37. Sam
Chapter thirty-seven
Sam
Forty-seven minutes. That was how long we had before the Pack patrol looped back and everything went sideways.
I crouched in the tree-line above Mégantic Agricultural Supply Co.—two boring buildings, a handful of trucks, and enough territorial magic seeping through the ground to make my wolf want to tear his own skin off—and did what I always did before an operation went live.
I ran the math on everything that could kill us.
The list was not short.
Foreign Pack territory: hostile by default.
We suspected fifteen witch guards on rotating patrol, plus eight in the barracks.
An unknown facility underground that Webster had been pouring resources into for months.
A ticking clock that would bring the Meute des Montagnes Pack wolves down on us if we overstayed.
We were on their Pack lands, and they were not going to be happy when they discovered we had trespassed all over it.
And somewhere in there, spell containment technology that could arm every anti-Shifter extremist on the planet if we didn’t destroy it today.
I’d had worse odds. Probably. I was trying not to think too hard about when.
Beside me, Annabella pressed her fingers against the frozen ground, her lips moving slightly. I got the impression she was reading the land. Silver-green light flickered at her fingertips, faint enough that you’d miss it if you didn’t know to look.
I knew to look. I always knew to look when it came to her.
Getting into Canada had been Gideon’s contribution.
He’d put us in touch with a Shifter who ran an underground route through the forests north of Jackman, Maine.
We’d crossed on foot at three a.m., seven figures moving through old-growth pine in single file, breath fogging in the dark.
No border checkpoint. No passports. Just Gideon’s smug assurance that his contact owed him a debt involving a stolen ice-fishing hut, a minor diplomatic incident with the Canadian Wildlife Service, and a beaver that Gideon insisted had started it.
I didn’t ask for details. With Gideon, the less you knew, the better you slept.
“Heat signatures confirmed,” Waylen’s voice crackled through my earpiece. “Sixteen outside on patrol, eight inside the barracks. If there is an underground section, we can’t see who’s down there. But I did bypass their encryption in twenty-eight seconds.”
Good. Intel was holding. That was something.
“Oh wow, twenty-eight whole seconds,” Mina’s voice cut in from the van. “Want a medal?”
“I’d love one, actually. What’s your time?”
“I could’ve done it in twenty, but I was busy setting up the actual surveillance grid while you were measuring your digital dick.”
I closed my eyes briefly.
Bringing Mina and having Waylen plug in from Three Rivers had been strategically sound.
Together, their tech capabilities covered every surveillance and communications angle we needed.
The fact that putting them on the same comms channel was like stuffing two cats in a carrier was an acceptable trade-off.
In theory. Mina was also the only fully human member of our team, which meant she was risking her life on foreign Pack territory without enhanced healing or magic to fall back on.
She hadn’t hesitated when she’d volunteered.
Hadn’t even blinked. That was Mina. Five foot two of absolute certainty that she no longer just belonged behind a desk but right in the fight these days, and the Goddess help you if you suggested otherwise.
“My surveillance architecture is flawless, thank you,” Waylen continued. “Unlike someone’s hasty patch job—”
“Hasty? I built redundancies into redundancies. Your ‘flawless architecture’ has three vulnerabilities I can see from here.”
“Can we fucking focus?” I said.
Brief silence. I could practically hear Waylen flipping me off.
“Patrol patterns are predictable,” Mina said. “Two-witch teams, rotating every twenty minutes. Three teams on the north side, three on the south, two circling the perimeter road.”
“Shift change in forty-seven minutes,” Waylen reported. “Though technically it’s a rotation reshuffle, not a shift change, because the teams don’t fully swap, they redistribute based on a—”
“We know what it is,” I cut in. “Gid?”
Gideon had been motionless on Annabella’s other side, watching the eastern tree-line with his kind of lazy focus that meant he was tracking six things at once.
“The Meute des Montagnes do Pack patrol in the area. They’re gonna circle back through this sector in forty-five minutes, maybe less.
Tight schedule. These guys are professional. ”
“Think they know what’s in the facility?” Annabella asked, her voice low.
