Chapter 19 - Lola
The Pine Shadow Club was dead quiet.
Not the quiet of late-night drinks or soft music echoing in empty glasses, but the kind of quiet that came after violence that settled thick and suffocating, like ash after a fire.
Lola sat pressed against a cracked leather booth, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around herself.
Her breath came in shallow pulls as she tried to keep her heartbeat steady.
Across from her, Daisy sat similarly curled, eyes wide and glassy.
Cassie was crouched beside the bar, jaw tight, scanning the room like she might still find a way out if she looked hard enough.
Poppy and Bree sat on the floor near the back wall, huddled together.
And in the middle of it all, looming, unmoving, was him.
Red Teeth.
He hadn’t spoken more than a few words since storming the club with half a dozen alphas in tow.
They came fast, the lights cut out, and the front doors slammed open before any of them could scream and were blown to smithereens behind them.
Red Teeth led the way, tall, massive, his hulking frame wrapped in rough dark fabric, face obscured by a cracked bone mask that covered most of his features.
What little skin showed beneath was weathered, scarred.
The mask itself wasn’t decorative; it was warped, jagged, as if it had been torn from something still living.
His presence said more than words ever could.
The detonator sat loosely in his hand, the thumb resting casually against the trigger. Explosives had been strapped to support beams. Wires taped to corners. Everyone had seen them. Everyone understood the threat.
He’d already blown up the entrance.
He hadn’t offered a single explanation. Hadn’t minced about with words. Just said in a gravelly voice, “You try anything, you die. You try to run, you all die.”
That was it. No speeches. No posturing.
The women didn’t speak unless they had to. Most of the noise came from his alphas, half-feral men with wild eyes and savage grins, pacing like animals that hadn’t been let off the leash yet. They jeered and joked, laughed about “Iron Walker bitches” and “Felix playing the politician.”
“Bet the big bad alpha’s pissing himself right about now,” one said with a grin.
“Think they’ll come crawling? They always come crawling.”
“Red Teeth’ll tear them apart. And then? Then the old ways come back. No more treaties. No more cowards hiding behind rules.”
Daisy flinched and looked at Lola.
Lola shook her head once, sharply. Don’t react. That was rule number one. If you were prey, you had to act like stone. Not alive. Not weak.
But even she couldn’t suppress the way her hands trembled in her lap.
Her one consolation was that nobody had sniffed out her pregnancy yet.
She didn’t know if it was because Dane was the father or just his innate skill as a hunter, but so far, he had been the only one to scent it so early in her pregnancy.
Even so, she was walking a fine line. If any of the alphas found out…
Red Teeth hadn’t looked at any of them for long. His gaze was heavy, impersonal. He hadn’t even seemed to enjoy the fear. He was here for a reason. Whatever twisted logic drove him, it was ruthless, deliberate, and terrifying.
One of the rogue alphas, tall, sneering, eyes too wide, paced past where Lola sat and muttered to no one in particular, “Always knew this peace crap wouldn’t last. Wolves need blood. Not fucking meetings.”
Another snorted, “Felix and his fucking daycare. All his little toy alphas. You think Dane’s gonna break through those doors like some hero? Be my guest.”
The first laughed, “Yeah. Let him come. I want to watch him bleed.”
Lola’s breath hitched. Something cold swept through her stomach.
She wasn’t the only one who heard. Cassie glanced at her, eyes wide.
They were bait. All of them.
“This is a trap,” Cassie murmured, barely audible, “they want the males to come. Then they kill them all.”
Lola’s chest tightened.
Red Teeth moved, suddenly. Just a slow pivot of his head, his mask shifting to face Cassie’s direction. He didn’t say a word. Just stared at her with those dark, lifeless eyes.
Cassie shut up immediately.
A moment later, he gestured to one of his men, who stepped forward and barked, “Basement. Now. All of them.”
The rogue alphas closed in.
Daisy stood slowly, helping Bree to her feet. Poppy stumbled after them. Lola stood last, her spine stiff, jaw locked.
They moved in a silent group toward the back corridor, past the blood-smeared entryway, down the narrow hall where half the lights flickered and one had shattered.
Cassie caught Lola’s hand. Squeezed it once.
The basement door yawned open ahead.
Lola descended into the basement like she was walking into the jaws of a great beast.
