Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The headache started at dawn.
It wasn’t a normal headache, like Gregor got sometimes from dehydration or from lack of sleep. This was a deep, diffuse ache that seemed to originate behind his eyes and radiate outward until his entire skull throbbed with a pressure that had no physical cause and no obvious remedy.
He ignored it. He had work to do.
The investigation had been running for fourteen hours, and Gregor had not stopped moving for any of them.
He’d reviewed the security footage frame by frame until he could describe Fergal’s final visible moments in detail—the slight hesitation at the edge of the camera range, the way Fergal’s hand had risen to push hair from his face, the squint against the midday sun.
He’d personally walked the path from the cabin to the eastern tree line, cataloging every footprint, every broken twig, every disturbance in the soil.
The trail ended abruptly fifty yards past the last camera—a clear patch of ground where the grass was slightly flattened and the air still carried the faintest residue of teleportation magic, that ozone-and-copper smell that lingered after a translocation.
Multiple people had stood there. At least five, based on the foot impressions. And then they’d all vanished.
He’d briefed the expanded leadership team twice, coordinated with the Hayes pack security, ensured Blair had set up a rotating watch schedule that ensured no other high-value targets were left unguarded, and set Oliver and Fallon to analyzing the magical residue at the tree line for any signature that could help identify the specific dragons involved.
There had been no communication with the Murphys. No ransom demands, nothing. That worried Gregor more than anything. What did they want? Why had they taken Fergal specifically? That was the part he couldn’t figure out.
The headache pulsed. He pressed his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose and kept moving.
“Commander.” Rhene fell into step beside him as Gregor crossed the yard between the main house and the security station.
The pack alpha looked like he hadn’t slept either, which made sense—having a king kidnapped from your territory was the kind of security failure that kept a leader awake. “Any news?”
“Fallon confirmed the magical residue at the tree line is consistent with Murphy-trained dragons. Oliver said at least two magic users were involved, but that’s all. They used teleportation, but we have no idea where they went.”
Rhene sighed. “In other words, no real new information.”
“No.”
Rhene shot him a long look. “You look like shit,” he said with the bluntness that Gregor had come to appreciate about the wolf alpha. “When did you last eat?”
“I’m fine.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“I’ll eat when I need to.”
Rhene’s expression said he recognized deflection when he heard it but was choosing not to push. Smart man.
Rhene’s phone dinged with an incoming text, and as he read it—Gregor could see it was more than one sentence, but he wasn’t close enough to read it—his expression changed. “Zack has flagged a concern about one of the omegas.”
Gregor stopped walking. “Which omega?”
Another text came in and Gregor waited as Rhene read it. “Simon. One of the original Murphy group who came with Fallon.”
The name registered with a distant familiarity—the quiet omega with sandy hair who’d served coffee at the intelligence meeting weeks ago. The one Fergal had been kind to, asking his name. Gregor had noted him as unremarkable, which, in retrospect, might’ve been the point.
“What kind of concern?”
“Zack noticed Simon’s behavior has changed since yesterday. He was concerned enough that he asked Delton for his assessment—he’s a psychologist, specialized in trauma—and Delton said that at first glance, it looks like guilt.”
Guilt. The word landed hard in Gregor’s gut. The Murphys had an inside spy—something he hadn’t consciously suspected but that his subconscious had been circling, the way it circled every potential threat, cataloging and filing and waiting for the pattern to reveal itself. “Where is he now?”
“Delton is with him in the main house, keeping an eye on him. He hasn’t confronted him yet—he’s waiting for your call.”
Gregor changed direction without breaking stride, heading for the main house.
Rhene had to lengthen his steps to match.
The headache was getting worse—a persistent throb that seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat—and underneath it, a cold that had settled into his bones sometime in the last few hours and refused to leave, despite the mild afternoon temperature.
He registered these symptoms with clinical detachment.
Headache, cold intolerance, a tremor in his hands.
The same symptoms Erwan had described during his separation from Rhene—mate sickness, the physical manifestation of a fated bond under strain.
His body was telling him what his mind had only just accepted: Fergal was his mate, and the distance between them was poison.
Erwan’s symptoms had been slower, but maybe Gregor’s were exacerbated by the dampening of their bond, the complete absence of it?
