Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The first thing Fergal noticed when he woke up was the silence.
Not the absence of sound because he could hear plenty of noises. Footsteps in a corridor beyond the locked door. Muffled voices, too distant to make out words. The creak of old wood settling. The low, persistent hum of magical wards pressed so thick against the walls they were almost audible.
No, the silence was inside him. The place where Gregor should’ve been—that constant, warm presence at the edge of his awareness that he’d stopped noticing the way you stopped noticing your own heartbeat—was empty. Hollow. A frequency gone dead, leaving behind nothing.
He didn’t know when that connection had become a part of him, couldn’t pinpoint the moment it had shifted from something he felt to something he was.
But its absence was devastating in a way that went beyond emotion into something physical—a phantom limb sensation, his consciousness reaching for something that had been amputated and finding only the echo of where it used to be.
Gregor.
Nothing. Not even static. Just the flat, featureless silence of a wall that no amount of reaching could penetrate.
Fergal opened his eyes, then slowly sat up, taking inventory.
The room was small—twelve feet by ten, he estimated from his position on a narrow cot against the far wall.
Bare wooden floors, faded wallpaper, and a single window that admitted gray afternoon light through glass that shimmered faintly with the telltale iridescence of magical sealing.
A door, solid wood, no handle on the inside but otherwise not fortified, other than by magic, he assumed.
A bucket in the corner that he chose not to think about.
And his single cot with a flimsy mattress and an even thinner excuse for a blanket. It was scratchy and it smelled.
No other furniture. No other features.
His body was intact—no injuries, no restraints, no lingering pain beyond a dull headache that was probably a side effect of whatever dampening magic they’d used on him.
He was still wearing the same clothes, though they’d taken off his boots.
No reading glasses because he’d left those on the kitchen table next to a cup of coffee that was probably still warm when Gregor found it.
Because he would’ve found it by now. He would know Fergal was gone.
The thought was simultaneously comforting and agonizing.
Gregor would’ve come home from patrol, found the empty cabin, the note, the warm coffee, and the reading glasses sitting on the table like a fucking monument to everything Fergal had left behind.
And he would’ve blamed himself. Immediately, completely, with the same ruthless self-judgment he applied to every perceived failure.
Fergal pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and breathed through the wave of grief that crashed over him.
Not for himself—he was alive, uninjured, and his mind was working.
Grief for what he’d done to Gregor. For the note that said nothing.
For the silence where their connection should be.
For the fact that the last real conversation they’d had was a fight about secrets, and now Fergal was the one who’d left without telling the truth.
The irony was enough to choke on.
He’d been sitting at the kitchen table, nursing his second coffee and pretending to read a legal brief while actually composing imaginary speeches to Gregor in his head.
Apologies. Demands. Pleas. The same rotating script he’d been writing and discarding for three days, none of them right, none of them sufficient to bridge the gap between “I need to know your secret” and “I love you regardless.”
Then Simon had knocked on the door.
The omega’s face had told Fergal everything before a single word was spoken.
White as paper, eyes red-rimmed, hands shaking so badly he could barely hold the small stone clutched in his right fist—the same stone Fergal had occasionally seen him turning over in his fingers, which he’d assumed was a comfort object. A trauma survivor’s talisman.
It wasn’t a talisman. It was a communication device.
“They’re going to kill Gregor.” Simon’s voice had been barely a whisper, raw with terror. “They know his patrol route. They have men positioned along the perimeter. If you don’t come to the eastern tree line alone within fifteen minutes, they’ll ambush him.”
Fifteen minutes. Fergal’s mind had started running scenarios before Simon finished the sentence. The public coms were out. Those would be monitored. So would phone calls to Gregor, he figured.
He could call Blair, but it would take Blair at least ten minutes to reach Gregor’s position on the extended route, assuming Blair was even in the compound and not on his own patrol.
Another option was to mobilize the pack’s security, but the visible movement would alert whoever was watching, potentially triggering an early ambush.
Should he try to find Gregor himself? The extended route covered miles of terrain through forest and along ridge lines, and Fergal didn’t know which section Gregor was on right now.
