Several pack members flinched, and the guilt in the air grew thick enough to choke on. But I was watching Gideon's face, watching the way pain carved itself deeper into the lines around his eyes with each word.
"Whether she was actually cursing pack members or just had the misfortune of being a powerful witch during paranoid times doesn't matter now," Gideon continued, and there was something broken in his voice. Something that spoke of wounds that had never properly healed. "What matters is that a child watched his mother burn, and then spent the next century learning magic that should have died with the old world."
"Wait," I interrupted, my photographer's mind catching on details that didn't add up. "Century? How old is this guy? And don't tell me he's over a hundred.”
The silence that followed was different from the others—heavier, loaded with the kind of truth that made reality feel unstable. Gideon's face had gone pale, and I could see him weighing how much to reveal.
"He's found ways to extend his life," Gideon said carefully. "Dark magic that comes with... costs."
"What kind of costs?" Evan demanded, moving closer with that predatory grace that meant his wolf was paying attention.
Gideon's hands shook as he reached for something in his jacket—not a weapon, but a flask that he unscrewed with desperate fingers. The whiskey went down like medicine, like liquid courage for revelations that would change everything.
"He feeds on wolves," Gideon said finally, the words barely above a whisper. "Their hearts, specifically. Raw. While the life is still warm in them."
The room erupted in snarls and shocked curses, several pack members actually stepping back like the words themselves were contaminated. I felt my own stomach lurch, photographer's instincts trying to process the mechanics of something that horrific.
"That's impossible," someone said, but their voice lacked conviction.
"Hearts hold the connection to the forest, to the lunar cycles that give wolves their power," Gideon continued, each word seeming to cost him something vital. "By consuming them, Silas absorbs fragments of that bond. It slows his aging, strengthens his magic, but it also..." He gestured vaguely at himself, like his own existence was evidence of corruption.
"Makes him less human," Evan finished, understanding dawning in his voice. "That's why Calder and the rogues follow him. He's become something that scares even broken wolves into submission."
"How many?" Daniel's voice was quiet, but it carried across the room like thunder. "How many hearts has he consumed?"
"I don't know," Gideon said, but there was something in his expression that suggested he had suspicions he didn't want tovoice. "Dozens, maybe. Possibly more. Every missing wolf, every disappearance that couldn't be explained..."
The implications hit the room like a physical force. Because suddenly those weren't just statistics about pack conflicts or territorial disputes. Those were people, wolves with families and bonds and lives that had been snuffed out to feed something that had forgotten what it meant to be human.
"What does he want?" I asked, because someone needed to voice the question that would help us understand how to fight back. "Beyond revenge for his mother, what's his endgame?"
Gideon took another pull from his flask before answering. "Power over the Evernight Forest. He believes it was stolen from witches when the Callahans rose to Alpha status. He wants to sever the pack's bond to the land and bind it to himself instead."
"And legacy," Daniel added grimly. "The Duvall name was erased from history after we... after what happened to his mother. He wants to carve it back into this place, written in blood and shadow."
"But it's more than that now," Gideon continued, voice growing more strained with each revelation. "The longer he feeds, the less human he becomes. Part of what drives him isn't rational anymore—it's hunger. Pure, gnawing need to consume. Even if he gets everything he wants, the hunger will never end."
I started pacing then, my mind racing to catch up with implications I didn't want to face. There was something about the way Gideon talked about Silas—not like a distant enemy, but like someone he knew intimately. Someone whose corruption he'd witnessed firsthand.
"How do you know so much about what he can do?" the scarred woman asked, suspicion creeping into her voice. "About how his magic works, what drives him?"
The silence that followed was deafening. Gideon stood there like a man facing his own execution, hands shaking with morethan just magical residue. For just a moment, I saw something in his face that looked like a family resemblance I didn't want to acknowledge.
"Enough." Daniel's voice cracked like a whip, silencing the muttering. "Yes, we're facing threats we haven't dealt with in decades. Yes, some of us are going to die before this is over. But we're still a pack, and packs protect their own."
“So what's the plan?” I asked, surprised by the steadiness in my own voice.
Daniel smiled then, sharp and predatory and entirely too pleased. “We prepare for war. And we make sure Silas learns the same lesson his mother did—that you don't fuck with the Callahan pack.”
The room began to empty slowly, pack members filing out in small groups with the kind of weighted silence that followed life-changing conversations. Some cast glances my way—less hostile now, more measuring. Like they were trying to figure out where exactly I fit in this new reality we were all stumbling toward.
When the last wolf disappeared through the doorway, Daniel turned his attention to Evan and me. The Alpha energy that had filled the room during the meeting didn't fade so much as focus, narrowing to laser precision on the two of us standing by the fireplace.
“Sit,” he said, gesturing to the couch that had been vacated moments before.
Evan moved first, settling into the worn leather with the kind of careful control that meant he was either exhausted or furious. Probably both. I followed, hyperaware of every sound I made, every breath I took. The camera around my neck suddenly felt heavier than it had any right to.
Daniel remained standing, hands clasped behind his back in a posture that probably looked relaxed if you didn't know whatto look for. I was starting to learn that nothing about Daniel Callahan was ever truly relaxed.
