Chapter 32 Sable
SABLE
“Wait,” I said, squeezing Rhys’s hand and whispered, “don’t attack.”
“Sable?” Eve’s voice drifted from the shadows ahead.
I stepped forward, dragging Rhys with me. “We’re here,” I called softly.
Two figures emerged from the darkness—Eve in her oracle dress, Astrid beside her with that focused expression she wore when maintaining complex magic.
Rhys went absolutely still. Shock hit first—then calculation, the swift assessment of a beta realizing pack members were deep in enemy territory where they didn’t belong.
“What the hell are they doing here?” He kept his voice low.
“There are shifters in transit here,” Eve said to him. “We followed the Crux scent. There was no way to communicate with you when we found the tunnels. This place is completely cut off from the world above. That’s why we came to the assembly hall to get you.”
Rhys looked between the three of us, his golden eyes taking in details he’d probably been unconsciously noting for weeks—the way Eve and I moved with similar grace, the scent markers that connected us, the pack dynamics that were so different from Orion hierarchy.
“So I already know that Eve and you are Crux,” he said slowly. His gaze shifted to Astrid, whose arms were crossed and her eyebrow raised. “Is the pup Crux too?”
“The pup?” Astrid’s indignation flared through the bond, but she held her tongue and nodded.
“Fuck,” Rhys muttered, dragging a hand through his hair. “You girls are everywhere.”
“We can intercept the transport,” I said, taking Rhys by the arm and leading him forward. “We just have to find them in a glamoured underground ecosystem designed to throw off supernatural senses.”
“You two head south,” Eve said. “Astrid and I will take the north tunnels. These walls may have magic in them, but that won’t be enough to stop the Crux bond.”
Eve put her hand on Astrid’s back. Astrid started to walk away with her, but looked back at me. “Nice to finally save Crux with you, Mama Sabe.”
“You just take care of yourself out there.” I sighed. There was no protecting her anymore. She was holding her own.
The corridors of the underground transport system stretched endlessly ahead.
My vampire nature worked automatically—seventeen exit points between here and the main staircase, heartbeats still pulsing in the assembly hall above us.
The tang of old blood had seeped into these stones over centuries of supernatural politics.
Underneath that scent, something else curled through the recycled air, and my wolf recoiled. A heavy musk hung in the air, though we hadn’t seen a soul since leaving the assembly hall.
My steps faltered as the Crux bond hit me, all thoughts of the acrid scent disappearing. Rhys’s wolf caught the shift in my body chemistry—the spike of adrenaline, the involuntary tension of recognizing predators in your territory.
“Sable,” he whispered. “I’ve got nothing. What do you sense?”
The Crux bond pulsed in my consciousness. Eve was urgent, broadcasting images that made my hybrid nature snarl: dozens of supernatural beings in cells, guards moving with military precision, the scent of terror so thick it was almost visible.
“Eve senses the captured shifters—she’s sharing her vision,” I said, voice strained. “Dozens of supernatural beings. Being prepared for auction.”
The pieces were finally coming together.
The Council’s emergency session called with such precise timing when Rhys was gone.
The trafficking operation Eve sensed when we left Orion territory.
The way every political maneuver tonight had felt choreographed, designed to keep the alphas distracted while something else unfolded in the shadows.
“Where?” Rhys hissed.
“Somewhere south of here.” I closed my eyes, letting Eve’s oracle visions flow through our bond. The images came in flashes—cramped cells, injured prisoners, the systematic organization of beings sorted by species and potential value. “This isn’t random trafficking, Rhys.”
Rhys went absolutely still beside me, his wolf’s attention sharpening until it was laser-focused. His protective instincts flared—not just for me, but for everyone who mattered to me. Only because they mattered to me.
My enhanced senses reached deeper into the tunnel systems, parsing scent signatures with the precision my mother drilled into me during those early years when survival depended on knowing exactly who had passed through an area and when.
Pack wolves. Multiple families. Multiple families. Not rogues—these were scents from territories I’d mapped during years of Crux rescue operations.
