46. Sam
Chapter forty-six
Sam
The quad trail cut northeast through dense spruce and birch, the tracks still sharp-edged in the mud. Maybe two hours old, based on the crystal formation along the tread marks.
The bond pulled me forward like a line hooked behind my sternum.
She was awake now. Had been for a while.
The sedation had worn off, and I could feel the difference: her wolf pressing against the silver suppression, her witch magic flickering in weak, frustrated bursts. She was trying to find a way out.
That’s my girl. I’m coming.
“Quad was running heavy,” Gideon said, crouched beside one of the deeper tread marks. He pressed two fingers into the impression and frowned. “Pulling weight. The sled-crate they had her on, plus at least one rider.”
This wasn’t new information. “We need to pick up the pace,” I said.
“We’ve been picking up the pace for the last forty minutes. If we pick it up any more, we’ll be running, and running through Mountain Pack territory is a good way to trigger a patrol response.” He stood, wiping mud from his fingers. “I realize restraint isn’t your love language.”
“My love language is getting my mate back.”
“Your love language is property damage. Getting your mate back is just the current excuse.”
Jem moved past us both, taking point without asking. His stride seemed unhurried but covered ground much faster than it looked. Esme was back in the van with Mina. She’d crashed before we left, and Jem had insisted on letting her sleep. Zeke was guarding them both.
We’d left the van an hour ago. Mina was working with Waylen, pulling satellite data, tracking the quad’s heat signature through the sector, and getting intel on the Mountain Pack.
I followed the quad tracks and let my wolf do what he was made for.
Northeast. Deeper into the mountains.
The trail wound through a narrow gulch between two granite outcrops, then opened into a gentler slope thick with birch. I could smell the Pack now—territorial markers soaked into the tree bark, urine and musk layered over years. We were deep inside Mountain Pack territory.
“Mina,” I said. “Talk to me.”
“Working on it. Waylen’s satellite pass gave me thermal mapping for the area. There’s a large structure two and a half clicks ahead. Significant heat output: multiple fireplaces, generator, concentrated body heat. Matches what you’d expect from a Pack Alpha’s compound.”
“How many?”
“Hard to say from satellite thermals at this resolution. Twelve to fifteen inside. Will be more on lower floors; the heat signatures blend together through the roof.”
Twelve to fifteen wolves. Defending their own Alpha’s home, on their own land, with every tactical advantage terrain could provide.
And us. Three in the field, one on comms.
The odds weren’t great. I’d worked with worse, but not by much.
“Patrol routes?” I asked.
“Waylen’s working on movement patterns from the last two satellite passes. Give me another ten minutes.”
“You’ve got five.”
“You said that last time.”
“Did it work?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’ve got five.”
Gideon fell into step beside me, his stride easy, eyes doing that constant sweep of the forest that made him look bored and alert at the same time. It was the thing that made him genuinely dangerous. People assumed the casual posture meant he wasn’t paying attention.
“Walk me through the approach,” he said. “Because I assume you’ve been running tactical scenarios in that overworked brain of yours for the last forty minutes, and I’d rather hear the plan before you improvise one that involves crashing through a wall.”
“That was one time.”
“It was three times. I’ve been counting.”
Fair point.
“We don’t know enough yet,” I admitted. “We need eyes on the compound before I can plan a breach. But the basics: we get to an elevated position with sightlines. Map guard positions, entry points, where they’re holding her. Then we hit them fast, before they know we’re coming.”
“Elevated position, map the layout, hit them fast.” Gideon repeated it back. “Straightforward. Which means something will go horrifically wrong, because nothing you plan ever stays straightforward.”
“That’s why I bring you.”
“Ah. So I’m the contingency plan for your contingency plan. Flattering.”
The trail climbed. The spruce thinned out, replaced by wind-stunted birch and exposed rock.
We were gaining elevation, the valley below starting to open up through gaps in the canopy.
My wolf was pulling harder now. She was close, maybe a kilometer, maybe less, and the proximity was making the bond sing with a clarity that bordered on painful.
Hold on, Moonbeam.
“Sam.” Mina’s voice in my ear.
“Yeah?”
“I got into the Mountain Pack’s phone system. Internal messages, group texts. They’re not exactly running military-grade encryption out here. I’ve been monitoring for anything useful, but I just picked up something else.”
“Tell me.”
“They contacted Webster directly. Told him about his facility going bye-bye. Then offered to trade a captured prisoner in exchange for continued medical treatment for their Alpha. The response came back within minutes.”
“What response?”
“He agreed. And Sam—” She paused. I heard her swallow. “The response said he was already en route. That was over an hour ago.”
“How far?” My voice came out flat. “How far is Webster from here?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know where he was when he sent the response. But if he was anywhere in the northeast corridor…” She trailed off. She didn’t need to finish.
Close. He could be close already.
Gideon moved into my line of sight. Not blocking me—positioning himself where I could see his face, read his expression.
