Chapter 10 - Dane
The first thing Dane registered was the weight against his side.
Not crushing, just warm, soft, undeniably there. He blinked slowly, eyes adjusting to the faint gray light trickling through the windows. His neck ached from the awkward angle against the couch cushions, and one of his legs had gone numb beneath a baby blanket.
But none of that registered compared to the feeling of her.
Lola.
Tucked into his side, one hand resting lightly over his stomach, her face relaxed in sleep.
Dane froze.
The blanket had slipped halfway down her shoulder, revealing the curve of her neck, the delicate collarbone, the rise and fall of her breath. Her features, usually drawn tight with nerves or masked behind a wall of dry sarcasm, were soft now. Bare. Peaceful in a way he’d never seen before.
He had absolutely no memory of her falling asleep there.
One minute they’d been talking quietly, Sam fed and fussing in his crib, and the next…
This.
Dane swallowed.
It should’ve felt weird. Invasive. Hell, if it had been any other woman, it would’ve been. He didn’t do this. Falling asleep next to someone? Waking up with his arm half-curled around her waist? That kind of comfort didn’t come easy to him. Didn’t come at all.
But right now?
He didn’t hate it.
In fact, the longer he looked down at her, the more that disorientation faded into something else…heavier and harder to name.
Possessive, almost.
His gaze flicked to Sam’s crib, a few feet away. The baby was still asleep, curled like a pup, one hand flopped above his head.
Dane exhaled slowly.
He wasn’t sure when his life had become this strange, quiet thing. A woman on his couch, a baby in his home, a calm morning that didn’t smell of blood or sweat or adrenaline.
And gods help him, he liked it.
Too much.
He shifted slightly, trying not to wake her. But as his fingers brushed her arm, just a ghost of contact, his phone blared to life on the table beside them.
The shrill buzz shattered the stillness like glass under a boot.
Lola jerked upright with a small gasp, her hair tumbling around her face. She blinked wildly, disoriented, pulling back from him as if she’d been burned.
“I…I’m sorry!” she blurted, clutching at the blanket. “I didn’t mean to…I must’ve…oh God.”
Dane sat up more slowly, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s fine.”
She was already halfway off the couch, cheeks flushed scarlet, “I didn’t mean to fall asleep on you, I was just…Sam wouldn’t settle and…and you were warm, and then…oh, damn it.”
“Lola.”
She froze, halfway to standing.
He reached out and caught her wrist, gently. Not enough to stop her, just enough to make her pause.
Their eyes met.
“It’s okay,” he said softly, “really.”
Her lips parted. She looked like she wanted to say something, apologize again, maybe, or make some awkward joke, but the phone buzzed again, urgent this time.
Dane sighed and released her wrist, reaching for it.
Felix’s number. Office line. Urgent business.
His stomach dropped.
He answered, “Dane.”
A crisp voice crackled down the line, “Get to Pine Shadow. Now. Emergency briefing. Felix wants everyone there in twenty minutes.”
Dane’s jaw tightened, “Got it.”
The call ended with a sharp click.
He stood, grabbing the hoodie slung over the arm of the couch and pulling it over his head. His body was still half-stiff from sleep, and his mind hadn’t fully caught up, but his instincts were already burning awake.
Something had happened.
Something bad.
Behind him, Lola hovered near the crib, tucking Sam’s blanket tighter than necessary. She looked uncertain, like she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to say something or pretend none of it had happened.
Dane turned to her.
“You’ll stay here today?”
She nodded quickly, “Of course.”
“Lock the door behind me. Don’t answer unless it’s me or one of the others.”
Her brows pinched. “Is it serious?”
He didn’t answer.
Not because he didn’t want to, but because whatever was coming, he had a sinking feeling words weren’t going to do it justice.
The Pine Shadow Club was lit up like a storm shelter when Dane pulled in, the soft hum of early-morning traffic replaced by the low tension of boots on gravel and murmured voices. A few junior enforcers flanked the entrance, all alert and armed.
Something had them spooked.
Dane pushed through the double doors and made straight for the back room.