I shook my head. My shoulder brushed hers as I adjusted position, and the mate bond lit up, a current of heat and awareness that I could not afford right now but couldn’t shut down either.
I’d spent years training myself to compartmentalize.
To separate the personal from the operational, the emotional from the tactical.
The mate bond had made that skill completely fucking useless.
I could feel her focus. Her controlled anger.
That razor-edge readiness she carried now that both sides of her were awake.
My wolf pushed toward her, wanting proximity, wanting contact. I hauled him back.
Not now. Focus.
“Doubtful,” I said. “Webster’s probably paying them through an intermediary. Protection contract, no questions asked. Standard mercenary deal for territory this isolated.”
Annabella nodded. The silver streak in her dark hair caught the weak morning light. She’d been working it between her fingers earlier, twisting it the way she did sometimes when she was running threat scenarios. She’d stopped now. Game face.
Goddess, she was something.
I ran a hand through my hair and forced myself to look at the facility instead of her. Forty-five minutes, Shaw. Mooning over her in a combat zone…Derek would never let you live this down.
“Everyone ready?” I looked at each of them in turn.
Jem had positioned himself beside Esme. Protective didn’t begin to cover it; the man arranged himself around Esme the way you’d cup your hands around a candle in a storm.
She didn’t seem to notice, or maybe she noticed everything and just didn’t mind.
Jem caught me looking and gave me a short nod.
Everything Jem did had that quality. Measured.
Certain. He didn’t waste movement or words, and when he committed to something, he committed with everything he had.
Esme looked small and pale in the morning light, blonde hair catching the sun.
She’d been humming something under her breath for the last ten minutes.
I’d worked with some heavy hitters in Council operations.
Enforcers who could bring down buildings.
Wolves who’d earned kill counts that made seasoned fighters go quiet.
None of them had unnerved me the way Esme Parker did when she went still and started humming.
Zeke crouched on Esme’s other side, hands resting on his knees, that faint warmth of healing magic already gathered and waiting.
Ready. He was always ready. Mina was back in the van coordinating everything.
And then there was Gideon. Rogue wolf, self-appointed adult supervision, no obligation to be here whatsoever.
He’d shown up because…Well, I’d stopped trying to figure out Gideon’s reasons for anything.
The man operated on a logic system that had nothing to do with sense and everything to do with some internal code he’d never share with anyone.
But he was here. On hostile territory. About to assault a fortified position.
All of them were. Every one of them had chosen this.
I looked at Annabella last. Her eyes met mine and she nodded. “We’re ready.”
“The wards,” Esme said softly. “They hum like sleepy bees. Lazy morning magic. Not expecting visitors.”
“Can you get past them?” I asked.
“Already am. The wards think my magic is just wind, just shadow. Nothing to see, nothing to catch.”
She extended one pale hand toward the facility. Silver-blue light gathered around her palm—quiet, steady—and I watched as the most terrifying thing I’d seen in months began.
“Sixteen targets,” I reminded her. “All witches. All trained.”
“I know that, Sam,” she scolded. Her eyes had gone unfocused, that faraway look. “Sleepy-time, bye-bye.”
The spell built. I couldn’t see it the way Annabella could. She’d gone rigid beside me, her lips slightly parted, watching something invisible to the rest of us. Whatever she was seeing had put a look of awe on her face.
On Mina’s screen, the heat signatures started dropping.
“North patrol down,” Mina reported. A pause. “South patrol down.” Another pause. “Perimeter team…down.”
I counted in my head. Ninety seconds. Sixteen trained witch guards, scattered across the facility’s perimeter, taken out simultaneously without a single alarm triggered.
Ninety. Fucking. Seconds.
Esme swayed. Jem caught her immediately, his arm around her waist, absorbing her weight without shifting his stance an inch.
“Like reaching for butterflies on all the branches at once,” she murmured, leaning into him. “Stretchy-far. But I caught them all. Every one.”
“All targets neutralized,” Waylen confirmed. “No alarms triggered. You’ve got a clear approach.”
“Time to move,” I said, feet already moving.