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“We take her back to HQ.” I counter. “Make her tell us what she knows. Use her to discover her father’s plans and lead us to the missing Omegas.”

I steel my spine as I lay out my plan, confident it’s the best course of action.“We get answers to whatever the fuck’s going on with the blood Caelan found. Above all, we use her, just like she used Caelan. Then we give her back to daddy.”

My instincts start to settle. The more I consider it, the more sure I am that this is the perfect plan. It appeals to Dax’s logic while satisfying our thirst for vengeance as well.

Dax’s looks at me with eyes hard as stone. Leaning over the console, he lowers his voice and says, “We take her with us and bring her back to HQ.”

I nod. “Right, like I⁠—”

“Then we make her suffer for ever thinking she could outsmart a Bastard.”

I whip my head to the side and almost recoil at the flat, dead stare of my packmate. There’s no life in his eyes. The blazing anger from before is gone completely.

Whatever he’s feeling now is way worse than anger.

“I will ruin her, Vae. I will pick her apart piece by piece,” he continues in an eerily calm cadence. “I will pluck every piece of knowledge out of her pretty little head and use it to bring down her father. And once I have his smoking, charred corpse smoldering at my feet, only then will I tear her apart.”

His smile is fucking terrifying. My eyes flick between him and the road, like my instincts aren’t sure which is more dangerous to take my attention off of.

“Make no mistake. I will make her pay for what she’s done to Caelan. She will pay for the pain she’s brought to our pack. I won’t let her go until she’s paid for each and every aching second between now and eternity.”

My lungs squeeze. Something inside of me is screaming.

“Daxen…”

“I’ve made my decision.”

His decision? What the fuck. That’s not how we do shit. We’re a pack. When it comes to pack issues, chain of command means fuck all.

I’m two seconds away from laying into him when a mansion comes into view. All my fears for Caelan seem to multiply when I see the dark structure looming ahead. I press my foot harder on the gas, anxious to get down the gravel drive.

“Look out!” Daxen’s shouted warning makes me slam on the breaks. The SUV skids through loose gravel as the tires squeal in protest.

I’m about to ask him what the fuck he’s shouting for when a black blur streaks past the front of the vehicle. It bolts toward the treeline, partially illuminated by our headlights.

“What the fuck..?” I mutter, squinting at the black shadow of muscle and fur.

“GO!” Dax roars. “We don’t have time for whatever that was. Just fucking go, for Fate’s sake!”

Shit. He’s right. I clench my jaw and punch the gas, determined to get to my brother.

I tell myself to ignore it, but right as the damn thing makes it to the forest, it turns and stares right at me. Its large yellow eyes shine bright in the reflection of the SUV’s headlights, gleam like phantom coins in the dark.

A chill skates down my spine and I clench my jaw

I mean, what kind of big ass cat was that, anyways?

I guess it looked kind of like a domestic short hair. If someone injected a domestic short hair with Fatesdamned steroids.

“Everyone ready?” Dax’s voice crackles through my headsets as we finish last second checks before deploying. His lethal edge forces my attention back to the very real, very fucked up situation we’re about to run into.

“Copy,” Gav responds. “You’ve got point on this one, Daxen.”

I’m not shocked Gav’s handing lead to Dax. He knows like I do that Dax has already come up with solid, tactically perfect plans based on limited intel and the possible situations we’re about to walk into. Not only that, but he’s probably got a few contingencies for each of those plans in case things go to shit.

Tactics and ops is basically his super power.

“We go in through the front.” Dax orders. “Stay down, stay fast, controlled, and silent. Don’t make yourself a target and don’t give them any reason to shoot before we find Caelan.”