Felix was already there, seated at the head of the long oak table, his hands steepled, the carved lines in his face deeper than usual. Rick leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, eyes unreadable. Nicolas paced near the window, stopping only when Dane stepped in.
“You’re late,” Rick said.
“I’m here,” Dane replied curtly. He tossed his hoodie onto a chair and took the seat across from Felix. “What’s going on?”
Felix didn’t waste time.
“There was a killing spree just outside our territory line last night. Town called Briarglen. Fifty miles northeast.”
Dane’s stomach sank.
“Human?”
“Humans and shifters. Small pack. Probably rogues banded together. They were…” Felix hesitated, then turned the laptop on the table toward Dane. “See for yourself.”
The screen displayed a series of images. Grainy night shots at first, crime scene tape, flashing red lights, and investigators in gloves. Then…
The bodies.
Dane clenched his jaw.
They’d been ripped apart, deliberately. Not a clean kill, not a fight gone bad. This was artistry, if you could call it that. Bones snapped at angles that spoke of torture, flesh flayed with surgical malice. A message in crimson.
“Red Teeth,” he growled.
Felix nodded grimly, “No doubt. It’s the same as before. Same signature, cruelty for cruelty’s sake. No other purpose but shock value. Except this time, he’s wiped out the whole damn pack.”
“Why now? Why this close?”
“That’s the point. He’s escalating.”
Dane leaned back in his chair, the air around him turning colder. “He’s not just taunting us. He’s sending a warning.”
“Exactly,” Felix said, “this wasn’t some feral lashing out. It was staged. Location, timing, victim selection—he wants our attention. Wants to remind us we’re vulnerable.”
“And is he right?”
Silence fell.
Nicolas finally spoke, “It’s close. Too close. Thirty miles outside the border used to be neutral ground, but if he’s crossing into that…he’s either grown bolder or he’s not working alone.”
Rick’s voice was flat. “He never had the discipline for strategy. Someone’s helping him.”
Felix nodded. “I think he’s recruiting.”
The room went still.
Dane frowned, “From where?”
“Other packs. Rogues. There are always ferals and outcasts. If he’s been promising them power, revenge, territory…they’ll follow.”
“He’s building an army,” Rick muttered.
“Looks like it,” Felix confirmed.
A sharp pang twisted in Dane’s gut. He glanced back at the laptop, the last photo, zoomed in, a hand missing three fingers, left on top of a blood-soaked tree stump like an offering.
It wasn’t just a kill.
It was a declaration.
“Let me go after him,” Dane said, rising to his feet. “I’ll take Rick. We’ll track his trail, see who’s with him. Cut the head off before he spreads further.”
“No,” Felix said.
Dane stared at him. “What?”
“I said no.”
“You saw the photos. He’s not going to stop. If we wait—”
“We wait because it’s what we have to do,” Felix snapped, standing. “He wants us to chase him. He’s baiting you. If I send my enforcers into rogue territory without intel, we risk walking straight into a trap.”
“So we do nothing?”
“We secure our people.” Felix jabbed a finger toward the map pinned to the wall. “Double patrols on the northeast border. Set up checkpoints. Any unknown wolves crossing in or out get flagged, followed, and questioned. We protect the pack first.”
Dane’s jaw clenched. Every part of him wanted to argue. Wanted to move. Waiting felt wrong. Cowardly.
But Felix’s gaze was iron. And Dane knew that look. He wasn’t just being cautious.
He was being tactical.
“Fine,” Dane said at last, “but I want command on the patrols.”
Felix nodded. “You’ve got it.”
“Give me three units. I’ll take the eastern perimeter.”
Felix leaned forward. “Keep it tight, Dane. If this really is the start of something bigger, I need you alive long enough to fight it.”
Dane nodded once.
But as he turned to leave, his thoughts weren’t of Red Teeth.
They were of the woman curled up on his couch this morning, blinking sleep from her eyes.
And the baby sleeping beside her, who already had his whole heart.
Because now there was more than a territory line at stake.
There was home.
And Dane would raze the earth before he let anything threaten that.
***
The wind coming off the ridge stung sharp with the bite of early winter, carrying the scent of damp soil and pine needles. Dane stood at the eastern line of the Iron Walker territory, staring into the trees like he expected them to blink first.
