Chapter 18
MIA
My wolf is demanding today. Pushing at the surface of me in a way that makes it hard to think about anything else for more than thirty consecutive seconds.
I tell myself it’s panic over the stolen Null.
Hers and mine. But by the end of breakfast with my dad—where it takes everything in me to act normal even when he tries asking me about Nash—I know it’s more than that.
His nose wrinkles as he hugs me goodbye. “You smell different today.”
“New shampoo,” I lie.
He studies me for half a second too long before letting it go. But my heart thuds, and by the time I close the door behind him, I’m sick to my stomach.
The Null is wearing off.
I’m trying hard not to think about what it will mean if I don’t find more before it’s completely out of my system. I’ve faced down dozens of predators with the strength to kill me, but I’ve never felt more vulnerable than I do now.
The east quarter of the city is quieter than downtown at this hour; residential streets bleeding into the older commercial blocks where the storefronts run to dry cleaners and small grocers and the occasional smoke shop with a neon OPEN sign in the window that only shows three of the four letters lit.
I bypass them all and head for the one at the end of the block.
The sign above the door says The Pharmacy, but it’s a half-assed attempt to cover for their real merchandise.
I usually avoid coming here and instead pay a courier to bring my order, but there’s no time for that today.
Besides, Ramsey burned my courier when he used him to bring me that first pitch trying to get me to join him.
I pull my jacket tighter and walk faster and tell my wolf to settle down. She ignores me completely, which is more proof I’m so fucked.
At the corner of Ardent and Voss—not Lena Voss, just a coincidence of street naming that I notice and immediately wish I hadn’t—a wolf I vaguely recognize from one of the patrol rotations passes me on the sidewalk. Asis, I think his name is.
We nod. He starts to walk past. Then he stops.
Cringing, I look back.
He’s backed up three steps without seeming to realize he’s done it. His eyes are slightly wide. The particular expression of a wolf whose instincts have just told him something his brain is still catching up to. That he’s just encountered a predator where he didn’t expect one.
Merda. My dominance.
I’ve always had it—less than an alpha but more than any normal wolf should have.
The kind of dominance that invites either challenge or submission, though you never know which you’ll get until it’s too late to avoid either one.
It’s actually the reason I started taking the Null.
If Vincenzo or Franco had ever sensed it on me, they would have immediately treated me like a threat.
So would a thousand others in this town.
So, I hid it.
For years.
“Sorry,” I say to Asis, already backing away. “That time of the month. My wolf gets cranky.”
He just stares at me, unconvinced, before hurrying away.
I turn back toward The Pharmacy and force myself to just breathe. I have time. The Null is still wearing off gradually. I’m not unraveling. I’m just… louder than usual. I can manage loud.
My wolf makes a sound that is not agreement.
The window displays are full of gauze bandages and turmeric supplements, which have always struck me as the most aggressively generic cover for a black-market hex supplier in the history of bad decisions.
The kind of cover-up that screams nothing interesting happens here so loudly that anyone paying attention knows immediately that interesting things do, in fact, happen here.
I have no idea how it hasn’t been found out already, but that’s in my favor, I guess.
The door is open.
Not unlocked. Open.
Shit. Spoke too soon.
My hand goes to the knife at my hip before my brain has finished processing the possibilities. The wolf in me is already reading the air—copper and chemical and something underneath both of those that I don’t want to name yet because naming it changes what the next ten minutes look like.
I push the door open with two fingers and step inside.
The shop is destroyed.
Not ransacked—ransacked implies someone looking for something specific and willing to make a mess to find it.
This is different. This is methodical. Every shelf cleared.
Every container opened and emptied or smashed where it stood.
The glass cases along the back wall shattered inward. Drawers pulled out and upended.
Slowly, I make my way toward the counter at the back. Broken glass crunches under my feet, and I know the small bit of hope I’m harboring that I’ll find a bottle of Null intact is na?ve and useless. There’s not a vial or container in this place that hasn’t been taken or destroyed.
I stop in front of the old cash register, scanning for some clue about where I can find what I need.
But whatever records existed—files, ledgers, anything electronic like a tablet or laptop—gone.
And behind the counter, half hidden by the fallen shelving unit, is what I dreaded I’d find before I walked through the door.
