Chapter 30 Ripped Away #2
I was perched on the edge of a chair that Aiden had carefully set upright, my fingers tracing the worn wood as if seeking comfort in its familiar grooves.
The room around me felt heavy, each shadow a reminder of Ethan’s last breath, each creak of the floorboards echoing with unspoken grief.
My heart thudded dully in my chest, a relentless drumbeat of loss and fear that wrapped around me like a suffocating fog, making it hard to breathe.
I stared blankly at the chaos surrounding me, struggling to process the reality of what had just transpired.
I stood and moved into the living room, wiping my face with the back of my hand, and reached for my phone. My fingers hovered over contacts, then landed on the name I didn’t want to call.
But I knew he was able to help me.
Even if his help had a cost.
Ulysses answered on the first ring.
“Josie. I was beginning to wonder if you’d fallen off the face of the earth,” he said smoothly.
The way he said my name made it sound as if he’d been perched behind the line for hours, waiting for me to crack, waiting for my desperation to force my hand.
I hated giving him the satisfaction. But I hated the alternative even more.
“Ulysses,” I breathed, the weight of his name hanging in the air like a dark cloud.
There was a pause, long enough for me to hear the faint clink of glass on his end, “Perhaps you’d like to explain why you’ve missed several nights at the club. That wasn’t the deal we had.”
I gritted my teeth. “This isn’t about work…”
“Everything is about work, Josie,” he interrupted, his tone cool, almost amused. “I’d hate for you to find yourself… unemployed. Such a shame, especially when your circumstances are already so precarious.”
My grip on the phone tightened until my knuckles ached.
“They took Mateo.” The words crashed from my lips, hoarse and raw. I clenched my fist around the phone until the casing creaked in warning, willing him to feel the magnitude of my terror. “And I think you know more about Project Moonlight than you’ve admitted.”
There was a stifled chuckle, the kind that could have been mistaken for a cough, on the other end. He didn’t deny it. Didn’t bother with the polite fiction that this was all news to him. The silence between us stretched, taut as a strangling cord.
Ulysses was somewhere comfortable while my world was collapsing in real time.
“That’s a very… pointed accusation, Josie.” He spoke slowly, as if savoring each syllable. “Are you sure your emotions aren’t clouding your judgment?”
“My judgment is fine,” I snapped.
A beat of silence. I could almost see him weighing the risks, calculating the precise amount of candor to give me without ceding any ground.
“Perhaps I do. Perhaps I don’t. But it sounds like we have much to discuss… in person. Tonight.” Ulysses said. “Josie. Listen to me.” His voice dropped, grave and urgent.
I recognized it, the voice that once convinced me I could trust him. “If the entities behind Project Moonlight have escalated to open abduction, then events have accelerated beyond anyone’s control. Even mine.”
“Stop with the riddles. Tell me who has him.” He was quiet for a moment.
“You still don’t understand what Mateo is, do you?” he murmured. “There are factions at play… wolves, witches, and others… each with their own agendas. But there’s something deeper. Something older.”
My knees buckled, and I sank onto the torn-up couch, staring at the jagged remnants of a once-whole coffee mug glinting at my feet. “What have you done, Ulysses?”
He exhaled, exasperated, as if I were a child failing to grasp a simple equation. “Not I, Josie. The world itself is correcting an imbalance. Your son is a… fulcrum, pivot, whatever you want to call it. And every supernatural in the city… damn, in the world, feels the tremor he caused.”
I pressed the heel of my palm to my forehead, fighting the urge to scream. “You’re speaking in circles. I need real answers, not your cryptic bullshit. Where is Mateo? Who took him?”
Again, that infuriating, deliberate quiet.
Then, he said, “You’re not wrong. But you’re not ready for the whole truth… not yet.”
“Try me.”
He sighed. “Meet me tonight. Bring…”
“I’m not in the city,” I interrupted him.
“I know where you are, Josie,” he said cryptically. “I’ll meet you tonight. Bring your wolf. And be ready to hear things you won’t like.”
Then the line went dead.
Aiden’s voice cut through the tension, each clipped command ringing out with urgency as he finished calling his pack. “Backup’s on the way,” he announced, his eyes locked onto mine, a piercing intensity that grounded me amidst the chaos. “What now?”
