9. Sam #2
“Someone has to watch the watchers.” Derek met his stare without blinking.
“The night shift changes at ten p.m. There’ll be a mix of the usual crew and new guards, human, some of Kane’s followers.
They’re ex-military but less experienced in prison situations and protocols.
Maximum chaos potential during transition. That’s your window.”
I knew Gideon was not only shocked but hated that Derek, that any PI agency or Pack had this kind of reach, this kind of intelligence operation running in the background.
It meant the Shaw family had resources and connections that even the Council didn’t fully understand.
As a Council enforcer, the Council was his Pack, and his whole job was to protect the Council against any threat.
This went against everything he stood for.
And it meant Derek had been planning for something like this, preparing for the day when the Council became the enemy.
Sofia touched Derek’s arm, and some of the tension eased from his shoulders. But his eyes never left Gideon’s.
“We need a diversion.” Ryan pointed to the northwest section of the perimeter, tactical and businesslike, ignoring the standoff like it wasn’t happening. “Here. Mason, Derek, and I stage a perimeter breach. Flash-bangs, smoke. Make it look like an external attack.”
“It’ll draw their rapid response team away from the interior,” Mason agreed. “Splits their forces; leaves the inside understaffed during your extraction.”
“Okay, so here’s the deal.” Waylen pulled up the prison schematics, bouncing slightly in his seat. “Sam, you’re a legit Council member. You don’t need forged credentials. You just walk in and demand prisoner interrogation. Standard procedure. Guards have to comply.”
“Right.” I leaned forward, studying the layout. “I request the prisoners be brought to the interrogation room.”
“Prisoners plural?” Waylen looked up. “Thought we were just grabbing Annabella McGrath.”
“Three prisoners,” I said, keeping my voice level. “Annabella McGrath, Mina Tong, and Zeke Thornton.”
“Wait.” Gideon straightened from his casual lean against the wall. “Three?”
“They were arrested together. Makes sense I’d interrogate them together.”
Gideon went completely still. The kind of stillness that meant his brain was running calculations at full speed—risk assessment, exposure probability, everything that could go catastrophically wrong.
Then he exploded.
“Three. THREE?”
Here we go.
Gid started pacing, hands gesturing wildly. “Okay, so we’re not just breaking into the most secure supernatural prison in North America for your mate—which, fine, I get it, mate bond, destiny, all that romantic bullshit—but NOW we’re adding two more?”
His voice rose, sharp and incredulous. “Every additional prisoner triples our risk, triples our exposure, triples the ways this ends with all of us in matching cells! Do you have any idea how many things can go wrong with three prisoners?” He raked a hand through his hair.
“Because I can list them. Alphabetically. I’ve got time. ”
He rounded on me. “We could ALL end up in there. Or dead. Or worse, in there and then dead. You, me, your brothers, everyone in this room. Should I start measuring us for matching jumpsuits now?”
“I worked with them for weeks, Gid. They’re not strangers. They were my crew. My team. And they’re in there because of me. Because I brought the Council down on all of them.”
I paused, let that sink in.
“Mina’s human. She’s not built for what that place does to people. And Zeke…” I stopped, remembering his quiet calm, his windowsill garden, the gentleness that had no place in Adarcan’s brutality. “I can’t leave them. I won’t.”
Derek didn’t hesitate. “Sam wants them out. We get them out.”
Gideon spun toward him. “Oh, so NOW you want to play the white-knight brother? Where the fuck have you been the last few months, Shaw?”
The room went cold.
“You weren’t there to drag Sam out of bars when he was so drunk he couldn’t remember his own name.
Didn’t save his ass when we were surrounded by twenty feral Rippers in Arkansas—just me and him, bleeding and fighting until dawn.
Didn’t patch him up when a Council operation went sideways and he took a blade to the stomach. ”
Derek’s scent sharpened, aggression bleeding into the air.
“No, you were here.” Gideon’s voice dripped acid. “Living your nice life in Three Rivers. Playing house with your mate. While Sam was drowning in Council politics, making impossible choices, getting his hands dirty so the rest of you could sleep at night.”
“Gid—” I started.
“No,” he cut me off. “He doesn’t get to waltz in now and play family. He doesn’t get to lecture me about what Sam wants when he hasn’t been there. So yeah, excuse me if I’m not impressed by your sudden fucking support.”
Derek’s voice was dangerously quiet. “I’m his twin. You got no fucking clue what that means.”
