Near the equipment shed, I catch sight of Kyle standing alone between two groups. Marcus’s faction clusters to his left. Wyatt and the loyal core to his right. Kyle’s shoulders hunch forward, caught in no-man’s-land.
Mateo approaches him, voice pitched low but carrying. “Marcus actually listens, you know. When you bring him concerns, he does something about it. Not just ‘I’ll handle it’ and nothing changes.”
Kyle’s jaw works. “Alpha’s doing his best—“
“Is he?” Mateo’s tone stays gentle. Reasonable. That’s what makes it dangerous. “Three wolves missing. No answers. Just more patrols that find nothing.” He rests a hand on Kyle’s shoulder. “We look out for our own. That’s all Marcus is doing.”
Kyle doesn’t move toward Marcus’s group. But he doesn’t move away from Mateo either.
Across the yard, Harper stands near the training ring, watching the divisions form. Her hands clench at her sides, then release. Her expression asks a question no one can answer: How do we fix this?
She doesn’t look toward Ben. Doesn’t seek him out the way she used to. That wound is still too fresh.
Ben doesn’t look her way. Doesn’t acknowledge the silent question. He has no answer to give.
Wyatt stations himself deliberately at the main lodge entrance—my territory, Marcus’s faction watching from fifty feet away. His posture radiates loyalty, but his eyes track Marcus’s movements with something between concern and calculation.
Kari stays near me, scanning the compound with her intelligence specialist’s precision. Not worried about who’s loyal. Cataloging who’s useful. Always tactical, that one.
Reyna lingers at the armory entrance, close enough to Derek that they could be working together. Except they’re not talking. Her patrol partner joined Marcus three days ago. She stayed. The space between them feels wider than the compound.
And scattered throughout—five, maybe six wolves who won’t choose at all. They avoid both groups, creating their own uncertain territory of neutrals.
Even my loyal wolves question whether they’re wrong to stay.
Marcus hasn’t done anything overtly wrong. Made suggestions. Offered solutions. Listened to concerns.
But everything’s breaking anyway.
This is what manipulation looks like—no visible villain, just erosion.
I move toward the command center, needing space from the visible cracks in my pack. Inside, Ben’s already there with Kari, heads bent over a map marked with red circles.
“Connection confirmed,” Ben says without looking up. His finger traces a line between marked points.
Kari taps the map. “All eight disappearances—the hikers and our wolves—they’re connected.” Her finger moves between marked locations. “Jensen, Kira, and Tomas. Jessica and Mark. The three new ones Harper reported. All within a five-mile radius. Same energy signature.”
My jaw tightens. “We’ve been searching for our wolves this whole time, and they’re connected to the hikers?”
“Nova just confirmed it.” Ben slides a tablet across the table showing energy readings. “The residual traces match what we found at the eastern perimeter and at the trail cam sites. Faelan’s projections. He’s been taking them systematically—testing different locations, different timing. Building toward something.”
I study the map, each red circle marking where someone vanished into thin air.
“Eight people,” I say quietly. “Our wolves for three weeks. The others taken since.”
“Nova confirmed it when she went into the Fade.” Kari’s voice stays professional, but her jaw tightens. “They’re suspended. Not dead—stored. Like he’s collecting them for something.”
Stored. Like hostages. Like leverage.
But leverage for what?
Mateo’s voice echoes from minutes ago in the yard: “Three wolves missing. No answers. Just more patrols that find nothing.”
He’s right. And every day we don’t find them, my authority bleeds out a little more. Now we know the hikers are part of the same pattern—all of them caught in Faelan’s web.
“Where?” I demand.
Ben points to the convergence point on the map. “Nova’s narrowing the location. She says when she’s ready to go in, we’ll only get one shot. The Fade will close after we breach it.”