“Ulysses is on his way,” I replied, my heart racing at the thought of his impending arrival.
Aiden’s expression twisted with disdain, his jaw clenching so tightly that I feared it might crack.
The tension in his posture spoke volumes; every taut muscle was a silent protest against the very idea of Ulysses.
I could almost see the memories of their past confrontations flickering behind his gaze, each one a reminder of the animosity that simmered just beneath the surface.
I understood then that this was more than just a disagreement; it was a rift of distrust that stretched between Aiden and Ulysses, forged by history and betrayal.
A silence stretched between us, heavy with unspoken turmoil. The walls inched closer, the shadows crept forward. I could almost hear the unasked questions hanging between us: “Why?” “Why did you call him?” “Why do you trust him?”
I took a deep breath.
“We can’t just wait here,” I continued, the words tumbling out in a rush. “Every second we stand still makes me feel more powerless. We need to go to my grandparents’ house. There might be something there… something that can help us.”
Aiden’s jaw remained tight, the muscle twitching as he wrestled with his frustration over my decision to involve Ulysses. Yet, after a moment’s hesitation, he gave a curt nod. The tension in his shoulders eased slightly, revealing a flicker of trust beneath the anger.
We drove along the weathered highway in silence, the mid-afternoon sun casting a relentless glare through the windshield.
My thoughts raced; they kept looping on the memory of Mateo’s bedroom walls, and then Ethan’s face in the kitchen.
They replayed like a film strip with no sound, just the visceral knowledge that I was already too late.
Aiden drove with both hands on the wheel, knuckles white and rigid.
If I didn’t think about the immediate terror, I might have found comfort in the little ways he tried to anchor me: his hand brushing the back of mine on the center console, a thumb tracing small circles against my skin.
Every so often, he glanced over at me, a quick calculation of my state, then back to the road with a renewed intensity.
When we turned onto the old county road and the farmhouse came into view, I felt the first real tremor of dread. The place hadn’t changed since I was a kid: same weather-beaten roof, same half-collapsed barn leaning into the wind.
When I saw the place, it was the knowledge that it might be hiding the piece of my family I’d never wanted to see that choked me.
We parked in the gravel drive. The house greeted us with the usual hush. Aiden scanned the perimeter, his nostrils flaring as he caught the scents that still lingered. I felt a shiver crawl over my skin.
“We’re clear,” he said softly, but his stance was rigid, eyes always moving.
Inside, the air was stale with dust and ancient sunlight. The afternoon light filtered through yellowed curtains, casting the space in a perpetual gloom. The floorboards creaked underfoot, the kind of creak that felt almost alive.
I walked to the mantle and slid my fingers along the row of knick-knacks: old Polaroids, a chipped trophy from my mother’s track days, a wooden figure painted in the likeness of St. Francis.
I tried to steady my breathing, but every object felt like it was whispering about things I didn’t want to remember.
Aiden moved through the rooms with a quiet efficiency, checking windows and doors, pausing every so often to listen.
I drifted to the kitchen, to the sunlit corner where my grandmother’s canning jars used to line the counter.
There was still a faint aura of her: cinnamon, vanilla, and something herbal and sharp.
I let it wrap around me for a second before pushing on to the narrow hallway that led to my grandfather’s study.
The study was the only room that had ever truly belonged to him.
The air hung heavy with the scent of old books and cedar shavings.
I ran my hand over the surface of the desk, fingers catching on the scratches and ink stains.
The desk was locked, but I remembered where he kept the spare key: taped behind the third drawer.
It was still there, waiting. With a rusty squeak, the lock gave way.
I opened the drawer and found layers of yellowed paper: bills, newspaper clippings, a tangle of rubber bands brittle with age.
Aiden had gone quiet behind me, but I could feel the way he kept just out of my line of sight to give me space. I leafed through the papers, searching for any sign that the answers were here and not just a product of my sleep-deprived paranoia.
Near the bottom, under a stack of receipts, I found a letter addressed to my grandfather in a handwriting I didn’t recognize.
The return address was a P.O. Box in some upstate town I’d never heard of.
Inside was a single sheet, typewritten, with no signature.
The language was bureaucratic and clinical, but the message was clear: my grandfather was involved in something classified that required absolute secrecy.