“Yeah? I know it meant when you got bloodlust, you tried to kill him.”
Derek didn’t lunge. Didn’t snarl. He just went very, very still; and I knew that his wolf was one breath from the surface, held back by nothing but willpower. His scent sharpened, pine and moss turning to something cold and dangerous. My own wolf pressed forward, ready to take the hit for him.
“Enough.” I stepped between them, palm flat against Derek’s chest. I could feel his heartbeat through my hand—too fast, barely controlled. Our bond thrummed with old pain, old guilt, the jagged edges of something neither of us had fully healed.
Gideon’s expression flickered; a crack in the armor, there and gone. He knew he’d gone too far. But admitting it would mean admitting he cared, and Gideon didn’t do that.
“Touchy subject. Duly noted.”
“Stand down.” Ryan didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. The Alpha command was there anyway, bone-deep, impossible to ignore.
I kept my hand on Derek for one more second. Two. Then I let go.
“We’re not revisiting the past,” I said. “We’re here for Annabella. For all three of them. That’s the mission.”
Derek’s nod was a single controlled movement. Gideon’s face smoothed into something professionally blank.
Waylen let out a low whistle, eyes bouncing between us like he’d just witnessed the best entertainment of his life. “We all good now? Nobody’s gonna sprout claws and redecorate the furniture?”
Nobody answered.
“Shame.” He turned back to his screens. “Anyway, your mission? Already halfway written.”
He turned his screens toward us, the blue light reflecting off his glasses.
“Surveillance loop initiates during the perimeter breach. It’ll show the interrogation room feed going static—like some idiot tripped a circuit—while the rest of the prison runs on a five-minute loop I already coded.
Guards won’t know it’s fake until they notice a dude re-tie his shoelace five times in a row. ”
He tapped a few keys. “Sam and Gideon go in clean. Council credentials get you access. Interrogation room is here—” He zoomed in. “Three prisoners enter. Feed cuts. Loop rolls. You walk them straight out through the south exit.”
“And when we hit the outer perimeter?” Gideon asked.
Waylen’s grin returned, sharp and pleased. “That’s when Sam decks you. Realistic force, concussive but not permanent—unless you’re into that. You go down, and suddenly it looks like Sam went rogue. You’re the hero who tried to stop him. Council saves face. Nobody questions your loyalty.”
“That’s insane,” Mason said quietly.
“That’s Tuesday, my dude.” Waylen’s attention snapped back to his keyboards. “Now give me the prisoner names—full legal identities, prisoner numbers if you’ve got them—and I’ll have your paperwork ready before midnight.”
The room emptied one by one.
Derek and Sofia left together, her hand linked with his. Ryan and Mai went to check on their kids, and Mason disappeared with them. Carlito announced he needed something significantly stronger than coffee, and predictably, Gid was all up for that.
I was alone.
The restless energy that had driven me all day finally stilled, replaced by something harder. Cleaner. We had a plan. We had a team. We had a target.
Tomorrow, everything would change.
I moved to the window, staring out at the darkening sky. Somewhere out there—hundreds of miles north—Annabella was in a cell. Silver and nullstone. Pain and isolation.
Hold on, baby. The words were a whisper, spoken to empty air. One more day.
My wolf settled in my chest, no longer frantic. Patient now. Focused.
The door opened behind me.
“Stop brooding.” Gideon was back, and his voice was lighter without the audience. “Won’t change anything.”
“Brooding is half my personality these days.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed. Very sexy. Very tortured hero. The ladies must love it.” He moved to stand beside me, looking out at the same nothing. “You need rest. Tomorrow’s going to be hell.”
“Probably.”
“Definitely.” He paused. “Thanks for not letting me kill your brother.”
“Thanks for not making me choose.”
He snorted. “Yeah, well. Someone’s gotta keep you from getting yourself killed. Pretty sure Derek would murder me if I let anything happen to you now.”
“He might murder you anyway.”
“He can try. I’m scrappy.” Another pause, longer this time. “She better be worth all this.”
“She is.”
Gideon studied my face for a moment, then nodded. Whatever he saw there must have been enough.
“Get some sleep,” he said, and left.
The door clicked shut.
I stayed at the window, watching darkness swallow the last of the light.
Tomorrow: Adarcan.
Tomorrow: Annabella.
Tomorrow: everything.
My wolf settled finally, focused and ready.
Tomorrow, we hunt.