Behind him, six enforcers moved in near silence—young, well-trained, but tense. Word of the Briarglen killings had already circulated. No one said it aloud, but they were all thinking the same thing.
It’s started.
Dane crouched near a fresh scrape in the earth, wolf prints. Small. Likely a scout. But they were on the right side of the border.
His jaw tightened.
So far, nothing overt had crossed into their territory. But something was out there. Watching. Testing.
Red Teeth always circled before he pounced.
Dane stood, exhaling slowly through his nose. He scanned the line again, half-listening to the radio clicks behind him. The forest ahead looked quiet. Too quiet. Nature knew when predators were near. Even the birds had gone silent.
He turned to Marcus, one of the enforcers at his flank. “Double loop around the hollow. Take Grady with you. If you catch a scent, you call it in, don’t engage. Clear?”
Marcus nodded and jogged off, low and fast through the trees, Grady on his trail.
Dane watched them go, then leaned a hand against the nearest tree trunk, grounding himself. The bark scraped against his palm, rough and real.
A few months ago, this stretch of forest had been just another checkpoint. A job. A duty.
Now?
Now it was a wall between the people he loved and something hungry waiting in the dark.
He hated that word.
Loved.
It curled inside his chest like a truth too raw to say aloud.
But what else could he call it?
Lola, pacing the kitchen barefoot at night with Sam tucked against her shoulder. Lola, explaining dream analysis in shifter mythology to Sam like it were a fairy tale. Lola, blinking up at him from his couch, lips parted in sleep, like she’d finally let herself rest.
He didn’t just care about her.
He was wrapped around her.
And Sam?
That was beyond language now. Beyond reason.
Dane didn’t know when it happened, whether it was the first time the kid gripped his finger or the night he woke up in a panic and found himself instinctively reaching for the bassinet, but at some point, Sam had become his.
His to raise.
His to shield.
His to kill for.
And if Red Teeth, or any other bastard, thought for a second they could bring their war to Dane’s doorstep, they were in for a brutal correction.
Dane straightened, running a hand through his hair, damp still from his earlier shower.
This was the hardest part.
The waiting.
Not the fighting. Not the aftermath. Those were easy. You bled, you healed, you buried the bodies, and you moved on.
But the moments before, when the air thickened with dread, when your gut knew something was coming but the trees still looked empty, that was where madness bred.
He reached for the radio clipped to his belt.
“East sector clear. Looping to the south line.”
A crackle of confirmation came through.
Dane jogged down the incline, his breath visible in the cold air, body tense and ready. Each step fed the fire building inside him.
He wasn’t just angry anymore.
He was focused.
This was the cost of having something to lose.
You became lethal.
Not because you loved violence, but because you knew the violence would come, whether you welcomed it or not. And when it did, you needed to be the one who struck first. Hardest. Final.
His feet hit the bottom of the ridge. He paused briefly, catching the scent of something stale and sharp; old blood, maybe. Not fresh. Could’ve been days old. Could’ve been bait.
Red Teeth played games like that.
He pushed forward anyway.
Twenty minutes later, he regrouped with the others near an old watchpoint. The perimeter was holding, for now. They’d reinforced three blind spots, marked two unfamiliar scents that needed tracking, and rerouted the northeast patrol toward a vulnerable wildlife corridor.
No sign of Red Teeth.
Yet.
But they had miles and miles of territory line to cover.
As Dane mounted his bike and revved the engine, his thoughts circled back, homeward.
To the warmth of the apartment.
The smell of cinnamon tea and that ridiculous lemon-scented laundry powder Lola insisted on using.
To the crib in the corner of his room because Sam never stayed asleep in his own.
To the woman who said the wrong thing more often than not but somehow always made the right call when it counted.
To the child who had no idea how completely he’d cracked Dane open.
He gunned the throttle and pulled out of the trees, the roar echoing like a war cry down the ridge as he followed the territory line.
Let Red Teeth come.
Dane would be ready.
And this time, he wasn’t just fighting for his pack.
He was fighting for them.