According to my sources, the wolf who ran this shop was named Petyr.
He was sixty-three, non-violent, and had been quietly supplying hex materials to anyone who could pay and keep their mouth shut for the better part of fifteen years.
He was not a hex witch himself. He was just a middleman with good contacts and better discretion.
Mostly, he sold love potions (which weren’t actually real) and healing salves.
And the occasional Null if you knew how to ask.
He didn’t deserve this.
I crouch beside him and check for a pulse I already know isn’t there, and then I stand back up and look at the destruction around me and breathe through the cold fury that comes from seeing someone killed for the crime of being useful to the wrong person.
Or the right person, depending on how you looked at it.
Ramsey didn’t just steal my Null. He cut off the supply.
“Well,” says a familiar voice from the doorway behind me. “This is not great.”
I whirl, panic leaving me breathless. “Crow.”
“Mia.” His boots crunch over broken glass until he stops in the middle of the room. “I’m going to need you to explain what you’re doing here.”
I cross my arms. “I’m going to need you to explain the same thing."
“I asked first.”
“I got here first.”
He pins me with a look that says I’m not getting out of this. “Yeah, that’s my second question. How the hell did you manage that?”
I smirk. “Guess my instincts are still better than yours.”
He shakes his head and comes further into the shop, stepping over debris. He crouches beside Petyr the way I did, respectful, thorough, not touching anything he doesn’t need to. Then he stands and looks at me.
“Any leads on who might have done this?” he asks.
“I’ll give you one guess.”
He straightens, eyeing me shrewdly. “You’re thinking Ramsey. How do you know?”
“Who else would it be?” I ask.
He looks like he wants to answer that very question or at least challenge my logic.
Instead, he pulls out his phone and photographs the room in a systematic sweep: walls, floor, counter, shelving.
“According to my source, Petyr received a shipment last month that he had to sign for. Return address was Blue Ridge, Virginia.”
“Hex territory,” I say.
He nods. “I’d hoped to track the goods back to a witch we could proposition for help.” He lowers the phone. “Why were you running the same lead?”
I look at the destroyed shelving. The emptied containers. The deliberate absence of anything that might tell us who Petyr was connected to or where those connections led. “To find a hex witch,” I say. “Same as you.”
Crow looks at me. He has the particular quality of stillness he gets when he’s already put something together but isn’t ready to reveal what he knows. It’s a look he’s used in interrogation when he’s baiting someone into outing their own lies. “For the ward investigation?”
I sigh. “Among other things.”
He keeps looking at me.
“What?”
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
I scowl.
If it were Dutch or Razor or literally anyone else, I would have lied my way straight out of this mess. But it’s Crow. Not only can he tell when I’m lying (one of the few who can), but he’s one of the only people in my life who won’t judge me for the truth.
“I’ve been taking Null,” I say quietly.
His eyes widen fractionally. It’s the only response he gives, but for Crow, that’s enough. “Since when?” he finally asks.
“I don’t know. A few years.”
“Years?” he repeats incredulously. Then he sighs. “Is this about your wolf?” he asks.
His tone is soft. Understanding. It only makes me feel worse.
“Partly,” I say because Crow was one of the first to notice how dominant she was. We were thirteen. Playing in Dutch’s pool. Razor dunked me from behind, thinking it was hysterical. I’d been so pissed to get my hair wet that I’d nearly drowned him. I might have been a tad overreactive.
After that, I was careful about my temper. Not that it mattered. My wolf only grew stronger as I got older. Until the only thing that hid her true strength was Null.
“You know it’s not dangerous for you anymore, right?” Crow asks. And I know he’s referring to Grey and Lexi as our new alphas. Neither of them would be threatened by my wolf.
“It’s not the only reason I was taking it,” I say.
“What’s—” His confusion morphs to realization. “You don’t want to find your mate.”
“Can you blame me?”
His brow furrows. “Mia, this pack has changed. You aren’t going to be threatened or targeted or—”
“I’m being targeted right now,” I hiss sharply, my composure slipping.
His brows knit in confusion.
I blow out a breath. “When Ramsey found us in the woods, he stole my Null from my pack. That’s why I was here, looking for more.”
“Why would he do that? And how did he know you were taking it?”
“I don’t know. On both counts.”
“Did you tell him you were—”