Chapter 25
Callum
The evening air carries something wrong.
I pause at the tree line, letting my senses expand beyond the immediate perimeter.
Behind me, the Lodge glows with warm light—Lyanna still inside with Dane, processing what Evren’s alliance means for our case.
I should be in there with her. Should be planning next steps, coordinating with Derek on evidence compilation.
Instead, I’m out here because something in my gut won’t settle.
My wolf has been restless since the surveillance briefing. Nyxiana’s clinical description of fae observation methods turned theoretical threat into visceral reality. They’ve been watching. Documenting. Building profiles on every member of this pack.
On Lyanna. On me. On what we are to each other.
The wind shifts, and I catch it—faint, almost masked, but unmistakable. Fae magic. Not the warm honey signature of Lyanna or the crisp frost of Nyxiana. Something sharper. Artificial. The chemical tang of glamour layered over presence.
Someone is out there. Right now. Watching.
I don’t signal Ben or alert the patrol. If I’m wrong, I’ve wasted resources. If I’m right, any communication could tip them off. My wolf surges forward, eager and deadly, and for once I don’t hold him back.
The shift takes me between one heartbeat and the next.
Bones reshape with familiar agony that’s become almost comfortable over years of practice.
My spine elongates, shoulders dropping as my center of gravity changes.
Clothes dissolve into the shift—a Guardian trick passed down through angel bloodlines, the same magic that lets us call them back when we return to human form.
Fur erupts across my skin, silver-gray in the fading light.
I hit the ground on four paws, already running.
The scent trail blazes through the underbrush like a neon sign.
Whoever this is, they’re good at magical concealment but terrible at understanding wolf senses.
The glamour masks their visual presence, making them invisible to casual observation.
But it can’t hide the displaced air currents, the crushed pine needles, or the sour undertone of fae corruption beneath the spell.
I know that corruption signature. The same taint that saturated our pack during the contamination, the same dark magic threaded through Caelynn’s death. A growl builds low in my chest before I can stop it.
One of Faelan’s people. Here. Now.
Rage floods my muscles with supernatural speed. The forest blurs past me—trees, rocks, fallen logs cleared in single bounds. My paws barely touch the ground before launching again. The prey scent grows stronger with every stride.
There. Movement ahead. A shimmer in the air where reality doesn’t quite match itself.
I don’t slow down. Don’t give warning. A Guardian wolf in full hunt doesn’t announce itself to its target.
I leap.
My jaws close on something solid—an arm, I think, wrapped in spelled fabric that tastes of copper and old magic.
The glamour shatters on impact, revealing a fae male in dark clothing, his face contorted with shock and pain.
He’s young, maybe mid-twenties in human terms, with the sharp features and too-perfect bone structure of court breeding.
An observer. A spy. One of the eyes Nyxiana warned us about.
He screams something in old fae—a defensive spell that crackles against my fur and accomplishes nothing. Guardian bloodline gives me resistance to minor magics. His panic tells me he didn’t expect that.
I release his arm only to lunge for his throat, stopping with my teeth just pressing against his pulse point. Hot breath fogs between us. His blood pounds against my fangs, rabbit-fast with terror.
Talk, I think at him, knowing he can’t hear me, knowing my wolf’s message is clear enough in the way my jaws could close at any moment.
“Please—“ He’s gasping, hands raised in surrender. “Please, I’m just—I was just watching—reporting—”
A growl rumbles through my chest, vibrating against his throat. He whimpers.
“Lord Faelan,” he babbles. “Lord Faelan sent me. To monitor the healer. Document her movements, her connections, her—“ His voice breaks. “Her relationship with the Guardian wolf.”
The confirmation hits like ice water. They know. They’ve been watching us specifically. Every stolen moment, every careful touch, every time we thought the wards protected us—they’ve been building a case.
I press harder, just enough to break skin. A thin line of blood wells up, crimson against his pale throat.
“I can tell you everything!” He’s crying now, tears cutting tracks through the dirt on his face. “The observation points, the reporting schedule, what we’ve documented. I can tell you all of it. Just please—please don’t—“
I hold him there for a long moment, letting him feel how easily I could end this. How much I want to. This male has been watching Lyanna. Cataloging her habits. Reporting back to the same monster who killed her sister and corrupted my pack.
Every instinct in me screams to finish it.
But dead spies don’t talk. And we need information more than I need vengeance.
I release him with a snarl, backing up just enough to keep him pinned with my presence. He scrambles against the tree trunk behind him, pressing himself into the bark as if he could melt through it.
“Don’t run,” I think, projecting as much threat as possible into my stance. My hackles stay raised, teeth still bared. “Stay exactly where you are.”
I throw back my head and howl—not a hunting call, but a pack signal. Location. Assistance needed. Prisoner secured.