“Don’t,” he said.
“I’m not—”
“You are. I can see it happening. Your shoulders just climbed three inches, and your hands are doing that thing where they stop being hands and start being weapons.” He kept his voice even.
“We knew this was a possibility. Someone was always going to come for her. At least now we know the timeline.”
“The timeline is now, Gideon. Webster could be at that compound already.”
“Then running in blind gets us killed and gets her killed. Which is the exact opposite of helpful.”
“He’ll break her.” The words came out jagged, torn from somewhere I didn’t want to examine. “He knows how. He built her. He spent years conditioning her to believe she was nothing without him, and he’ll use every single weapon he installed in her head to—”
“Stop.” Jem’s voice. Not loud. Didn’t need to be. “You’re projecting.”
“I’m not—”
“You are. You’re running worst-case scenarios and treating them as certainties. Annabella broke his conditioning. She reversed a mind-wipe on a Council member. She is not the girl he built. Not anymore.”
He was right. She wasn’t that girl. But Webster didn’t know that yet, and a man who thought he owned you was a man who’d burn you down before letting you go free.
“Okay.” I breathed. Let my hands unclench. Let the Shift recede from where it had been pushing at my skin. “Okay. We move faster. We get to that ridge, get eyes on the compound, and we figure out what we’re walking into.”
“That’s better,” Gideon said. “See? Growth.”
“Call me Sammy-boy right now, and I’ll break your jaw.”
He grinned at me. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
We moved.
Faster now. The pretense of caution gave way to urgency. Jem took point again and set a pace that was just short of a run—ground-eating strides that forced the rest of us to stretch.
The terrain steepened, and I could smell the compound now—woodsmoke, cooking oil, the concentrated musk of a Pack that had denned here for generations. My wolf surged, every instinct tuned to the scent of wolves who had his mate.
“Eight hundred meters,” Mina said. “You’ll have visual from the top.”
I went low for the final approach. Dropped to my stomach on the cold granite and crawled the last ten meters to the ridge’s edge. Gideon settled in beside me and pulled a compact scope from his jacket.
Below us, the Alpha House sat in a shallow valley.
House was generous. It was a compound. A massive log-and-stone structure built for a Pack that lived close to its wolf side.
Vaulted roof, wraparound deck, smoke rising from twin stone chimneys.
Outbuildings flanked the main structure: a workshop, a storage barn, and a smaller cabin that looked like a guard post. The cleared ground around it was deliberate.
Thirty meters of open land between the tree-line and the nearest wall. Anyone approaching would be exposed.
The bond blazed.
There. Second floor. East side.
“Two exterior patrols,” Gideon murmured, sweeping the scope in slow passes. “South perimeter—two wolves, human form, rifles. I can’t see the east patrol yet, probably behind the main structure.”
“Hold.” Jem’s voice, low and sharp.
I followed his sightline. South. Through the trees at the far end of the valley, where a rough logging road emerged from the forest.
Headlights.
My stomach dropped.
One vehicle. Then a second. A third. They came through the tree-line in a tight convoy formation. Black SUVs with tinted windows. Fourth vehicle. Fifth. Sixth.
Six vehicles.
They rolled into the cleared ground around the compound and fanned out—two flanking the main entrance, the others taking positions that covered every approach vector.
Doors opened simultaneously. Figures emerged.
Black tactical gear. Coordinated movements.
And I could smell them even from this distance. Not wolves.
Witches.
“Count them,” I said. My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.
“Fourteen,” Gideon said, scope pressed to his eye. “No—Twenty. Full tactical loadout. They came ready for a fight, Sam.”
Below us, the Alpha House’s front door opened. Wolves spilled out—six, eight, ten—forming a loose reception line. Their body language was all wrong. Shoulders hunched, heads low, feet shifting. They looked like rabbits in front of a fox den.
Nervous, scared.
A Pack of backcountry wolves, dominant enough to hold sixty square miles of Quebec wilderness, reduced to cowering on their own front porch.
Because of the man stepping out of the lead vehicle.
I didn’t need the scope. Didn’t need Gideon’s confirmation.
Didn’t need anything as I saw the figure unfold from the passenger seat.
Tall, unhurried, carrying himself with the stillness of someone who had never once doubted his right to any room he entered.
Simon Webster. Beside me, Gideon slowly lowered the scope.
“Sam—”
“I see him.”
My wolf went feral.
Go. NOW. Kill him. Kill them all. She’s RIGHT THERE—
I didn’t move. Couldn’t. Because Jem had been right in the forest and Gideon had been right in the van, and the math hadn’t changed. It had gotten catastrophically worse. Three of us against twenty trained combat witches and a man whose power made the air taste like ozone even from a ridge away.
If I went down there, I’d die. And Annabella would have no one left coming for her.
So I lay on the frozen granite with my wolf tearing me apart from the inside, and I watched Simon Webster walk into the building where my mate was, and I did nothing.