Chapter 5
NASH
The conference room on the first floor of the Giovanni estate is already half-full when Marcus and I arrive for the morning meeting.
The long table is covered in various maps—with even more hanging on the far wall—tactical overlays, and what look like scouting reports.
There are also three open laptops, a plate of pastries, and a pair of boots propped on the end that attach to a male with cropped brown hair and a sharp gaze that suggests he’d rather fight than negotiate anything.
He slouches in a chair, leaning backward at a dangerous angle.
When he sees me, his gaze sharpens for an instant before he goes back to scrolling his phone.
Nearby, Grey stands chatting with another male whose picture I’ve seen in our own recon reports. His name is Donahue, according to our scouts. New to the pack but already a team leader. Not that I’ve mentioned that bit of research to Grey.
I take my seat beside Marcus, who has already assessed every exit, cataloged every face, and arranged himself in the precise posture of a man who is paying attention to everything and revealing nothing.
He’s been my second for six years. I’ve never once had to tell him what to do in a room like this.
Across the table, Dutch—Grey’s second whose shirt reads I Void Warranties—leans forward in his chair with his elbows propped on his knees and the unassuming energy of someone who is far sharper than he looks.
He’s texting furiously while casting glances at me.
Likely telling Mia everything we talked about earlier, a side effect I anticipated and find amusement in.
A nudge from Marcus interrupts my quiet spying. I look down to see a text on his phone. It’s from Lovaro, one of our board members at the war college. I scan it, noting the passive-aggressive—and also aggressive—language that says in no uncertain terms to get my ass back to campus immediately.
I glance up at Marcus, whose brow is already lifted in question.
I shake my head, and he goes to work, typing a reply that’s undoubtedly ten times more diplomatic than mine would have been. The war college has survived worse than my absence. Indigo Hills might not.
I go back to watching the room.
Donahue breaks away from Grey and sits down beside a female my reports say is named Camila.
Their chairs are angled slightly toward each other in the unconscious way of mated wolves—aware of each other even when they’re not looking.
Andy, Lexi’s second, has a tablet and a posture that says she has already read everyone in this room and formed opinions about all of them.
Grey sits down at the head of the table. Lexi to his right.
And Mia—
Walks in two minutes late, carrying a bag of what smells like breakfast. She sets it down in front of Razor, who leaps toward it like it’s the meal of a starving man.
“Crow says you better give him credit, or these are the last ones you’ll ever get,” she warns him.
Razor’s eyes widen. “He wouldn’t.”
“You know he would,” she says, and he pouts but digs into the bag and pulls out something delicious-smelling wrapped in greasy paper. Dutch snatches the bag before Razor can take another and helps himself.
I watch as Mia offers greetings to everyone in the room.
Everyone but me. In fact, she hasn’t looked at me once since she walked in, which is far more telling than if she’d stared.
Mia Reyes is someone who accounts for everything in a room.
The fact that she’s accounting for me by deliberate omission means she’s been thinking about me.
My wolf finds this enormously encouraging.
“Mia, you want to update us?” Grey prompts when everyone’s settled.
She taps the map with two fingers. “Our perimeter sweep picked up movement on the northern ridge last night.”
“That’s pretty close to the city limits,” Dutch says around a mouthful of breakfast sandwich.
Mia nods. “From what we can tell, it was low numbers, single file, deliberately avoiding the ward markers that still stand in that area.” She looks at Grey and states the obvious conclusion, “They know where the boundary lines are.”
“Which means they’ve been watching,” Grey says with a frown.
“Long enough to map them,” I confirm. Every head in the room turns toward me.
I keep my voice even, measured. “My scouts picked up tracks last night and followed them back to a staging area roughly twelve miles northeast. Abandoned by the time we got there but recently used. Fires, supply lines, enough space for…” I glance at Marcus.
“Sixty wolves minimum,” Marcus says. First words he’s spoken. Everyone clocks him briefly, assesses him and his intel.
“Sixty,” Dutch repeats. “How does a guy who was just locked in a cell up until two weeks ago have sixty wolves under his command?”
“He’s been building up to this for longer than we realized,” Mia says, and there’s a tightness in her jaw that tells me she’s already been turning this over. And wrestling with the rage and betrayal that comes with this kind of truth. “Our scouts reported another camp a few hours’ drive from here.”
“That’s pretty far outside the boundary line,” Dutch says. “How do you know it was his?”