“They’re the missing members from territories the Council absorbed,” I continued, each word feeling heavier than the last. “The Centaurus pack that was absorbed after refusing Cassiopeia hunting rights. The Lyra wolves who supposedly died in territorial disputes after their luna was lost. They weren’t killed. They were taken.”
Understanding flared in Rhys’s golden eyes—then fury, so fierce it made the air itself quiver with heat.
“Systematic extermination with a profit margin,” he whispered.
“Kill the powerful in staged ‘accidents,’ then sell the survivors to collectors who’ll pay premium prices for rare bloodlines.
Sick bastards.” His voice had a rough edge that meant his wolf was pushing at his control.
“How long do you think this has been going on?”
“Auctions have been going on since the dawn of time, despite the laws against it. But this new approach? Years. Maybe decades. Perhaps ever since Orion was cursed.” The scope of it made my stomach clench.
How many families had mourned loved ones who were actually caged somewhere, waiting to be sold?
How many territories had been carved up while survivors were sold to the highest bidder?
Through the Crux bond, another pulse of information came from Eve.
The prisoners weren’t just random supernatural beings—many carried the scent markers of oracle heritage.
Lost Crux wolves who’d been scattered across different territories, their abilities suppressed or exploited until they could be properly processed.
My people. The pack I’d spent my life protecting, caged and waiting to be divided among collectors who viewed their gifts as entertainment.
The Crux bond detonated in my consciousness without warning.
A torrent of sensory overload hit me with the force of a dam bursting. Every empathic ability I’d inherited through the Crux bloodline ignited simultaneously, turning my nervous system into a lightning rod for supernatural suffering.
Terror flooded through me, dozens of voices screaming in harmony through the bond. Emotions hit my hybrid nature: desperation that tasted of copper and salt, rage that burned through my veins, hopelessness from being reduced to a commodity.
“There are Crux wolves among them,” I said, silver magic beginning to crackle unconsciously around my fingers. “Where are they?” I hissed, my senses reaching out to find them but coming back empty. Too much feeling, not enough direction.
The mate bond flared as Rhys absorbed everything.
My knees buckled.
The ground rushed up to meet me. Rhys caught me before I hit the ground, his arms wrapping around my waist as my body convulsed with empathic feedback. His alarm spiked as my pulse became chaotic.
“Sable,” his voice was raw, “what’s happening?”
I couldn’t answer because the visions were coming, pouring through the Crux connection with surgical clarity.
A child’s cry echoing through stone corridors—too young to understand why his parents couldn’t reach him through a barrier of blessed silver.
Oracle wolves with their gifts suppressed by magical dampening collars, vacant with the emptiness that came from having their supernatural nature forcibly severed.
Feeding tubes and medical equipment. Either for keeping the prisoners in optimal condition or for conducting tests.
This was happening somewhere beneath our feet. I didn’t want to know.
“Sable.” Rhys’s hands framed my face as he forced me to focus on his golden eyes instead of the horrific images flooding through the bond. “Stay with me.”
Eve blazed through our connection, urgent and crystalline with oracle certainty.
She’d found the source, followed the signs of her vision to their physical location.
The visions sharpened, becoming geographical—specific corridors, exact distances, the precise route through underground tunnels that would lead us directly to the prisoners.
And underneath it all, I felt a presence I couldn’t immediately place, watching the proceedings with the detached interest of someone who viewed suffering as data points in a larger equation.
Someone who’d been orchestrating this operation for years while sitting in Council sessions, debating territorial boundaries and trade agreements. Someone who was about to discover the Crux wolves they’d tried to eliminate weren’t as scattered as they’d believed.
The empathic overload began to ebb, leaving me shaking in Rhys’s arms, but functional. He’d experienced fragments of what I’d seen, enough to understand the scope of what we were facing.
“What is it?” he whispered in my ear, and I mustered my energy.
The empathic storm receded, leaving me trembling in Rhys’s arms. Through the haze, his heartbeat steadied mine. We both knew what we’d seen—what we couldn’t unsee. Somewhere beneath our feet, my people were waiting in chains.
“Eve found them,” I breathed.