatically.
By the time we reached Sarah’s house, we had a small entourage of wolves, all of them sensing something was very wrong.
Knox pounded on the door.
No answer.
My heart dropped into my stomach. Sarah always answered quickly. She was always there, always ready, always-
Knox tried the handle. Unlocked. We burst inside, calling out.
“Sarah?”
“Blake?”
The house was empty. Quiet. No baby crying. No elderly woman puttering around the kitchen. No sounds of life at all except for the ticking of a clock on the mantle and the hum of the refrigerator.
I spun in a circle, my eyes scanning every corner. Blake’s bassinet was in the living room, exactly where Sarah always kept it. But it was empty. The blankets were neatly folded. No sign of struggle. No sign of anything wrong except for the absence of everyone who should have been here.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
Knox whirled on the guards stationed outside. “Where is she?” he demanded, his voice barely human. His wolf was right at the surface, ready to break through, ready to tear apart anyone who stood between him and his daughter.
“She went out with Serena and their assigned guards,” one of the guards said, his face pale with dawning realization that something had gone terribly wrong. “They haven’t returned yet.”
“Who were the guards assigned?”
The guard swallowed hard, consulting some internal list. “Theo, Jack, a man from Moonfang named Patrick, and Lucio.”
My world stopped.
The sound around me faded to nothing. The guard’s mouth was still moving, but I couldn’t hear the words anymore. Everything had narrowed down to that one name, echoing in my skull like a death knell.
Lucio.