Chapter 15
NASH
The meeting room feels smaller than it did two days ago, despite there being half as many bodies in it.
Maybe it’s the fact that everyone in here looks ready to go to war.
In this moment, it’s easy to see this fight is personal for them.
Ramsey was a friend, and now he’s their greatest enemy.
Not just capable of hurting them but actively doing so at every chance.
Makes me want to put the fucker down even more. Especially when I glimpse the pain Mia’s trying so hard to hide. She stands at the far end of the room, pacing back and forth while she texts furiously.
Everyone else was already here when I arrived.
Grey and Lexi sit at the head of the table, Andy and Dutch flanking them like brackets. Crow sits quiet and watchful at the far end with Razor beside him, the latter cracking his knuckles like he’s about to face off with his opponent here and now.
I take a seat in the middle with Marcus at my right.
My wolf is on edge in a way I’ve never felt before.
Maybe it’s Ramsey or the fact that I’m sitting in the middle of a pack that’s not my own, who all look ready to attack something.
Then again, maybe it’s Mia, standing in the center of the room like she owns it, and the fact that I spent three days in the woods, falling in love with her, and now I’m sitting eight feet away, pretending like she’s someone I could ever walk away from again.
She hasn’t looked at me since we walked in. As usual.
I’ve looked at her approximately every forty-five seconds. Same old.
Grey calls the room to order. Everyone settles. The air shifts from the low hum of individual conversations to collective focus.
“Mia,” Grey says simply.
She takes it from there.
I’ve watched her work before. In this room, at the restaurant fire, today in the woods after Ramsey left.
Always with the focused patience of someone who trusts her own instincts completely.
But this is different. This is Mia Reyes in full command of a room full of wolves who would follow her into a war zone, and she knows it, and she uses it without ever making it about herself.
Because for Mia, it’s about the innocents she’s determined to protect.
She starts with Lena Voss.
The room stills as she talks about how Echo brought us the coat buttons.
Then led us to the young woman’s body. She delivers the news cleanly—the facts, the location, the cause of death.
But I can see what it costs her in the set of her jaw and the way she keeps her focus on the table rather than on the faces around it.
“Whatever he promised her for defecting, she changed her mind in the end,” Mia says. “Or she tried to. And he made an example of her.”
“That asshole is dead,” Razor mutters.
Mia moves on to recounting our conversation with Ramsey. The appearance in the woods. The wolves he brought. The recruitment pitch delivered over a dead body.
“He said Grey and Lexi aren’t safe,” she says.
“He threatened our alphas.” Dutch’s voice is flat. “To your face.”
“He did.”
“And he’s still breathing,” Razor says. He glances at me like he wants to know how this is possible on my watch.
“I don’t like it either,” Mia says. “But Nash was right. Ramsey’s wolf is different.” She glances at Grey and Lexi. “He feels powerful. And unstable. Like both of you before you bonded. Besides that, we were outnumbered, and I had Lena’s body to think about. So yes, he’s still breathing. For now.”
“The smart play was getting yourselves safely back here,” Grey says firmly before Razor can argue.
“You think he’s taken the serum?” Lexi asks me.
“I do,” Mia says. There’s worry in her eyes now, but she covers it quickly. “But even worse, I think he’s taken out more of the wards than we realized.”
“Davina,” Razor says darkly.
“Likely,” Mia says. “Whoever it is, they’re not amateur. And whatever has him waiting to strike at us, it’s not access. He’s proven that. Which means he has something else up his sleeve.”
I watch as they all absorb that idea, each one recalibrating their understanding of how bad things are.
Then Razor’s chair scrapes back.
“Right,” he says, standing. “So, we go find him. Tonight. We know the general area—”
“Sit down,” Mia says.
“No, fuck that. I’m going to—”
“Razor. Sit. Down.”
There’s a commanding resonance in Mia that has me sitting up straighter. It only lasts a fraction of a second before it’s gone, but I didn’t imagine it. And in that moment, she was dominant enough to give an alpha a run for their money.
Razor feels it too because he sits. But with a deep scowl that tells me he won’t be benched for long.
I look around, wondering if the rest of them felt it, but no one reacts.
Dutch leans forward toward Razor. “She’s right, man. Going out half-cocked is exactly what he wants. He’d pick us off one by one in terrain he knows better than we do right now.”
“So, what, we just wait around here like sitting ducks?” Razor’s hands are flat on the table. “He killed Lena. He burned Solano’s. He's threatening Grey and Lexi in their own house, and we’re supposed to sit here and—”
“We’re supposed to be smart,” Mia says. “We preserve our resources. We don’t send people into the field on emotion when we have an active intelligence problem.”