“Because they found Violet’s ID,” Mia says quietly.
Lexi goes pale.
Mia shakes her head. “To have built a camp and abducted Violet, not to mention the recon it would have taken to identify her in the first place… Ramsey didn’t just decide to do this after the leadership change. This was already in motion.”
“From a cell?” Dutch challenges.
“Before that, I think,” Mia says carefully. She looks at her alphas. “He used Lexi as a double agent. Was a double agent himself for years.” Lexi looks away guiltily. I frown, wondering about that part of the story, but then Mia looks at me. “You said he approached you. What did he have to offer?”
“Four days ago.” I hold her gaze for exactly one second longer than necessary. “He had funding, infrastructure, and a recruitment pitch that was too polished to be improvised.”
“Someone helped him build this,” Andy says.
“Behind our fucking backs the entire time,” Dutch says darkly.
“Remember when Franco took out Ramsey’s old man?” Razor says. “The asshole was so devastated. Reckless even. Dug himself a hole with the alphas. Really screwed himself.”
“Maybe it was all part of his plan,” Mia says.
“He’s smarter than we gave him credit for,” Lexi says quietly.
“He’s still a fucking idiot to challenge us,” Dutch grumbles.
“Both can be true,” Mia tells him.
For a moment, the room is quiet as they all exchange murderous looks. Razor has stopped eating. That, more than anything, tells me the mood has shifted to war.
“What about the recruitment angle?” Grey says, leaning forward. “Do we know who else he’s targeting? Anyone else he approached that we can warn—or bring in as allies, like Nash?”
Camila straightens slightly. Something in her expression shifts—careful, deliberate, the look of someone who has been sitting on information and choosing their moment. She glances once at Donahue, who gives her a small nod.
“I don’t know about recruiting to our side, but I think we’re losing more than we think,” she says.
“What do you mean?” Grey asks.
“Two of our newer patrols didn’t report for their shifts yesterday,” she says. “We assumed illness at first. But their quarters are cleared out.” She pauses. “Personal items. Gone.”
The temperature in the room drops.
“Defection,” Dutch says flatly. “Those assholes.”
“Possible,” Camila says. Her gaze flicks to Mia’s. “Or coercion. I knew both of them. They weren’t unhappy here. That’s what I can’t reconcile.”
“Who was it?” Mia asks.
Camila hands her a report. Mia scans it quickly, then looks back at her team leader. “You think Ramsey knew they were on our patrol teams,” Mia says quietly. “Targeted them on purpose.”
Camila looks at her and shrugs. “It’s what I would have done.”
“He recruited them specifically because he knew their loyalty wasn’t as long-standing as some others.
” Mia’s eyes move to the map, contemplative.
“Which means he has someone on the inside, feeding him names. Who’s vulnerable.
Who’s dissatisfied. Who can be flipped or frightened.
” Her voice stays level, but I can hear the controlled fury beneath it.
“He's not just building an army outside our walls. He’s already inside them.”
The room erupts into overlapping voices—Dutch and Razor talking over each other, Donahue asking about a security audit, Andy conferring with Lexi and typing on her tablet.
Grey raises a hand, and the noise subsides.
He looks at Mia. “We’re on a hiring freeze until further notice. No new names added to the patrol schedule.”
“Agreed.” She looks at Donahue and Camila, who nod.
“Nash,” Lexi says, turning every head toward me. “Did you see his pack members when you met with them? Or have you done any research on them on your own?”
The room is completely silent, like they’re all hoping I have the answers they don’t.
Marcus and I exchange a look because they aren’t going to like those answers.
“From what we could gather, most of his new pack is made up of disaffected wolves,” I say.
“Vincenzo's former arms buyers whose supply chain died with him. Franco loyalists who fled after the leadership change. Anyone who built their livelihood around the old regime and now has nothing to show for it.” I pause. “He’s not promising them ideology. He’s promising them wealth.
Territory. A return to the way things were.
Most of his pack is willing to fight to get that back. ”
“The way things were was a nightmare,” Camila says flatly.
“For good people,” Donahue reminds her. “Not for the people who were profiting from it.”
“So, he’s one step ahead on everything,” Razor says in disbelief.
No one has an answer for that.
“We have a lot of data,” Mia says. “Wolf recruitments. Abandoned camps. Broken ward lines. We just need to figure out which intel is a distraction and which is a clue.”