Chapter 6 #2
Nash nods. “Agreed.” He straightens, moving back to his side of the table. I tell myself the distance is a relief and mostly believe it. “Camila's intel about the defectors. The two names—did you know them personally?”
I sigh. “No, not personally. But I helped vet them. Lena Voss and Tig Jensen. Both were previously members of Vincenzo’s pack security hired on last year by Rocco.” I set the tablet down and look at the map.
“So they already had training,” I say, and she nods.
“Neither of them had any red flags. Clean records, showed up for shifts, integrated well. Which means, either Ramsey is very good at identifying who to target—”
“Or whoever is feeding him information from the inside has access to pack assessments,” Nash finishes.
The word inside sits between us like a stone dropped in still water.
The guilt in my chest sharpens, stupid and misplaced. I’m not his leak. I know that. But I am sitting on proof he reached inside our circle long before anyone wanted to admit he could.
“We have a leak,” I say.
“It’s one theory.”
I meet his eyes, reading between the lines. There’s nothing sexual about the way he watches me now. Or maybe there is, but first and foremost, we’re both strategizing, considering, working through all the angles.
Because if we really do have a leak…
“Which means everything we decide in this room—”
“Has to be need-to-know going forward.” He holds my gaze. “I didn't say it in the meeting earlier because I didn't want to fracture trust in a room full of people who need to trust each other. But yes.”
I tilt my head. “Or because you’re the new guy, and it wouldn’t be well received from an outsider.”
“Or that.”
I study him. “It was a good call,” I admit.
Something shifts in his expression, brief, almost imperceptible. Like the acknowledgment costs me something and he knows it but isn’t going to make it into anything more than it is.
I appreciate that more than I want to.
We work for another hour. It’s the strangest kind of torture.
Genuinely productive, tactically satisfying, interrupted every twenty seconds or so by the awareness of his body near mine.
The way he marks the overlays in that precise black.
The way he listens completely and takes all my ideas seriously.
When I talk, he’s actually hearing me, not waiting for his turn.
It’s disarming in a way that flirtation never could be.
At some point, he walks to the counter along the wall and comes back with two cups of coffee. He sets one beside my tablet and says nothing about it. I drink it without acknowledging the gesture.
We are, I think grimly, terrifyingly compatible.
“So, the serum you mentioned earlier,” Nash says. “Grey mentioned it’s what killed Vincenzo. Sounds intense.”
“It was. Although, it was scarier when we didn’t know if Lexi and Grey would survive it,” I admit.
“And the experiments Franco did over the years,” he says. “You never knew about them?”
“No.” Regret tugs at me as I think of all those women. Lexi’s mom. Crow’s. “Franco’s thirst for power hurt a lot of people,” I say quietly.
“Sounds like you had your hands full here these last few years.”
I don’t say anything. He’s asking me to remember the first time we met. And even though he’s referencing the business deal we made, it feels dangerously personal with him sitting across from me in the same room again.
Nash seems to read my thoughts and changes the subject back to work.
“So, your theory about Ramsey getting his hands on the serum.” He doesn’t look up from the overlay he’s marking. “You weren’t guessing.”
“No.”
“You've been thinking about it for a while.”
I was thinking about it the moment I heard he’d become an alpha.
I just needed someone else to say it out loud first. “It’s the only thing that explains the timeline.
Ramsey was a soldier at times, but he was always a follower.
He’s not an alpha, not like Grey always was.
Wolves don’t just become dominant out of nowhere.
Not naturally. That kind of thing can only be—”
“Made,” he says.
“Forced,” I say at the same time.
We look at each other.
Made. That’s worse than forced. Forced implies he took it violently. Made implies he could do it again anytime for anyone else.
Would he barter for allies by promising to make them alphas too?
“Made or forced, he won’t be able to withstand the mental weight of a large pack,” Nash says. “Too much wolf strength when his wolf is not meant to hold it.”
“An entire pack of wolves under the leadership of a wolf who can’t hold his power,” I say quietly, the horror of it washing over me. Not just for him or us—for them.
“It’s unstable,” Nash finishes. “A ticking time bomb.”
I look at the map of the city. All those grids and sectors and carefully closed gaps. All those people I’ve spent years trying to protect.
“He doesn’t need weapons if he is the weapon,” I say.
Nash nods. “I’ve thought of that.”
“Do you think he knows he can’t hang onto it?” I wonder. “Is that why he came to you, another alpha? A backup plan?”
“No. His ego was too big for that. I think he wants to consolidate power from more than just Indigo Hills.”
“You think he wants to rule a larger area?”
“I think he believes he was due to come into a power that was snatched away from him.”
I sigh. “His dad was a general. He grew up expecting to inherit that title. But then… Anthony was killed a while back. Publicly. Franco accused him of fraud and embezzlement and executed him publicly. It was just a way to shock and scare people into submission, but he used a guy’s life to do it.
Then, Vincenzo passed Ramsey over. And something in him just… snapped.”
Nash’s face is grim. “That kind of resentment and rage burns hot enough to scorch everything around it.”
My stomach twists as I realize how deep this goes for Ramsey.
For him to be willing to take that serum, knowing what it did to the others before him—the way it killed Vincenzo in the end—is just more evidence of how determined he is to destroy us.
My childhood friend is long gone. All that remains is my enemy.
It still hurts to know what I have to do now.
“We need to find him before he can take it out on the innocents in this city.”
“Yes,” Nash says. And then, quieter, “We will.”
It's not a platitude. It’s not reassurance for reassurance’s sake. He says it the way he says everything, like it’s already been assessed and decided and the outcome is simply a matter of execution.
That kind of certainty bolsters me in a way I didn’t know I needed. I look down at my tablet before he can see what it does to me. What he does to me.
We work until the light outside the windows shifts from the flat bright of midday to the slanting rays of afternoon.
At some point, Echo appears on the windowsill outside.
I have no idea how he got up there, considering there are no hedges to climb to reach it, and he sits, watching us with his dark, judgmental eyes.
Nash glances up at him. “I see you still have your partner in crime.”
“Actually, he just showed up today for the first time in two years.”
Nash blinks. “Where was he before that?”
“Who knows. Likely wreaking havoc on someone else’s life.”
“Does he do that often? Come and go for long periods of time?”
“That raccoon does whatever he wants.”
Nash looks at Echo for a moment. Echo looks back with the unblinking assessment of a creature who is trying to decide if Nash has anything shiny enough or expensive enough to interest him.
Then Nash looks back at the map and says, “I envy him that.”
I want to ask what he means, but it feels too personal. A question like that will only lead to more moments like last night. And I can’t afford to open that door. Not now.
As if in support of us both, Echo sets a decorative stone on the windowsill and disappears. I look back at my tablet, my heart strangely warm. I’ve missed that stupid raccoon.