The concrete steps were cracked and steep, worn by decades of use and rot.
The air grew colder with every step, and by the time they reached the floor, the temperature had plummeted enough that her breath came out in visible puffs.
It smelled like mildew, sweat, and something older, something sour and metallic that turned her stomach.
They were herded without a word. The alphas, brutish and sharp-eyed, didn’t so much as touch them, but the threat lingered in every gesture, every glance. A snap of fingers. A curl of lip. One wrong move and they would strike.
The room was long and narrow, with a low, curved ceiling, like a wine cellar.
Stone walls dripped with condensation. Rusted hooks and bolts clung to beams overhead, remnants of a time Lola knew too much about.
Her academic research had unearthed the dark, vicious past of the Iron Walkers, their descent into brutality under the old guard.
This room had been used for torture. Punishment. Control.
Now, they were back in it.
The irony made her sick.
A single flickering bulb cast a sickly glow over crates, stacked chairs, and forgotten equipment shoved to the corners.
Daisy, Cassie, Poppy, Bree, and a few other pack females crowded in, huddling together like warmth could be shared through proximity alone.
Lola wrapped her arms around herself and stood slightly apart, trying to keep her hands from shaking.
She was terrified.
Not the prickling, nervous kind of fear she’d felt when she presented at academic conferences or when she’d first arrived in Silvermist. Not even the sharp, panicked fear of falling for someone she knew would break her.
This was the kind of fear that was rooted in the marrow. That echoed in the blood. This was the fear of dying. Of everyone she loved dying. Of the club exploding into ash above them.
Her mouth was dry. Her heart thudded unevenly in her chest. Her senses, so keen as a shifter, were overloaded. The stink of old pain. The murmur of whispered prayers. The constant threat of footsteps returning. Every creak in the floor above made her stomach drop.
She sat on an overturned crate and dug her nails into her palms. Stay calm, Lola. Stay present. But her body didn’t listen. Her mind was a storm.
She thought of Dane.
God, Dane.
What if he charged in? What if he didn’t know the building was rigged with explosives? What if he walked right into it thinking he was saving her, only to—
Her throat closed. A tear escaped down her cheek, and she wiped it away angrily. This was not the time for tears. This was the time for thinking. For surviving.
The other women murmured to one another in hushed tones. Daisy was comforting Bree, who was shaking. Cassie had her arm around Poppy, trying to coax her into drinking some water from a dented metal thermos someone had found.
Lola couldn’t bring herself to speak. If she opened her mouth, she wasn’t sure what would come out.
This had been her worst nightmare.
Not being kidnapped, necessarily, but being powerless. Being cornered. Having every bit of her intellect and strength rendered useless by brute force and the cruelty of wolves with no conscience.
Her eyes wandered the room.
The hooks in the ceiling. The water-stained concrete. The vague discoloration on the far wall, brown and streaked, not quite paint.
Someone had suffered here once; many someones.
And here she was, caught in the same place.
Her stomach turned. She curled tighter into herself.
Was Dane already on his way? Had Felix gathered the others? Were the twins safe? Was Thea?
She thought about Sam.
Oh God, Sam.
Her hand went protectively to her belly, the barely-there curve hidden under her dark wool coat. She hadn’t told the females yet. It felt fragile still, too new, too precious. She’d wanted to be sure before she said anything, before she let it become real in the world.
Now, she might never get the chance.
No.
Her hands curled into fists.
She would not die here. She would not let her story end in a damp cellar beneath the bones of the past. She was smart. She was strong. She had survived worse.
Or…maybe she hadn’t.
But she would now.
She shifted her weight and looked again at the far wall. Something about the layout scratched at her mind. The dimensions. The foundations. She knew the history of this building, had studied the blueprints once for a paper about post-prohibition architecture.
A whisper of memory stirred.
She blinked hard, trying to concentrate, her breath shallow, her vision swimming.
Cassie moved closer to her. “You okay?” she whispered.
Lola nodded quickly, too quickly.
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
“I can’t fall apart,” Lola said, voice raw. “If I fall apart now, I won’t come back from it.”
Cassie didn’t say anything. Just squeezed her hand.
Lola closed her eyes, trying to anchor herself to that. To kindness. To touch. To life.