I scanned the page. My pulse pounded in my ears. At the bottom, a line that made my skin crawl.
“Protect the line at any cost. The future depends on stability.”
I turned to Aiden, who had moved to the built-in bookcase in the corner. He ran his finger along the shelf, then stopped and tapped gently on the wood.
“Hollow, right here,” he said.
He shifted a few battered science textbooks and pressed his palm against the back panel. With a subtle click, the panel slid open to reveal a narrow, hidden compartment. Inside, wrapped in a sheet of paper, was a stack of photographs.
I hesitated before taking them. The paper was dry and brittle.
The first photograph was black and white, my grandfather in a lab coat, standing shoulder to shoulder with a group of men and women in similar coats.
Most wore badges, some held clipboards. Their faces were sharp, serious, almost hungry.
The background was all blank walls and harsh lighting, and not a single window in sight.
I flipped to the next photo: my grandmother, much younger, her hair pulled back in a severe bun, sitting at a steel table beside a bank of machines. She was flanked by two men, both wearing surgical masks. One of them had his hand on her shoulder, like he was guiding her through something.
I kept flipping. Every image was another punch in the ribs.
My family, always in the periphery of these groups, always surrounded by strangers whose eyes seemed to follow me even now.
The last photo was in color, faded to reddish-brown.
It showed the farmhouse, this house, its front yard swarming with people in coveralls and gloves.
And in the foreground, half-hidden by shadow, was a child.
Blond hair, blue eyes, maybe five or six.
The face was smeared with dirt, but the expression was unmistakable: terror, raw and unfiltered.
I dropped the stack on the desk and pressed my palms to my eyes. Suddenly, Project Moonlight didn’t just feel like a nightmare from someone else’s past; it was tangled in my family’s blood.
I tried to breathe, but all I could taste was dust and the bitter tang of old secrets. Aiden came up beside me, hand resting lightly on my back.
“Josie,” he said quietly, “what is it?”
I shook my head, but the images wouldn’t leave. “They weren’t just farmers. They were part of it. The experiments, the genetics… Project Moonlight.”
He nodded. “It’s all connected. Whatever was started here never stopped.”
I wanted to scream. Instead, I found myself staring at the little girl in the final photo, wondering if she had ever escaped or if the cycle just kept repeating, each generation another test subject for whatever the hell this program was trying to achieve.
The room felt smaller. My chest ached with the sudden certainty that whatever had been started back then hadn’t ended, and now, Mateo was tangled in it.
We boxed up everything that looked suspicious: the photos, the letter, even a few of my grandfather’s old notebooks.
I found a flash drive taped inside one of the books, the casing marked with a strip of ancient masking tape and the word “MOONLIGHT.” I didn’t trust myself to look at it yet, but I slid it into my pocket.
“We need to go,” I said, my voice raw. “We have to find Mateo.”
Aiden led the way, but as we stepped into the hall, I caught a glimpse of myself in the cracked mirror by the entryway.
I didn’t recognize the woman looking back: eyes wild, hair stuck to her face with sweat, clothes stained with Ethan’s blood.
I looked haunted, like someone who’d stepped out of a nightmare and couldn’t quite shake the horror.
“You ready?” Aiden asked softly.
I nodded, unable to tear my eyes from my reflection. “As I’ll ever be.”
We drove back in silence, the box of evidence between us like a ticking bomb.
The sun was sinking low, painting the fields in shades of amber and gold.
It should have been beautiful, but all I could see was time slipping away; every minute that passed was another minute Mateo was gone, another minute he might be scared, or hurt, or worse.
By the time we pulled back into Emily’s driveway, the first stars were appearing in the darkening sky.
The farmhouse looked different now: windows glowing with warm light, the porch swept clean of the earlier chaos.
And parked beside it was a sleek black Bentley that didn’t belong in rural Oakville.
“Ulysses,” I whispered, a knot of dread tightening in my stomach.
Aiden’s fingers brushed against mine, warm and reassuring for just a moment before he released me. “I’ll be right beside you,” he said, his voice steady, grounding me.
I glanced at him, finding strength in his unwavering gaze. Together, we approached the house, the air thick with anticipation, bracing ourselves for the storm that Ulysses was sure to unleash.