Fergal smiled. It was thin and sharp and held no joy, but it was a smile, and it was the first one since he’d walked into the tree line and the world had gone silent. “I couldn’t agree more.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The headache started at dawn.
It wasn’t a normal headache, like Gregor got sometimes from dehydration or from lack of sleep. This was a deep, diffuse ache that seemed to originate behind his eyes and radiate outward until his entire skull throbbed with a pressure that had no physical cause and no obvious remedy.
He ignored it. He had work to do.
The investigation had been running for fourteen hours, and Gregor had not stopped moving for any of them. He’d reviewed the security footage frame by frame until he could describe Fergal’s final visible moments in detail—the slight hesitation at the edge of the camera range, the way Fergal’s hand had risen to push hair from his face, the squint against the midday sun.
He’d personally walked the path from the cabin to the eastern tree line, cataloging every footprint, every broken twig, every disturbance in the soil. The trail ended abruptly fifty yards past the last camera—a clear patch of ground where the grass was slightly flattened and the air still carried the faintest residue of teleportation magic, that ozone-and-copper smell that lingered after a translocation. Multiple people had stood there.At least five, based on the foot impressions. And then they’d all vanished.
He’d briefed the expanded leadership team twice, coordinated with the Hayes pack security, ensured Blair had set up a rotating watch schedule that ensured no other high-value targets were left unguarded, and set Oliver and Fallon to analyzing the magical residue at the tree line for any signature that could help identify the specific dragons involved.
There had been no communication with the Murphys. No ransom demands, nothing. That worried Gregor more than anything. What did they want? Why had they taken Fergal specifically? That was the part he couldn’t figure out.
The headache pulsed. He pressed his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose and kept moving.
“Commander.” Rhene fell into step beside him as Gregor crossed the yard between the main house and the security station. The pack alpha looked like he hadn’t slept either, which made sense—having a king kidnapped from your territory was the kind of security failure that kept a leader awake. “Any news?”
“Fallon confirmed the magical residue at the tree line is consistent with Murphy-trained dragons. Oliver said at least two magic users were involved, but that’s all. They used teleportation, but we have no idea where they went.”
Rhene sighed. “In other words, no real new information.”
“No.”
Rhene shot him a long look. “You look like shit,” he said with the bluntness that Gregor had come to appreciate about the wolf alpha. “When did you last eat?”
“I’m fine.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“I’ll eat when I need to.”
Rhene’s expression said he recognized deflection when he heard it but was choosing not to push. Smart man.
Rhene’s phone dinged with an incoming text, and as he read it—Gregor could see it was more than one sentence, but he wasn’t close enough to read it—his expression changed. “Zack has flagged a concern about one of the omegas.”
Gregor stopped walking. “Which omega?”
Another text came in and Gregor waited as Rhene read it. “Simon. One of the original Murphy group who came with Fallon.”
The name registered with a distant familiarity—the quiet omega with sandy hair who’d served coffee at the intelligence meeting weeks ago. The one Fergal had been kind to, asking his name. Gregor had noted him as unremarkable, which, in retrospect, might’ve been the point.
“What kind of concern?”
“Zack noticed Simon’s behavior has changed since yesterday. He was concerned enough that he asked Delton for his assessment—he’s a psychologist, specialized in trauma—and Delton said that at first glance, it looks like guilt.”
Guilt. The word landed hard in Gregor’s gut. The Murphys had an inside spy—something he hadn’t consciously suspected but that his subconscious had been circling, the way it circled every potential threat, cataloging and filing and waiting for the pattern to reveal itself. “Where is he now?”
“Delton is with him in the main house, keeping an eye on him. He hasn’t confronted him yet—he’s waiting for your call.”
Gregor changed direction without breaking stride, heading for the main house. Rhene had to lengthen his steps to match. The headache was getting worse—a persistent throb that seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat—and underneath it, a cold that had settled into his bones sometime in the last few hours and refused to leave, despite the mild afternoon temperature.
He registered these symptoms with clinical detachment. Headache, cold intolerance, a tremor in his hands. The samesymptoms Erwan had described during his separation from Rhene—mate sickness, the physical manifestation of a fated bond under strain. His body was telling him what his mind had only just accepted: Fergal was his mate, and the distance between them was poison.
Erwan’s symptoms had been slower, but maybe Gregor’s were exacerbated by the dampening of their bond, the complete absence of it? Or maybe it was because they were both dragons, making the bond between them different from that of a wolf and a dragon. He had no way of knowing, since he hadn’t heard of a mating bond between dragons in ages.