Within minutes, I hear answering movement through the trees. Ben emerges first, his own wolf form rippling with barely contained aggression as he takes in the scene. Kari follows in human form, already pulling spelled restraints from her patrol pack.
Ben shifts back, his expression murderous as he takes in the scene. “Restrain him. I want every word recorded.”
As Kari secures the prisoner, I turn and run.
Back toward the Lodge. Back toward Lyanna.
The compound comes into view through the trees, and I see her immediately.
She’s standing on the Lodge porch, wrapped in one of my flannel shirts over her own clothes, arms crossed against the evening chill. Her honey-blonde hair catches the last light of sunset, and even from this distance, I can see the tension in her shoulders.
She heard the howl. She’s been waiting. Watching the treeline for any sign of what happened.
I slow my approach, letting her see me coming. Giving her time to process what she’s looking at.
Her breath catches visibly as I emerge from the shadows. I know what she’s seeing—a massive silver-gray wolf, easily twice the size of any natural animal, with amber eyes that burn with intelligence no beast should possess. Battle-ready. Blood on my muzzle.
I stop at the bottom of the porch steps, holding her gaze.
She descends without hesitation.
“You caught someone.” Her voice is steady, but her hands reach toward me before she seems to realize what she’s doing.
I hold still as her fingers sink into the fur at my neck. The contact sends warmth flooding through the bond.
“I’ve never been this close to you like this,” she says quietly. Her fingers trace through my ruff, across my shoulder, finding the raised scar on my flank from a border skirmish years ago. Clinical. Assessing. The healer cataloging damage even now.
Then her hand pauses over my ribs, feeling the hammer of my heart beneath fur and muscle.
“You’re still you,” she murmurs. “I can feel it.”
I press my head against her palm—brief, deliberate—then step back and let the shift take me. Bones reshape, fur recedes, and I pull my human form back around me. Guardian training lets me manifest clothes from memory as the shift completes.
I catch her hands in mine, still feeling the ghost of her touch in my fur.
“They’ve been watching us,” I say, my voice rough from the shift. “Faelan’s people. The spy I caught—he’s been documenting everything. Our relationship, our movements, our bond.”
Her face pales, but her grip on my hands tightens. “How much do they know?”
“Enough.” I pull her closer, wrapping my arms around her like I can physically shield her from the implications. “They know what we are to each other. They’ve been reporting back for weeks.”
She’s silent for a moment, processing. Then she looks up at me with those fierce emerald eyes, and I see the healer who faced down a deadly contamination, the diplomat who navigates impossible politics, the woman who chose me despite every obstacle.
“Then we use it,” she says. “Whatever they think they know, we turn it against them. We make them regret every moment they spent watching us instead of running.”
My wolf howls approval inside my chest.
I pull her closer, pressing my lips to her forehead. She grips the front of my shirt like she’s anchoring herself.
Before I can respond, footsteps crunch through the gravel behind us. Dane’s voice cuts through the moment.
“Callum. We got what we need.”
I turn, keeping Lyanna close. Dane stands at the edge of the porch light, his expression carved from stone. Behind him, Ben and Kari flank the spy—bound, bloodied, and shaking.
“Seventeen observation points,” Dane reports. “Rotating schedule, three observers at any given time. Dead drops at the old mill and behind the Silverwood library. Reports go directly to Faelan’s network through a contact in town.”
The spy’s head hangs low, all the fight drained out of him. He gave up everything. Smart enough to know cooperation was his only chance.
It won’t save him.
“Names?” I ask.
“Four others. Descriptions and locations.” Dane’s jaw tightens. “He’s been watching Lyanna specifically for three weeks. Documenting her routine, her healing work, her time with you.”
Lyanna’s hand finds mine, her grip fierce.
“What happens to him?” she asks. Her voice is calm, but I feel the steel underneath.
Dane meets her eyes. “He’s a spy for the man who murdered your sister and tried to destroy our pack. Pack law is clear.”
She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t argue. After a moment, she nods once.
Dane jerks his head toward the tree line. “Kari.”
Kari steps forward, pulling the spy upright with efficient brutality. He starts babbling again—promises, pleas, offers of more information—but she’s already hauling him toward the darkness beyond the compound lights.
The sounds cut off abruptly a minute later.
Dane watches the treeline for a moment, then turns back to us. “War room. Twenty minutes. We need to sweep those observation points before Faelan realizes his man isn’t reporting back.”
He heads inside, already calling for Derek and Nova.
Lyanna and I stand alone on the porch, the night pressing close around us.
“Now we know where they are.” I turn her to face me, hands on her shoulders. “And by morning, every one of those observation points will be empty.”
Her emerald eyes meet mine—grief and fury and desperate hope all tangled together. But underneath it, that core of steel I fell in love with.
“Let’s go make them regret it,” she says.