She didn’t know what was coming. She didn’t know how long they had. But she would get out of this. Somehow.
And if she couldn’t…she would make damn sure someone else did.
The darkness pressed in on them.
They sat in silence for long minutes after the guard left, the tension in the basement like a held breath. The air was too still, too thick. Lola could feel her pulse hammering in her throat, and her knuckles were white where she gripped her own wrist to stop her hands from shaking.
“Okay,” she whispered, mostly to herself. “Okay, okay…think.”
Cassie looked at her, brows drawn. “What?”
Lola blinked, heart slamming. “I think…I might have a way out.”
Daisy and Bree leaned closer, eyes wide. Even Poppy, who’d been silent for the past half hour, sat up straighter.
“It’s a long shot,” Lola said, breathless, “and I don’t even know if it’s real. But…my research. My thesis. I…I spent months going through old records of Silvermist. Pack history. Old structures. Hidden architecture. Do you remember a few months ago when I told you about the tunnels?”
Daisy’s eyes widened in remembrance. “You think the entrance might still be accessible?”
“I don’t know. But if it is …if we could find it, maybe we could get out. Or at least send someone to get help.”
Cassie inhaled sharply. “Do you remember where it was?”
Lola shook her head, frustration biting hard. “Not exactly. The plans were old, barely legible. But if we look…maybe. There might be signs. Architectural markers. Disturbed mortar. Something.”
They were interrupted by the creak of the door above.
Footsteps on the stairs.
All of them went still, dread sliding like ice down their spines.
Another alpha came down, taller than the last, with cold eyes and a scar splitting his brow. He looked around at them like he was choosing meat from a butcher’s stall.
He said nothing for a long moment, then started pacing slowly through the room, inspecting each woman with idle menace.
Lola held her breath when he passed her, refusing to flinch.
“Felix’s mate,” he muttered eventually, lips curling into a smirk. “Wonder which of you she is. Wonder how loud he’ll scream if we put her in pieces.”
He slowed in front of Daisy, eyes considering her fluffy curls, her curvy frame. “Could be you. A sweet little wife to bake him cookies and open your mouth for him whenever he demands it. I wonder what your pretty lips would look like wrapped around my cock.”
Daisy started at the crass words, her eyes filling with tears, her gaze resolutely fixed on the wall opposite.
“Or maybe it’s you?” the alpha pointed to Marsha, who snarled at him. “Maybe he prefers an alpha bitch to give him some fight. I bet I could fight you down, darlin’.”
He walked a few more steps, closer to Lola, close enough that the thick, acrid stench of him clogged her nose and threatened to make her cough, “Could be you, couldn’t it? All refined like. You might wrinkle your pretty nose at me now, sweetheart, but I bet I could make you scream for me.”
Lola swallowed, her wolf writhing within her. She trembled at the foreign feeling, so unused to her wolf rearing her head at all.
“Then again,” the male said, tapping his chin as a lecherous grin crept across his face, “I seem to remember something about Felix’s mate being a weak little human.”
He stopped abruptly in front of Cassie, eyeing her. She didn’t blink.
“Could be you. You’ve got the look. All rough around the edges. But so, so fragile beneath it all.”
No one spoke. Cassie’s jaw tightened. Lola silently begged her not to rise to the bait.
The male grasped Cassie’s chin, forcing her gaze up, “What about it, sweetheart? Are you the one who takes Felix’s cock?”
“Rot in hell,” Cassie spat.
The man grinned. “Ah, yeah, I think it’s you.”
A call came from above, and the alpha scowled, pushing Cassie away. With one last sneering glance, he turned and disappeared, the door slamming behind him.
They didn’t breathe again until the echo of his boots faded entirely.
Lola let out a shuddering breath, adrenaline still roaring through her. “We need to move. Now.”
Cassie looked at her. “You really think we can find this tunnel?”
“I think we have to try,” Lola said, voice trembling, “because if we wait for them to come for us, we’re all dead.”
Daisy nodded. “Where do we start?”
Lola stood slowly, every muscle trembling, “We look. Every wall. Every inch of this place. If the tunnel still exists…we’ll find it.”
And so, beneath the looming shadow of death, they began to search.
Not for hope. Not even for salvation.
But for a chance.
Because a chance was all they had left.
And sometimes…a chance was enough.