But I couldn’t keep it from him. He deserved to know that his son was alive. Even if the knowledge came wrapped in cruelty.
I pulled out my phone and made the calls.
Cole arrived first, followed closely by Hunt, then Ryder and Sawyer. Lina had seen the looks on our faces and immediately taken the kids to Sarah’s house without asking questions, a small army of guards following close behind her. She knew something was wrong. She trusted me to handle it.
I set the box on the coffee table and stepped back.
Cole stared at it for a long, terrible moment. His face was blank, carefully controlled, the expression of a man who had learned to expect the worst but still hoped for better.
He reached in and pulled out the pacifier.
The sound that came out of him was barely human.
He dropped to his knees on my living room floor, clutching the tiny piece of plastic to his chest like it was the most precious thing in the world. Sobs tore through him, raw and broken, his whole body shaking with a grief too big to contain.
“My boy,” he choked out between gasps. “My baby boy. She has my baby boy.”
I wanted to look away. I couldn’t. I stood there and watched my friend, my beta, one of the strongest men I had ever known, fall completely apart. Tears streamed down his face as he rocked back and forth, keening with a pain that made my own eyes burn and my chest ache.
Ryder’s jaw was clenched tight, his eyes bright with suppressed emotion. Sawyer had turned away, his hand pressed over his mouth. Hunt stood frozen, his fists shaking at his sides. Noah just looked sad.
Someone had done this. Someone had taken a child from his father, had used that innocent baby as a weapon, had sent back a piece of him just to twist the knife deeper. Mary. This was Mary’s work. Mary and Mira and whoever else was helping them orchestrate this campaign of terror.
They were going to fucking pay.
“Hunt!” I roared, my voice echoing off the walls. “With me!”
I was already moving, already shifting, my clothes shredding as my body transformed mid stride. The change ripped through me faster than it ever had before, fueled by rage and protective instinct. Bones cracked and reformed. Fur sprouted across my skin. My hands became paws, my face elongated into a muzzle, and then I was running on four legs, a massive black wolf tearing through the front door.
I sprinted toward the tree line where the photograph had been taken, my paws eating up the ground, my lungs burning with exertion and fury. Hunt and two other enforcers followed, their wolves keeping pace behind me. We tore through the underbrush, noses to the ground, desperate for a scent.
The forest blurred around me. Trees, rocks, fallen logs, all of it streaming past in a rush of greens and browns. My wolf was fully in control now, driving us forward with single-minded determination. Find. Track. Hunt. Kill.
We found the spot.
The grass was matted down where someone had stood, the earth compressed by the weight of a body holding still for an extended period. Boot prints marked the soft soil, clear indentations that told me our enemy had been here for a while. Watching. Waiting. Taking their time to compose the perfect photograph.
I inhaled deeply, expecting the scent of Mary or a rogue or anyone we could track.
Instead, the air smelled like chemicals. Harsh and burning, searing my nostrils, making my eyes water. Bleach. Industrialgrade bleach, poured all over the ground in massive quantities. The liquid had soaked into the earth, yellowing the grass, killing everything it touched, destroying any trace of scent.
They had cleaned up after themselves. They had anticipated our response and neutralized our greatest advantage. They knew how we hunted.
It wasn’t just a cleanup. It was a message.
We know how you hunt. We are smarter than you. We will always be one step ahead.
I snapped my jaws at the chemical soaked air, fury and frustration boiling over. A howl ripped from my throat, long and loud and full of rage, echoing through the forest until the birds went silent and even the insects stopped their buzzing.
Hunt shifted beside me, his own frustration evident in every line of his human body.
“They planned this,” he said grimly. “Every step. The human courier. The untraceable chain. The bleach. They knew exactly what we would do and how to counter it.”
I shifted back to human form, ignoring the cold air on my bare skin. One of the enforcers tossed me a pair of spare pants from an emergency cache we kept hidden in a hollow tree.
“Get Ryder,” I ordered, pulling on the pants. “Tell him to bring his best trackers. We’re going to the gas station.”
The enforcer nodded and took off running.