Fifteen minutes. Not enough time for any of it.
“What do they want?” Fergal had asked, his voice steady despite the ice forming in his chest.
“You. Just you. They said if you come alone, they’ll let him live.”
The calculation had taken less than three seconds.
If he went, he was walking into a trap. If he didn’t, the man he loved would die on a patrol route two miles away, alone, ambushed by enemies who knew his schedule because Fergal and Gregor had been too focused on Duncan and Donovan to consider that the Murphys might have another source of intelligence inside the pack and the clan.
Another source. The realization had been distant, clinical—filed away for later processing because there was no time for the betrayal to register fully.
Simon. The quiet omega who trembled when anyone looked at him.
The Murphy refugee who picked up meal trays and slipped through rooms like a ghost. How long?
How much had he reported? How many of their conversations, their strategies, their secrets had been transmitted through that stone to the very people who’d murdered Fergal’s father?
Later. He’d deal with that later. Right now, Gregor was walking a route that someone had given the Murphys, and Fergal had twelve minutes left.
He’d scribbled the note. Had to handle something. Back soon. Don’t worry. Pathetic, inadequate words that told Gregor nothing and would tell him everything—that Fergal had left voluntarily, that he’d known the risk, that he’d chosen to go anyway. Gregor would read between the lines.
He hadn’t taken his reading glasses. His hands had been shaking too hard to fold them, and some irrational part of his brain had whispered that leaving them behind was an anchor, some kind of promise of return.
He’d followed Simon to the eastern tree line with seven minutes to spare.
The omega had been silently crying the entire way, tears streaming down his face.
Fergal had wanted to both comfort him and strangle him.
He’d done a quick but careful brush into Simon’s mind, immediately butting up against a thick wall that felt all too familiar. The Murphys. Again.
More than anything, he’d wanted to ask why. What had they threatened Simon with? How long had he been betraying them? But there was no time.
Simon had disappeared right before they’d reached the boundary of the pack lands.
At the tree line, four shapes had materialized from the undergrowth—Murphy alphas, their magic cloaking them until the last moment.
Fergal had recognized Alistair’s broad frame and Kerry’s sharp features before the dampening spell hit him like a physical blow, severing every magical connection he possessed in one brutal cut.
In that fraction of a second before the dampening closed around him—one heartbeat, maybe two—Fergal had reached.
Not with his influencer magic. Not with his mind-reading.
With something deeper, something he hadn’t known existed until it was being torn away.
He’d reached for Gregor with everything he had, pouring every ounce of fear and love and desperation into the connection, screaming through whatever bond linked them.
I’m here. They have me. I love you. I’m sorry.
He didn’t know if Gregor had heard him. He didn’t know if the message had gotten through before the dampening swallowed it. All he knew was the silence that followed—absolute, suffocating—was the loneliest sound he’d ever not heard.
They’d blindfolded and then teleported him.
The disorientation was brutal—a nauseating whirl of darkness and pressure that lasted either seconds or hours, he couldn’t tell—and when his feet found solid ground again, he’d vomited on someone’s boots, which gave him a petty satisfaction that almost made up for the indignity.
They’d knocked him out cold with something that had smelled foul before darkness had enveloped him.
Now he was here. Wherever here was.
Fergal swung his legs off the cot and stood, testing his balance. Steady enough. The headache was fading. He crossed to the window and looked out.
Rolling terrain. Brown grass and scrubby trees stretched to a distant tree line.
A few outbuildings were visible—barns or storage structures, weathered and utilitarian.
A dirt road led to a gate in a fence that surrounded the property.
No mountains, no snow, no frozen lakes. This was nothing like Canada.
The vegetation, the flatness, the quality of the light—they all looked an awful lot like the pack lands he’d been on. Maybe he was closer than he’d thought?
He pressed his palm flat against the window. The magical seal buzzed against his skin—strong, layered, the work of someone who knew what they were doing. Colin, probably. The Murphy’s resident magical expert, according to Gregor.