48. Sam
Chapter forty-eight
Sam
Waiting was the cruelest thing I’d ever done to myself, and I’d once let Talia Johnson dress me down for forty minutes in front of the entire Council chamber without flinching.
This was worse.
I’d been flat on the frozen granite for—I checked my phone—an hour and twelve minutes.
An hour and twelve minutes of watching the Alpha House through Gideon’s scope while my wolf systematically dismantled every shred of control I possessed.
An hour and twelve minutes of feeling Annabella’s emotions.
Spikes of defiance, flashes of fear she buried before I could fully register them, and underneath it all a steady thrum of think, think, think that was so completely her I wanted to laugh and scream at the same time.
She was trying to find a way out. Even in silver cuffs, in a stranger’s territory, surrounded by witches who could kill her without raising their heart rates, she was scheming. Running angles. Looking for the crack she could drive a wedge through.
I was so fucking proud of her.
My wolf disagreed with the strategy of lying here appreciating her brilliance from a distance. He wanted blood. He wanted teeth in throats and the satisfying crunch of bone, and he wanted it approximately an hour and twelve minutes ago.
“Your jaw’s going to lock like that,” Gideon said from beside me.
He hadn’t moved either, one eye still pressed to the scope.
“Happened to a guy I knew in Quebec City. Clenched his teeth for so long during a custody hearing that the paramedics had to pry his mouth open with a tongue depressor. He was thirty-four. Ate through a straw for three weeks.”
“Fascinating.”
“Just trying to keep morale up.”
“Try harder.”
Jem was five feet to my left, utterly still. He hadn’t said a word in the last thirty minutes. Just breathed, slow and even, scanning the compound. The man conserved energy like a predator between hunts.
My phone vibrated. Mina.
Drone’s overhead. I count twenty hostiles inside the main structure, plus the Mountain Pack wolves. Webster’s heat signature is stationary—first floor, east side. Same room as your girl.
My girl. In a room with Simon Webster and twenty combat witches.
I typed back: Keep eyes on every exit. The second anything moves, I want to know.
Already ahead of you. Also, Esme woke up twenty minutes ago. She says the bond between you and AB is, quote, “screaming like a smoke alarm,” and she needs you to stop broadcasting or she’s going to have a migraine. Her words.
I almost smiled. Almost.
The bond pulsed. A sharp twist of something. Anger, but concentrated. My fingers dug into the rock.
You are the most infuriating, incredible, terrifying woman I have ever met. Please stay alive long enough for me to tell you that.
The bond didn’t carry words. But I pushed the feeling down the line anyway—I’m here, I’m close, hold on—and hoped something reached her.
Then the front doors of the Alpha House swung open.
They came out in pairs, spreading to flank the entrance. Witches first.
And then—
Annabella.
My vision tunneled so fast the periphery went gray.
She walked between two witches I didn’t recognize, her wrists bound in front of her.
Her chin was up. Shoulders back. She moved with the deliberate, measured stride of someone who refused to let the people holding her see her stumble.
Her silver streak caught the light, and I tracked it like a homing signal, the one part of her I could always find, always identify, even at this distance.
She looked smaller than I remembered. I hated that.
Hated that the cuffs and the distance and the angle conspired to make her look fragile when I knew—I knew—there was nothing fragile about Annabella McGrath.
She could dismantle every witch in that courtyard if they gave her three seconds and an inch of room.
But they weren’t giving her anything.
The rear door of the second SUV opened. Vivienne stepped out.
She’d been waiting outside with the vehicles, holding the perimeter like the good little soldier she was.
But the way she moved toward Annabella wasn’t military.
It was personal. She crossed the cleared ground with the stride of a woman who’d been looking forward to this particular moment, smoothing the front of her tactical jacket like she was about to pose for a photograph.
She reached Annabella and stopped. Said something I couldn’t hear from the ridge. Whatever it was, Annabella’s spine went rigid.
Then Vivienne grabbed her arm above the elbow and steered her toward the convoy.
Too hard. Too fast. Annabella stumbled, one foot sliding on the ground before she planted it, but Vivienne didn’t slow down.
Just kept that grip locked and her mouth moving, talking into Annabella’s ear with the kind of smile that made my wolf want to rip her jaw off at the hinge.
“Sam.” Gideon’s voice, very quiet. “Your eyes just went gold.”
I didn’t answer. I was watching Vivienne’s hand on Annabella’s arm and filing the image in the part of my brain that kept clean, organized records of people who were going to pay for what they’d done.
“Whoever the witch is, she’s not worth blowing our position,” Jem said. Barely a thread of sound.
“I’m not moving.”
“Your body says otherwise.”
He was right. I’d shifted to a crouch without realizing it.
I forced myself flat again. The granite scraped against my chest, and none of it mattered because Annabella was being steered toward the third SUV, and another witch was positioning to cut off the open ground.
Annabella tried to pull her arm free. I saw it: the tension through her shoulders, the twist against Vivienne’s grip.
Vivienne held. Leaned in close. Something pressed against Annabella’s ribs—a hand, a blade, I couldn’t tell from this distance—and Vivienne’s smile widened.
Annabella went still.
I will kill her for that. Not today. But I will.
“Mina.” I keyed the comm, keeping my voice so level it hurt. “Third vehicle. Black SUV. They’re loading Annabella into it now. I need a tracker on that vehicle.”
Mina’s response came in two seconds. “Drone’s repositioning. I can drop a micro-tracker, but I need a window. It has to land somewhere they won’t see it. Undercarriage is the best bet but it’s a tricky angle from above.”
“Make it work.”
“Give me thirty seconds.”
I watched Annabella disappear into the back seat of the third SUV. The door closed. Vivienne climbed into the passenger side. Another witch I didn’t recognize got behind the wheel.
Gone. Behind tinted glass, she was gone.
I’m right here.
“Twenty seconds,” Mina said through the comm. “The drone’s lined up. There’s a witch near the rear bumper. If she moves two steps east, I’ve got a clean drop.”
I watched the witch in question. She was adjusting something on her belt, half turned away from the vehicle. Come on. Move.
The witch took a step. Paused. Spoke to someone I couldn’t see.
“She’s still blocking,” Mina reported. “Fifteen seconds before the drone’s battery makes this academic.”
Below, Webster emerged from the Alpha House. He paused on the top step and surveyed his people the way a man surveys property. Adjusted a cuff. The witch by the third SUV turned to face him. Snapped to attention.
“Now,” Mina said.
Something too small to see dropped from somewhere above the convoy. Mina’s tablet—half a kilometer away in the van—would be showing the trajectory, the angle, the calculated drop point. I had to trust her. Trust the tech.
One second. Two.
“Tracker’s live.” Mina’s voice, tight with controlled triumph. “Lodged under the rear wheel arch. Strong signal. We’re good, Sam.”
The breath I let out fogged in the cold air.
Webster was climbing into the third vehicle. Doors closing down the line. Engines turning over.
Mountain Pack wolves lingered on the porch, their body language broadcasting a combination of relief and shame that came from watching someone else take your problem away.
“They’re rolling,” Jem said.
The convoy began to move. Single file. Lead vehicle first, then the others falling into formation. They turned southeast on the logging road and accelerated.
Southeast. Away from us. Away from any help I could offer.
I was on my feet before the last vehicle cleared the tree-line.
“If we run, van’s twenty-three minutes back through the forest,” Gideon said, already standing, already moving. He’d done the calculations the same time I had.
“Fourteen,” I corrected, and took off.
We ran.