My blood ran cold.
“I just... I just had the delivery!” the kid squeaked, his voice cracking on every syllable. He lifted his hands in surrender, nearly losing his balance on the bicycle. “I didn’t do anything wrong! I swear to god, man, I just deliver stuff!”
I grabbed the handlebars of his bicycle, steadying it but also preventing him from fleeing. I leaned in close, letting just a hint of my alpha authority bleed into my voice.
“Who gave this to you?”
“A lady!” the kid stammered. “She was waiting by the gas station on the main road, like three miles from here. She gave me fifty bucks to ride it up here. Said it was a surprise gift for a baby shower or something. I didn’t ask questions, okay? Fifty bucks is fifty bucks.”
I released the handlebars and scanned the tree line beyond our property. The gas station was outside our patrol range. Too far for us to catch someone making a quick drop, especially if they knew our routes.
The enemy wasn’t attacking head on. They weren’t sending wolves to fight wolves. They were outsourcing. Using innocent humans as unwitting pawns to bypass our senses. We couldn’t scent a threat if the threat was using human delivery boys who had no idea what they were carrying.
Clever. Calculated. Infuriatingly smart.
And absolutely fucking terrifying.
“Let him go,” I told the guards. “He doesn’t know anything.”
The teenager pedaled away so fast his rusty bicycle nearly tipped over, disappearing down the road without a single backward glance. I didn’t blame him.
I turned to the box.
Noah and I carried it to the front steps, far from the house where Lina and the kids were. The guards formed a protective perimeter, their eyes scanning the trees, their bodies coiled and ready for an attack that might come from any direction.
I opened the box.
Inside was a single object, nestled in a bed of tissue paper. A pacifier. Blue plastic, well-worn from use, the silicone nipple slightly flattened and clouded from being chewed on for months.
I picked it up with hands that weren’t quite steady.
There were initials scratched into the handle. Small, crude letters, probably carved with a key or a pocket knife.
T.B.
Thomas Barrett.
Cole’s son.
I went pale. Beside me, Noah made a sound like he had been punched in the stomach.
Underneath the pacifier was a photograph. I pulled it out, already knowing I wasn’t going to like what I saw.
It was a picture of the Pack House. Our home. The building where we lived, where our children slept, where we had dinner together as a family. The photograph was taken from the tree line at the edge of the property, a clear angle with a direct line of sight to our front door.
In the corner of the image, a date had been stamped in white text.
Yesterday’s date.
They had been here. Right here. Close enough to photograph our home. Close enough to count our guards and map our routines and learn our weaknesses.
The message was clear. We know where you live. We can get to you whenever we want. Your walls mean nothing.
“Shit,” Noah whispered.
I stared at the photograph, my mind racing through implications and countermeasures and escape routes. But beneath all the tactical thinking, one thought dominated: I had to tell Cole.
I didn’t want to. The man had been searching for his son for months, following leads that went nowhere, burning himself out with desperate hope. This would break him. This would absolutely shatter him into pieces.
