Chapter 30
Dane
The morning chill settles in my bones as I walk the perimeter. Frost crusts the edges of pine needles making the dirt path crunch under my boots. Dawn light cuts through the trees in sharp angles, not yet warm enough to burn off the night’s cold.
I roll my shoulders back, loosen my neck. My jaw stays tight.
Three full circuits around Ash Hollow since sunrise. Checking wards. Checking trails. Checking my own instincts.
Something’s off.
I pause at the northeastern corner where the training yard comes into view. Ben runs drills with six wolves. Their movements are crisp, precise, too hard.
Kari blocks Wyatt’s strike, then shoves him back with unnecessary force. He stumbles, recovers, bares his teeth for half a second. That’s new. Wyatt doesn’t show aggression during training.
Ben barks a command. They reset. The tension lingers in the space between their bodies.
I circle closer, keeping to the treeline. Reyna passes with a small patrol group, nods my way. Her expression stays neutral, but her posture is too straight, too controlled.
“Perimeter’s clear,” she says, voice low. “Nothing new on the east side.”
I nod once. She continues past with her team, back toward the lodge.
Near the equipment shed, I catch sight of Kyle standing alone between two groups. Marcus’s faction clusters to his left. Wyatt and the loyal core to his right. Kyle’s shoulders hunch forward, caught in no-man’s-land.
Mateo approaches him, voice pitched low but carrying. “Marcus actually listens, you know. When you bring him concerns, he does something about it. Not just ‘I’ll handle it’ and nothing changes.”
Kyle’s jaw works. “Alpha’s doing his best—“
“Is he?” Mateo’s tone stays gentle. Reasonable. That’s what makes it dangerous. “Three wolves missing. No answers. Just more patrols that find nothing.” He rests a hand on Kyle’s shoulder. “We look out for our own. That’s all Marcus is doing.”
Kyle doesn’t move toward Marcus’s group. But he doesn’t move away from Mateo either.
Across the yard, Harper stands near the training ring, watching the divisions form. Her hands clench at her sides, then release. Her expression asks a question no one can answer: How do we fix this?
She doesn’t look toward Ben. Doesn’t seek him out the way she used to. That wound is still too fresh.
Ben doesn’t look her way. Doesn’t acknowledge the silent question. He has no answer to give.
Wyatt stations himself deliberately at the main lodge entrance—my territory, Marcus’s faction watching from fifty feet away. His posture radiates loyalty, but his eyes track Marcus’s movements with something between concern and calculation.
Kari stays near me, scanning the compound with her intelligence specialist’s precision. Not worried about who’s loyal. Cataloging who’s useful. Always tactical, that one.
Reyna lingers at the armory entrance, close enough to Derek that they could be working together. Except they’re not talking. Her patrol partner joined Marcus three days ago. She stayed. The space between them feels wider than the compound.
And scattered throughout—five, maybe six wolves who won’t choose at all. They avoid both groups, creating their own uncertain territory of neutrals.
Even my loyal wolves question whether they’re wrong to stay.
Marcus hasn’t done anything overtly wrong. Made suggestions. Offered solutions. Listened to concerns.
But everything’s breaking anyway.
This is what manipulation looks like—no visible villain, just erosion.
I move toward the command center, needing space from the visible cracks in my pack. Inside, Ben’s already there with Kari, heads bent over a map marked with red circles.
“Connection confirmed,” Ben says without looking up. His finger traces a line between marked points.
Kari taps the map. “All eight disappearances—the hikers and our wolves—they’re connected.” Her finger moves between marked locations. “Jensen, Kira, and Tomas. Jessica and Mark. The three new ones Harper reported. All within a five-mile radius. Same energy signature.”
My jaw tightens. “We’ve been searching for our wolves this whole time, and they’re connected to the hikers?”
“Nova just confirmed it.” Ben slides a tablet across the table showing energy readings.
“The residual traces match what we found at the eastern perimeter and at the trail cam sites. Faelan’s projections.
He’s been taking them systematically—testing different locations, different timing. Building toward something.”
I study the map, each red circle marking where someone vanished into thin air.
“Eight people,” I say quietly. “Our wolves for three weeks. The others taken since.”
“Nova confirmed it when she went into the Fade.” Kari’s voice stays professional, but her jaw tightens. “They’re suspended. Not dead—stored. Like he’s collecting them for something.”
Stored. Like hostages. Like leverage.
But leverage for what?