Or maybe it was because they were both dragons, making the bond between them different from that of a wolf and a dragon.
He had no way of knowing, since he hadn’t heard of a mating bond between dragons in ages.
He filed the information and kept walking. There would be time to fall apart later. Or there wouldn’t be, and it wouldn’t matter.
Delton was waiting in the hallway outside one of the small rooms the pack used for private conversations, Zack by his side.
“Talk to me,” Gregor said, not bothering with introductions.
“Zack noticed it first,” Delton said, gesturing for Zack to explain.
“I noticed he was behaving oddly, very distraught. We’re all stressed for obvious reasons, but he seemed to be taking it much harder, which didn’t make sense to me.
And he hadn’t eaten since it happened. So I talked to him, and all my alarm bells were going off because he didn’t seem scared like the rest of us.
I know what fear looks like. I’ve been surrounded by it my entire life.
This wasn’t fear, so I asked Delton to check in with him. ”
Delton took over. “After assessing Simon, I agree. He’s not scanning for external threats the way the other omegas are. He’s turned inward. Hunched. And he flinches every time someone mentions Fergal’s name.”
“You think he knows something.”
“I think he’s carrying something that’s destroying him.
” Delton paused, choosing his next words with care.
“His presentation is consistent with acute guilt, not trauma. The distinction matters—trauma victims withdraw from the source of threat. Guilty individuals withdraw from the people they’ve wronged. ”
“And he’s withdrawing from everyone.”
“From the whole pack. As if everyone here is someone he’s wronged.”
The cold in Gregor’s bones intensified. “I want to talk to him.”
Delton held up a hand. “With respect, Commander, but you’re the last person who should be asking him questions.
You’re too close to this, and if Simon is carrying what I think he’s carrying, confronting him with a three-hundred-and-fifty-year-old alpha who’s in mate-separation distress is going to shut him down, not open him up. ”
The rational part of Gregor’s brain acknowledged the validity of this assessment. The irrational part—the part that was running on adrenaline and mate sickness and fourteen hours without sleep—wanted to kick the door down and shake the truth out of the omega by his collar.
“Let me do this,” Delton said quietly. “It’s what I’m trained for. Give me some time. If he knows something, I’ll get it.”
Gregor’s jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. “I want to be in the room.”
“That’s fine, Commander, but I need your word you won’t interfere.”
“Delton is really good at what he does,” Rhene said, almost pleading.
“Okay.”
They stayed, huddling in a corner of the room as Delton sat down with Simon.
Twenty-three minutes. That was how long it took.
Gregor stood in the corner and watched Delton dismantle Simon’s defenses with nothing but patience and kindness.
He wasn’t merely good at what he did. He was fucking brilliant.
The beta sat across from Simon at a small table, his posture open, his voice pitched low enough that Gregor had to strain to hear.
He didn’t interrogate. He didn’t accuse.
He simply created a space—warm, nonjudgmental, safe—and waited for the omega to fill it.
Simon lasted eleven minutes before the first crack appeared.
A tremor in his hands that he tried to hide by pressing them flat against the table.
A sheen of moisture in his eyes that he blinked away.
The slow, incremental collapse of a man who had been carrying a weight too heavy for his frame and had finally found someone who was offering to help him set it down.
“It’s okay,” Delton said softly, leaning forward. “Whatever it is, Simon, it’s okay. You’re safe here.”
“I’m not,” Simon whispered. “None of us is safe. Because of me.”
“Why is that?”
“I’ve been sending them reports.” Simon’s voice was barely audible, his eyes fixed on the table. “Since I arrived. Since Fallon brought us here.”
“Reports to whom?” Delton asked gently.
“The Murphys. Alistair and Kerry. They sent me a message to meet them, and they gave me a stone, a spelled stone. They told me…” A sob broke through, raw and ugly. “They told me if I stopped reporting, they’d kill my brother.”
“Your brother?”
“Tiernan. He’s fifteen. They sold him to the O’Connors a few years ago, since he’s an omega.
I thought I’d never see him again, but then they told me they’d gotten him back after we all left.
They knew I’d do anything to keep him alive.
” Simon’s hands were shaking so badly that the table vibrated.
“Anything. So they told me to send them reports…and I did.”