Nova nods, shifting aside.
My jaw tightens. “I’m still here.”
“Yes, you are,” Lyanna says absently, her focus entirely on the screen. “And you need to listen.” She types something, fingers moving with practiced precision. “Faelan is high court. These signatures—they’re not his physical presence.”
“They’re extensions,” Nova murmurs. “Projections.”
“Like reaching through a window,” Lyanna agrees.
“Stop,” I growl, the wolf rising in my chest. “Plain language. Now.”
Nova straightens, finally looking at me directly. “He’s not crossing your borders physically. He’s sending pieces of himself—impressions, influences. Jessica Chen and Mark Sullivan didn’t just go missing. They were taken.”
“By what?” I demand.
“By whom?” Lyanna corrects, her tone mild but unyielding. “His constructs. His ... instruments.”
My patience snaps. “This is my territory. My responsibility. I need more than cryptic half-answers.”
Nova’s scent shifts—subtle notes of frustration and something sharper beneath it. Fear? My wolf tracks the change, hungry to decode her.
“We’re trying to give you answers,” she says, her voice cool. “But you have to understand what we’re dealing with before you can fight it.”
The word “we” grates against my already frayed nerves. There is no “we.” There’s my pack, and there are two outsiders in my territory.
“I don’t need to understand it to kill it,” I state flatly.
Lyanna finally looks at me, her green-gold eyes reflecting the dim light. “Yes, Alpha, you do. Because if you strike blindly, you’ll make it worse.”
Her tone is respectful, but her words contain no deference. It’s not a challenge—it’s a simple statement of fact. And that’s somehow worse.
Nova turns back to the screen, dismissing me without a word. The casual rejection of my authority burns in my chest.
I’ve had enough. This is her room, but it’s my compound. My fucking territory.
“You have until sundown to give me something actionable,” I say, voice hard. “Not theories. Not possibilities. Facts.”
Neither woman responds. They’re already deep in quiet conversation, exchanging terms I don’t recognize. Pointing at patterns I can’t decode.
I turn and stride toward the door, refusing to slam it like a child. The cold metal of the handle bites into my palm.
Behind me, Nova murmurs, “The boundary lines need reinforcement.”
I step outside, drawing in a sharp breath of clean air. The wolf in me wants to return, to assert dominance, to make them both acknowledge who rules here. But rushing back in would only prove I’ve lost control.
I need space. Need to think without the distraction of Nova’s scent and Lyanna’s quiet certainty.
Before I can take another step, Ben’s voice cuts through my mind:
You’re gonna want to get to the gate. Now.
Fuck. Now what?
I reach the gate in under a minute, deliberately slowing my steps for the last fifty yards.
Ben stands stiff-backed at the entrance, flanked by three others. Their postures tell me everything: They’re tense but not ready to attack.
Two strangers wait on the other side of our boundary. The first one commands my attention immediately. He’s easily 6‘5“, towering even by Alpha standards, with the kind of presence that makes other predators step back. Steel blue eyes, vivid and ancient, lock onto mine without blinking. They assess with surgical precision, like he’s seen empires rise and fall.
