Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
MAGNUS
Istood at the perimeter of what had been, four hours ago, a functioning distribution hub.
The Queens terminal smelled like burning rubber, spilled diesel, and blood.
Twelve thousand square feet of cold storage, three loading bays, and a logistics operation that moved Blackwood supply lines through the eastern seaboard with an invisible efficiency that kept our name off federal watchlists was now a crater with walls.
The Volki hadn't used a car bomb. They'd used something military-grade, the kind of ordnance that didn't show up in civilian channels without significant connections and even more significant money.
This had been planned — bought and paid for — before Viktor was at the council table.
Before the alerts hit his phone. Before he turned his back on me in front of every Alpha in the room.
He had come to that meeting already at war.
I walked the perimeter with Huxley at my shoulder.
Our shoes crunched over broken glass and debris that had been thrown thirty feet from the blast site.
Three of our enforcers were dead. Two more were in a Blackwood-controlled medical facility with injuries that would have killed human men.
The cold storage units had been destroyed along with their contents; twelve tons of premium Wagyu and A5 cuts that had cleared Japanese customs three days ago, two refrigerated shipments of exotic game that the Fang Dynasty's chef had been waiting on for a month, and three additional consignments whose contents I would not be naming in any report.
I looked at each of the dead without looking away. That was the only thing I could give them right now. I was angry about the waste of food. I was pissed about the loss of life.
"They knew the layout," Huxley said, his voice stripped of everything except the operational. "Entry points, camera positions, shift rotations. Someone gave them a blueprint."
I crouched beside a section of blown wall, examining the scorch pattern. "This was placed from the inside of the east loading bay. They had someone in here before the device went off."
Huxley's jaw tightened. "I'll find them."
"What's the status on Newark?"
"Our intelligence says they're moving on the hub within forty-eight hours.
Possibly less." Huxley pulled up his phone, showing me a map with three additional Blackwood transit points flagged in red.
"If they take Newark the same way they took this, we lose the entire northern corridor.
Everything we move through conventional channels becomes a target they already have the address for. "
I looked at the map. Then at the three flags. Then, at the smoking ruin of what had been a functioning operation hours ago.
My wolf was not helping. It was still running hot from the garden; from vanilla and heat and that sound Nell had made when I'd pulled her hair.
The beast didn't understand why we were standing in broken glass instead of a cabin, balls deep and claws dug into the toy we wanted, when playtime kept getting snatched from us.
The wolf pulled at me with the insistence of an animal that had decided on a direction and could not comprehend the obstacles.
I shut it down. Locked it behind the part of me that had been trained since childhood to function in exactly these conditions. Pulling my phone out, I called the only person whose control outstripped mine.
"How bad?" Vidar asked after the first ring.
"Three dead. The hub is gone." I walked away from Huxley, putting distance between myself and the cleanup crew. "They had inside intelligence on the layout. This wasn't reactive. They planned this before the council meeting."
In the background, I heard Addie's voice, low and urgent. Then the sound of a door closing as he moved away from her. "Newark?"
"Forty-eight hours, maybe less. We can't hold the northern corridor through conventional channels. Every transit point we operate through standard routes is already mapped. They're going to make us hemorrhage until we're too depleted to hold territory."
Another silence. Then Gunnar's voice came onto the call, which meant I was now on speaker in whatever room Vidar had walked into. "The traditional lines are finished. We need routes the Volki can't see."
"Working on it," I said.
"We don't have the timeline to work on it," Vidar said. "We need something operational now. Something shielded."
I already knew what was coming. I had known since I saw the first image Huxley showed me as he rushed me out of the garden. I had known then what the Volki offensive was going to require of me.
"The Lobos," Gunnar said.
There it was.
"Sorsha runs a network of refrigerated pharmaceutical couriers," Vidar said.
"Medical-grade transit; temperature-controlled vehicles, licensed under federal pharmaceutical immunity statutes.
They move biological materials, experimental treatments, and controlled substances with DEA clearance.
The drivers are vetted, the vehicles are equipped with federal transponders, and every route is pre-cleared through a web of shell companies that look, on paper, like a legitimate cold-chain logistics operation. "
"The Volki can't touch it," Gunnar said.
"They can't touch it without triggering a federal response that would bring heat down on every pack in the tri-state area, including themselves.
The pharmaceutical immunity designation means any interference with those vehicles constitutes a federal crime with mandatory minimums. Even the Volki aren't stupid enough to blow up a truck with a DEA transponder. "
My brothers had the right of it. Goes to show Mei Ling and Fenrir Blackwood didn't raise fools. They'd raised us to use our heads in times of crisis. Which is why I was able to divert the blood flow from my dick and back to my big brain and confirm the plan.
"Can we use it to move reinforcements?" Gunnar asked.
"Reinforcements, high-value data, anything we need to move without it being visible on a route the Volki are already watching." I looked at what was left of the Queens terminal. "It solves the immediate problem completely."
"So call Sorsha," Gunnar said, with the cheerful simplicity of a man who was not the one who would be making that call.
Vidar said nothing. He knew what the call would cost. He was the one who had signed his own life away under pack warfare.
Lucky for him, he'd come out the other side of it in love with his wife.
Sorsha had been keeping her daughter away from me — away from all packs — since her birth.
As far as I knew, no one had laid eyes on Rosalind Lobo since the girl was a baby in her mother's arms.
Most thought it was for the girl's protection. I wasn't so sure.
"I'll handle Sorsha," I said.