The sound was violent. Sudden. The kind of noise someone makes when they’ve been hit hard and unexpectedly.
Then the phone clattered to the floor. I could picture it, skittering across concrete or dirt, the screen cracking on impact. Muffled voices followed, too distant to make out clearly, overlapping with sounds of struggle.
“Hunt?” I said, my voice rising. “Hunt, what’s happening? Are you okay?”
Knox was fully upright now, his hand gripping my arm, his face a mask of controlled fury. We stared at the phone, helpless, listening to the sounds of a fight we couldn’t see.
“I’ll make you regret this,” a woman’s voice said, closer now to the phone. Mira. It had to be Mira. The voice was cold and cruel, dripping with satisfaction.
“I don’t want to hurt you, girl.” Hunt’s voice, defiant even in danger. I could hear the strain in it, the pain. He was injured. “But I will if-”
Another grunt. Heavier this time. The thick, meaty sound of a body hitting the ground.
“HUNT!” I screamed into the phone.
Silence.
Then footsteps. Someone walking toward the fallen phone. The scrape of it being picked up off the ground.
“Is this fucking thing on?” The woman’s voice was right there now, speaking directly into the microphone. Casual. Almost amused.
Rage flooded through me, hot and blinding. My hands were shaking, my whole body trembling with fury and fear. “If you touch a single hair on his fucking head, I swear to god-”
The woman snorted. “Too late for that.”
My heart stopped.
“Bye,” she continued, her voice light and mocking. “Enjoy what’s next, bitch.”
The line went dead.
For a long moment, neither of us moved. The silence in the panic room was deafening, broken only by our ragged breathing and the distant hum of the climate control system. The phone satbetween us, dark and silent, a useless piece of technology that had just delivered the worst news imaginable.
Hunt was down. Maybe dead. Mira had him. And whatever was coming next, she wanted us to know it was going to be bad.
Then we exploded into action.
Knox was already out of bed, yanking on his pants with jerky, violent movements. His jaw was clenched so tight I could see the muscles jumping under his skin. His eyes had gone dark, almost black, his wolf fighting to break free.
I scrambled for my clothes, my hands trembling so badly I could barely get my shirt on straight. My mind was racing, thoughts tumbling over each other in a chaotic jumble.
“What the hell was Hunt talking about at the beginning?” Knox demanded as he pulled his shirt over his head. “What did he mean, you were right?”
“I asked him to keep an eye on Lucio,” I said, struggling with the button on my jeans. My fingers felt thick and clumsy, like they belonged to someone else. “After that meeting, when the twins came in and I saw the way he looked at them. I told Hunt I thought Lucio was hiding something.”
Knox froze for a split second, his hands stilling on his belt. Then his expression darkened, fury crossing his features like a storm cloud.
“You suspected him?” he growled.
“It was just a hunch! I didn’t have any proof!” I threw my hands up in frustration, tears pricking at my eyes. “Hunt said he would watch him but that they’d already checked his background. He said I was probably just stressed. I thought maybe I was being paranoid. I thought-”
“You weren’t paranoid.” Knox’s voice was hard as steel. “You were right. Your instincts were right. And now Hunt is down and Mira has him and that fucking traitor has been in our home, around our children, and we didn’t - fuck. FUCK.”
He slammed his fist against the wall, leaving a dent in the concrete. The impact echoed through the panic room, a sharp crack of violence that matched the chaos in my chest.
I grabbed his arm, pulling him back. “We need to move. We need to get the kids. Knox, we need to go NOW.”
He nodded, forcing himself to focus. I could see the effort it took, the way he pushed down the rage and the fear to make room for strategy. For action. This was the alpha in him, the leader who had kept his pack safe through countless threats.