Mateo’s voice echoes from minutes ago in the yard: “Three wolves missing. No answers. Just more patrols that find nothing.”
He’s right. And every day we don’t find them, my authority bleeds out a little more. Now we know the hikers are part of the same pattern—all of them caught in Faelan’s web.
“Where?” I demand.
Ben points to the convergence point on the map. “Nova’s narrowing the location. She says when she’s ready to go in, we’ll only get one shot. The Fade will close after we breach it.”
“Keep searching,” I order. “Document everything. When we find the exact location, I want full tactical assessment. Rescue operation for five people from an unstable dimension—we do this right or we don’t do it at all.”
Ben nods, already turning back to the map. Kari pulls up satellite imagery on her laptop, cross-referencing energy signatures with terrain features.
I step outside, the weight pressing down on my shoulders. Eight lives hanging in the balance while Faelan plays his games.
But lost isn’t the same as gone.
Not yet.
My gaze drifts across the yard to where Nova stands with Lyanna near the edge of the clearing.
Their heads bend together in quiet conversation.
Nova’s hands remain at her sides, fingers occasionally flexing then going still.
She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, then back.
Small, controlled movements that most wouldn’t notice.
I notice.
Her shoulders form a rigid line under her dark jacket. When she turns slightly, I catch her profile—jaw set, eyes steady. She looks composed. In control.
But I can feel it from here—the wrongness. The discomfort that lives under her skin.
My chest tightens. The urge to cross the yard builds beneath my ribs, pressure that doesn’t ease when I breathe through it.
Fuck.
A sharp bark cuts through the morning air. I turn to see Ben separating two wolves—Eli and Tomas—both bristling with aggression over what should be standard training.
“Back off,” Eli growls, hands flexed at his sides.
Tomas steps forward instead of back. “Make me.”
I move without thinking, cutting through the space between them.
“Enough,” I say. The word comes out quiet.
Both wolves freeze, then step back. The challenge dies in their posture.
“Eli, take five. Tomas, south patrol with Callum.”
They nod, separating without argument. But the reaction was wrong. Too sharp. Too ready for escalation.
The whole pack feels like a wire pulled taut—not yet broken, but stressed at every point.
I turn back to where Nova and Lyanna were standing.
The absence hits me like a physical blow. My chest tightens, an uncomfortable pressure building beneath my ribs. I scan the compound methodically—checking shadows between cabins, the path to the eastern boundary, the treeline where she might have disappeared. Nothing.
My hands curl into fists at my sides before I force them to relax. The urge to track her scent, to follow her trail, claws at my wolf instincts. But I plant my feet, jaw working as I grind my teeth against the compulsion.
She’s been gone maybe five minutes. Ten at most. But something cold and sharp settles in my gut—not fear, but recognition. The distance between us is growing, and every instinct I have screams that it’s wrong.
The space is empty now. Nova gone without a sound.
My jaw clenches tighter. I don’t like that.
I circle back toward the lodge, scanning the treeline, the cabins, the winding paths between buildings. No sign of her.
Something cold settles in my gut. Not fear—I don’t do fear. But awareness.
The distance between us is growing, and I can’t seem to close it.
An hour later I push through the command center door with measured force. The hinges stick like they always do, scraping metal on metal. Normally these small, predictable frictions ground me. Today they grate.
Callum paces the length of the planning table, back and forth, a caged animal wearing the concrete. His shoulders jut too high, his fingers flex then curl into fists. Back and forth. Flex and curl.
Ben stands with his back to the far wall, arms crossed tight across his chest. His eyes track Callum’s movements, narrowed slightly. Guarded.
Kari sits at the table’s corner, flipping through reports with mechanical precision. Her spine doesn’t touch the back of her chair.
And Rafe, watching them all from the corner, perfectly still. The kind of stillness that isn’t calm—it’s calculation.
Lyanna stands by the medical supply cabinet, organizing vials and bandages, her movements precise but tense. She doesn’t look up when I enter, but her shoulders stiffen slightly.
They acknowledge my entrance with murmurs of “Alpha” and brief nods, but the usual ease is missing. The tension in the room thickens.
“Reports,” I say, placing my palms flat on the table.
Kari slides a stack toward me. “Perimeter scans from 0400 to 0700. Elevated energy signatures along the eastern ridge. Again.”
“Same pattern?” I ask.
“No pattern.” She taps the paper with one finger. “That’s the problem.”