54. Annabella
Chapter fifty-four
Annabella
Ismelled it before I saw it.
Six hours of white-knuckle driving from Quebec, crammed into vehicles that reeked of blood and fear and the residual ozone of spent magic, and the first thing Three Rivers gave us was the smell.
Wolfsbane and char, rolling down the valley in a wave so thick my wolf flinched, and my eyes started streaming before we’d even cleared the last ridge.
My mother was in there. Ellie was in there.
The convoy crested the rise, and the town opened up below us, and everything I knew about the world rearranged itself.
No patrols on the perimeter. No guard rotations visible in the tree-line.
No hum of Pack life beneath the surface—that low, constant vibration that any wolf could feel when a territory was alive and defended.
Three Rivers was holding its breath, and the silence where that heartbeat should have been was the loudest thing I’d ever heard.
My wolf didn’t pace. She locked down, ears swiveled forward, every muscle frozen, weight dropped low, while light flickered beneath my skin in unsteady pulses I couldn’t control.
The damage built in layers as our convoy crawled through town.
Vehicles abandoned at wrong angles, doors hanging open.
A set of keys still dangling from one ignition, catching the thin afternoon light.
People ripped out of their lives mid-motion, mid-step, mid-thought.
We had to weave around a pickup truck left sideways across the road, its driver’s door flung wide like whoever had been inside hadn’t even had time to turn off the engine.
Burn patterns scored the buildings we passed. Firebombs thrown through windows. Then the Bottley came into view and I stopped breathing.
The front windows were smashed in. Chairs and tables had been hurled through from inside, scattered across the sidewalk in a mess of splintered wood and broken glass.
The door hung off one hinge. Scorch marks licked up the exterior wall, and through the gaping window frames I could see the bar itself—cracked, blackened, bottles shattered across the floor in pools of alcohol.
The SUV stopped, and I was out before the vehicle finished rolling, legs stiff from six hours of sitting. The wolfsbane-thick air hit my lungs full force, and I coughed hard enough to double over. The concentration out here was ten times what had seeped through the windows.
Sam was out a half-second behind me. Close enough that his scent cut through the wolfsbane; wood smoke and lime, laced with the copper tang of a cut on his face that hadn’t fully closed.
Through the bond, I felt his wolf slam against its restraints.
The same terrible recognition I was having, reflected back at me through our connection.
His brothers were somewhere here, too. Derek. Ryan. Mai and the twins.
Doors opened behind us. Boots on glass and gravel. Gideon’s low curse as the full weight of the air hit him.
Behind me, Mina’s voice came sharp and furious. “I can’t launch the drones. Jamming…active jamming across the whole area, targeted frequencies.”
“Can you trace where it’s coming from?” I asked without turning.
“Already working on it. Give me ten minutes.”
Then the wind shifted direction and the full scope of it hit.
Burned flesh, that sweet-rot stench that crawls down your throat and nests there.
Blood, enormous amounts of it, soaked into earth and shattered wood and broken glass.
And wolfsbane threading through everything, so concentrated my wolf tried to retreat and my senses screamed in alarm at the same time.
Ellie.
My sister’s face flashed behind my eyes. She was somewhere in this devastation because I’d sent her here. Because I’d thought Three Rivers was safe.
My magic surged harder, straining outward like it wanted to burn a path through the wreckage straight to them.
Sam caught my hand. “We’ll find them.” His voice was low, rough. I felt his own terror mirroring mine. “We’ll find all of them.”
I wanted to run. Every instinct I had screamed to tear through the ruins until I found Ellie’s heartbeat, my mother’s shallow breathing. Anything.
But running blind into situations never saved anyone.
I pulled my hand free. Stepped forward. Past Sam. Past Gideon, who had one hand on the vehicle where Webster sat bound and gagged. Past Jem and Esme. Past everyone.
“We split into teams,” I said. “Priorities: secure this position, get comms up, find survivors. In that order. Nobody goes chasing ghosts through the smoke until we know what we’re dealing with.”
I pointed at Gideon. “Clear the buildings in our immediate vicinity. I want to know nobody’s sitting in a window with a rifle waiting for us to spread out.”
Gideon’s jaw worked, but he nodded.
“Mina, that jamming is priority. If Derek and Ryan are alive in there, they’re trying to reach us and can’t. Break through it, get the drones up, find me anyone on comms.”
“On it.” She was already moving toward a better vantage point, boots crunching through glass.