“Yeah, let’s talk about that,” Dutch says, eyes narrowing on me and Marcus.
“Hang on. Before we get there, can we just revisit the wards,” Andy says, cutting through before Razor can chime in.
Her eyes are on her tablet. “If they’re failing and he has a witch actively working to take them down, how do we protect the estate?
Or the city? He could come in anytime. Hit anywhere. ”
Crow speaks for the first time. “He proved it once already.” Quiet. Weighted. Everyone knows he means Solano’s. Not just the restaurant itself but Bobby.
“No number of patrol schedules can possibly cover that kind of ground,” Andy adds quietly.
“It would be stupid to try,” Mia agrees, her voice heavy with regret.
I see it again. The pain flashing. She’s realized Lena isn’t the last wolf they’ll lose. Fuck. I glance at Marcus, who is already watching me watch her. He frowns and looks away again.
“What about the hex blade?” Razor asks suddenly.
“What about it?” Dutch asks.
“Can we use it to re-cast the wards?” Razor asks.
“You guys have a hex blade?” Marcus asks, eyes wide.
Grey nods in confirmation, leaving me with more questions than answers, but now’s not the time for them. “We still need a witch to do the casting,” he tells Razor.
“Damn,” Razor mutters.
“Then what—” Andy begins.
“We tighten security around the estate,” Mia says quietly. “Concentrated on protecting the alphas, overlapping rotations. No gaps, no predictable patterns.”
“What?” Lexi speaks up, confusion blurring into refusal. “No. Grey and I can handle ourselves. We can’t leave the rest of the city—”
“Yes, we can,” Grey tells her, covering her hand with his.
She glares at him, but he doesn’t back down.
“I won’t leave you unprotected,” he says.
“Even if it means our people dying in our place,” she hisses at him.
He doesn’t flinch. “Yes. Even then.”
She looks ready to spit fire at him, but he’s undeterred, and I admire him for it. Because I feel the same damn way about Mia. Not that she’d let anyone stand in front of her. Except maybe me. So that’s what I’ll have to do.
“We also need to find a hex witch,” Grey says, deftly changing the subject before his mate can rip into him. “Someone willing and able to start rebuilding the ward integrity.”
“What about Levi and Mac?” I ask Grey. “They might know someone.”
Grey glances at Lexi who nods. “I spoke to them a week ago,” he explains. “They put me in touch with their best contact. A hex-wolf named Chloe.”
“Whoa. There’s a hex wolf out there? As in, half hex, half wolf?” Razor asks, eyes wide. He and Dutch look at each other. I can’t blame them. Hex-wolves are rare. But I know Chloe and she’s one of the good ones.
“Can she help us?” Mia asks.
“Apparently, ward magic is unique even among hexes. Chloe doesn’t have the talent but she’s looking for someone who does and will send word if and when she finds them.”
“Damn,” Razor mutters. “Kind of curious what sort of wolf that would be.”
“She can probably kick your ass,” Crow mutters.
Razor gives him the finger.
“Sounds too uncertain to wait around on it,” Dutch says.
Mia nods. “That means we can’t stop looking for one of our own. It’s our top external priority. Crow, can you head that up?”
“On it.” Crow pulls out his phone, starts texting.
Mia looks at Grey again. “Internally, we concentrate on finding the leak.”
“The leak,” Razor repeats, and I know from the confusion he wears that he hasn’t put that part together yet.
“Someone in this pack told Ramsey where Nash and I were going. The coordinates, the timeline, possibly more.”
“Didn’t Lena tell him?” Razor asks.
“Lena left before we decided to go,” Mia reminds him. “Whatever information she gave him, it wasn’t that.”
“Fuck,” Razor says, realization finally dawning.
Crow looks up from his phone, gaze darting from face to face, and I know he’s already made the next logical leap.
Mia adds, “Until we find out who leaked that information, every piece of intelligence we share is potentially compromised.”
“Is that why Donahue and Camila aren’t here?” Lexi asks worriedly. “Do you think it’s one of them?”
“It would be better if it was,” Mia says quietly.
Then she waits while the rest of them read between the lines of what she’s saying.
For a smart pack like theirs, it takes them a full extra beat before I see their expressions shift to a horrified understanding.
But I don’t think intelligence is the problem.
It’s that every wolf in this room trusts the other so implicitly that they never would have considered one of them as a traitor.
“You’re fucked up for this, Mia,” Dutch begins, his tone a warning.
“You’re an idiot if you’re not willing to investigate it,” she snaps back.