Chapter 26 #2
Blair didn’t ask questions. “On it. I’ll alert the Hayes pack as well.”
Gregor was out the door in under a minute, running like a man possessed. Within minutes, the compound was mobilizing—voices rising, radios crackling, the organized chaos of a community that had practiced emergency protocols often enough that the response was automatic.
Gregor reached the main house, where Rhene was already emerging, his face tight. “Fergal?”
“Gone. Left a note saying he had to handle something. I felt a connection to him for a moment—his fear, then Murphy magic, then the connection was severed.”
Rhene’s expression hardened into something Gregor recognized as the pack alpha’s combat mode. It was the same transformation Gregor himself underwent, but colored by Rhene’s own experience of being taken. “How long?”
“His coffee was still warm. Thirty minutes tops, probably less.”
Zack appeared behind Rhene, still panting from running over. “I’ll coordinate the sweep.”
“If this is a Murphy operation, they might be targeting multiple people,” Rhene said.
Gregor’s blood, already cold, dropped another ten degrees.
He hadn’t considered that. If the Murphys had infiltrated the compound’s security enough to extract Fergal, they could be planning simultaneous strikes.
“Bring all the kids and high-value targets like Erwan into the meeting barn and post guards around it.”
He didn’t even realize he’d given an order that wasn’t his to give until Zack looked at Rhene for confirmation.
Rhene put a hand on his shoulder. “This is not the time to get territorial, but I also want to avoid us giving contradicting orders.” He studied Gregor for a beat.
“Can you lead the investigation? Or are you too close?”
Gregor admired the sheer balls of the wolf alpha to even raise that question. “I’m nowhere near objective, obviously, but I’m also the person who knows Fergal best and who should lead it.”
“True. Plus, you’re his mate.”
Mate? What the fuck did Rhene base that on? Then it hit Gregor. The connection he’d felt with Fergal. It hadn’t been mind-speak. It had been their fated-mate connection. Oh gods, Fergal was his mate. His fucking mate.
“You didn’t know?” Rhene asked, face softening.
Gregor shook his head, swallowing before his voice worked again. “Not until now.”
“I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”
So was he, but he had to shove that down to process later. “I have bigger concerns right now.”
More people were arriving—Jermon, Fallon, Crowell, Sivney. The main house was filling with the pack’s and clan’s leadership, pulled from their day by the alarm, their faces showing various stages of shock and fury.
Rhene whistled for attention, and silence descended. “Commander Gregor is in charge of the investigation.”
Gregor briefed the group in thirty seconds flat about the note, the connection he’d felt, the Murphy magic signature, and the timeline.
“Zack, coordinate a sweep of all cabins to do a headcount. Sivney, can you bring all children and high-value targets to the meeting barn? Blair, we need that meeting barn surrounded by guards. Fallon, I’m putting you in charge of the protective wards. ”
His mind ran through the scenarios, the possibilities, and something struck him. “Check on Duff Bás,” he added, and he watched comprehension dawn on several faces simultaneously.
Blair immediately called up a guard on his com. “Martin, can you check Duff Bás’s cabin? You should be closest. Over.”
“On it, boss. Over.”
They waited in silence for Martin to respond. He did, barely a minute later. “Cabin’s empty, boss. No note. Looks like he left in a hurry. Over.”
The room went quiet. Two disappearances. One with a note and signs of voluntary departure. One without.
“They’re connected,” Rhene said.
“Almost certainly.” Gregor’s mind was running scenarios at combat speed, but beneath the tactical analysis, beneath the threat assessments and probability calculations and strategic frameworks, a single thought pulsed with the steady, unbearable rhythm of a heartbeat.
Fergal. Fergal. Fergal.
“Commander.” Zack’s voice was carefully neutral. “Any other orders? Anything else you need?”
The omega’s question cut through the noise in Gregor’s head.
What did he need? He needed Fergal. He needed to rewind three days and tell the truth.
He needed to rewind two hours and skip the extended patrol.
He needed to rewind thirty minutes and be in the cabin when Fergal read whatever message had lured him out.
He breathed out. “I need a full intelligence sweep. Jermon, can you check every ward for signs of external magic? Blair, we need security camera footage from every angle covering the cabin and the compound exits. And we need to talk to anyone Fergal interacted with this morning to see if they noticed anything out of the ordinary.”
The room mobilized. People moved with purpose, assignments accepted without argument, the machinery of crisis response engaging with the well-oiled efficiency of a community that had weathered too many emergencies to waste time on panic.
Gregor stood in the middle of it and let the commander run the operation while the man inside him screamed.
Twenty minutes later, the preliminary reports were in.
No external ward breaches. No unfamiliar scents on the perimeter.
Security cameras showed Fergal leaving the cabin at twelve twenty-seven, alone, walking quickly toward the eastern tree line.
He wasn’t running. He wasn’t being dragged.
He was moving with purpose, as if going to meet someone.
The camera angles didn’t extend to the tree line.
Beyond the last frame, Fergal walked into the afternoon sunlight and disappeared.
There was no footage of Duff leaving at all, which meant he’d either avoided the cameras deliberately or left by a route that wasn’t covered. The man was a hunter. He knew how to move unseen.
“They didn’t leave together,” Gregor said, studying the footage time stamp. “Fergal left first. Duff went after him, or left separately.”
“Or Duff was taken too,” Jermon offered.
“Possible but unlikely. His cabin shows no signs of struggle, and a man with his skills wouldn’t go quietly unless he chose to.” Gregor’s jaw tightened. “My assessment is that Duff sensed something and followed it.”
“Which means Duff might know where Fergal is,” Rhene said.
“Or Duff might be walking into the same trap.”
The room absorbed that possibility in silence.
Gregor looked at the frozen frame on the security monitor—Fergal, captured mid-stride, his face clearly visible in the daylight.
He was squinting slightly, and his expression held something that Gregor couldn’t quite categorize.
Not fear. Not determination. Something more like resignation, the look of a man walking toward something he knew was dangerous because the alternative was worse.
What had someone told him? What threat had been convincing enough to make Fergal leave without waiting for Gregor, without telling him, without trusting that Gregor would handle it?
The answer came with the sickening clarity of a puzzle piece clicking into place.
A threat against Gregor himself. Someone had told Fergal that Gregor was in danger, and Fergal—brave, reckless, impossibly selfless Fergal—had gone to handle it alone rather than risk Gregor’s life. He’d left without alerting Gregor precisely because Gregor’s presence would make it worse.
He’d gone to protect Gregor. The way Gregor had spent his entire life protecting Fergal.
And now he was gone.
Gregor closed his eyes and made a vow.
I will find you. I will bring you home. And when I do, I will tell you everything—every truth, every secret, every word I’ve been too afraid to say. The truth about your brother. The truth about what I did. The truth about why I couldn’t say the three words you deserved to hear every single day.
If you still want me after that, I’m yours. Completely, without walls, without doors, without a single secret between us.
And if you don’t, if the truth is too much, if what I did is unforgivable, I’ll accept it. I’ll let you go.
I swear on everything I am.
He opened his eyes, picked up Fergal’s reading glasses that he’d put on the table, folded them carefully, and put them back in his breast pocket.
Then the commander took over, and Gregor went to war.