“Esme.” I turned to the blonde witch. She’d been swaying since the valley opened up below us, her eyes unfocused in that way that meant she was seeing something the rest of us couldn’t. “Can you sense anyone alive? Anyone trapped?”
She pressed both hands against her temples.
When she spoke, her voice had that eerie dual quality—half dreamy, half razor-sharp.
“So much hurt. Dark and loud, like thunderstorms stacked on thunderstorms.” She shuddered.
Then her eyes cleared slightly. “But life. Yes. Firefly-sparks, scattered through the buildings. Some barely flickering.”
“Then you’re our compass. You and Jem move through town; you point, the rescue teams follow. Jem, she overextends herself, you pull her back. I don’t care if she argues.”
Jem’s hand was already on Esme’s shoulder. “She always argues.” But his voice was gentle, and the look he gave her said he’d carry her out bodily if it came to it.
“Zeke, find the most intact building near here and set up triage. Anything you need, take it. As survivors come in, you assess and stabilize.”
“On it.” Zeke was already scanning the street, that steady medic’s calm settling over him.
“Anyone not injured comes in, Shifters go where we need brute strength—collapsed structures, heavy debris. Anyone with medical training goes to triage, stabilization, assessment.” I scanned the group. “Move.”
People moved.
That left me and Sam.
I didn’t assign us. Didn’t need to. We both knew where we were going: deeper into the damage, ahead of the rescue teams, where the smoke was thickest, and the unknowns were worst. We were the tip of the spear. Everyone else would follow the path we cleared.
We moved deeper into town, as the smoke thickened from haze into something you had to push through, acrid and clinging.
Then we heard it, faint, through the gray. Movement. Stumbling.
A shape appeared out of the smoke. Small. Moving wrong.
A boy. Twelve, maybe thirteen. Ginger hair matted dark with ash and sweat, freckles standing out against skin that had gone the color of old paper.
He had one hand pressed against his side, with crimson seeping between his shaking fingers.
His clothes were blackened, one sleeve burned away to the shoulder.
Soot smeared across his face in crawling patterns.
He’d been low to the ground. Hiding. Running. Maybe both.
He froze when he saw us. I watched his nostrils flare. Shifter, trying to sort friend from threat through air so poisoned his senses must have been screaming.
His eyes went to Sam first.
Recognition hit him in stages. I watched it happen: the confusion, then the sorting, then the connection landing. This kid had grown up in Three Rivers. He knew the Shaw brothers. To him, Sam wasn’t a Council member. He was Ryan’s brother. Derek’s twin. Pack.
The boy’s shoulders dropped. The rigid terror in his face softened into something raw and desperate that looked too much like hope for a kid that young.
I crouched in front of the boy, keeping my voice low and even. “You’re safe. Can you tell me your name?”
“Mitch.” His voice splintered. “They—They came so fast. We didn’t—”
“I know.” I kept my hands visible, open. Didn’t reach for him. “You did good, Mitch. You got out. You stayed alive. That’s what matters right now.”
His eyes were too wide. Too young for what lived behind them now.
“My mom,” he whispered. “She told me to run. She was fighting them, and she told me to run and I—”
“We’ll find her, but I need to get you patched up first. Can you do that?”
He nodded. Shaky, but real.
Zeke appeared at my shoulder, already reaching with careful, steady hands. “I’ve got him. Come on, kid.”
Mitch let himself be guided away. But he looked back once—at me. Not Sam, me, like he was fixing my face in his memories.
I straightened. The smoke curled and eddied around us, thick and bitter and endless.
Kane wanted us afraid.
The thought surfaced and I held it there, turned it over, tried to make it into something I could use. Kane had done this to paralyze us. To demonstrate his reach and cruelty.
And it was working. Because the truth was I was afraid.
Ellie was here somewhere. I didn’t know if my mother’s body was able to process the wolfsbane in the air. Sofia and Jase, who had just gotten Aunt Jo and Uncle Fred back. The twins—spirits, Ryan and Mai’s twins were so small.
The smoke kept curling. Somewhere deeper in town, a child was crying. High, thin, exhausted sobs that had been going on too long. Voices called out names I didn’t recognize, names that might never get answered.
And we still didn’t know.
“Sam.” My voice came out scraped raw. “What if—?”
“Don’t.” His jaw was set. “Don’t say it. It’s gonna be okay. It has to be.”
We kept walking. Deeper into the ruins. One step at a time toward answers I wasn’t sure I’d survive hearing.
Please. By every dark moon and howling night, please be alive.