He sits in the basement containment room—wrists zip-tied to the chair, two security wolves flanking the door—and cycles through defiance, denial, and bargaining before arriving at the terror that cracks him open.
"I didn't know people would die."
His voice is wrecked, snot and tears mixing on a face that looked trustworthy enough to walk my children to school.
"She said they just wanted information. Surveillance, nothing violent. She promised nobody would get hurt."
"Four are dead, Darren. My husband took a blade to the chest. My daughter crushed a man's hand defending herself from operatives you guided to her bedroom."
I keep my voice level, clinical. The rage will come later; right now I need information.
"Who is she?"
"I don't know the name. She approached me at a bar in Capitol Hill months ago, right before I transferred there. She knew I'd been passed over for promotion in my old pack and was angry about it.. She knew exactly which resentments to press."
"Describe her."
"Dark hair, shoulder-length. Sharp features, high cheekbones, the kind of face that's beautiful until you look at her eyes."
He swallows hard. "Her eyes were wrong, White Luna. Full of this calculated hatred, like she'd been planning something for years and was finally getting to enjoy it."
Recognition prickles at the back of my skull.
"What did she want from you specifically?"
"Security codes, patrol schedules, the children's routines, which wolves were assigned where. She wanted to know how Alpha interacted with the kids, how he responded to threats, what his instincts were when triplets were in danger."
His voice drops.
"She was obsessed with your family. Not the pack—your family specifically. Like this was personal."
"How did you communicate?"
"Dead-drop outside the eastern perimeter. I'd leave information in a hollow log during school escort walks, and she'd collect it within hours. Payment appeared in a separate location—cash, always cash, untraceable."
"You sold my children's safety for cash."
"I thought the information itself was harmless. When the attacks started, I tried to stop, but she threatened to expose me to the pack. Said she had proof of everything—"
"Enough!" I lean forward. "Here's what happens now. You have two options. Help me catch this woman, or face immediate execution for treason under pack law. Silvermoon statute is clear on wolves who betray their pack to hostile forces."
"I'll help. Whatever you need, I'll do it. Please—"
I pull a chair across from him and sit.
"You're going to pass one more piece of intelligence through your dead-drop. A meeting between me and Caroline Montgomery at the old boundary cabin tomorrow night."
"She won't believe that. It's too convenient."
"She'll do because it plays exactly to what she wants: the Luna and the Montgomery heir isolated, unprotected, discussing something that could hurt her plans."
"And when she comes for you?"
"That's not your concern. Yours is making the dead-drop look natural. Can you do that?"
"Yes," he nods rapidly. "Morning escort walk. I'll leave it in the hollow log like always."
"If you deviate from routine in any way, my wolves will know, and the execution option becomes immediately relevant."
"I understand… I'll be perfect, I swear."
I watch him leave the compound for the morning escort—walking beside Orion and Luna with a smile plastered across his lying face while security wolves shadow him from a distance I specified.
My stomach churns watching him interact with my children, knowing every gentle joke and backpack adjustment was cover for betrayal.
Lysander meets me in the war room an hour later.
"Dead-drop is confirmed. Darren placed the intelligence exactly as instructed. Our surveillance team watched the collection—a woman matching his description retrieved the message within ninety minutes."
"Position our teams at the boundary cabin. I want wolves in the treeline on three sides, with escape routes covered on the fourth. Nobody moves until I give the signal."
"You're going to be at the cabin."
"Caroline and I both will be. The bait doesn't work if the cabin's empty—they'll have surveillance, and they need to see us enter."
"Thalia, if this goes wrong—"
"Then you take command and finish what I started. But it won't go wrong. She'll come because she can't help herself. It looks like this has been personal from the beginning."
The cabin sits at the edge of pack territory where the forest thickens. Caroline and I arrive at dusk, making ourselves visible through the windows—two women bent over documents, the picture of strategic vulnerability.
We wait. Caroline reviews actual intelligence to maintain cover. I pretend to read while my wolf tracks every sound—branches shifting, footsteps on frozen ground, a distant twig cracking from the southwest.
Two hours after sunset, they come.
Six operatives move through the trees, weapons drawn, approaching the cabin with disciplined precision. My wolf counts them, marks positions, calculates the distance to the nearest wolf team.
But my attention locks on the figure standing on the ridge above the approach path.
She watches through binoculars, issuing commands through hand signals, orchestrating the assault with the casual authority of someone who's been running this operation for months.
The moonlight catches her face and my blood turns to ice.
Dark hair, shoulder-length, just as Darren described. Sharp features, high cheekbones. Eyes I'd recognize across any distance because I grew up watching them calculate, manipulate, and destroy everything they touched.
Lia.
My sister. Exiled, banished, supposedly gone forever—standing on a ridge commanding the hunter force that's been destroying my family. The woman who tried to steal my children and was exiled for betrayal spent it building an army to finish what she started.
I signal Lysander. His wolf team surges from the treeline, cutting off the hunters' retreat with coordinated precision. The operatives scatter—some engage, some flee, their formation collapsing as wolves appear from three directions simultaneously.
I don't care about the hunters. My wolf is already moving.
The shift takes me mid-stride, white fur erupting as I launch toward the ridge. Lia sees me coming—I watch her face cycle through shock, fury, and the particular terror of a woman who forgot what her sister became.
She runs.
Exile has cost her. No pack training, no supernatural conditioning, no wolves at her back. She's spent years among humans, growing soft while I've been leading a pack through war.
I take her down at the treeline. Two hundred pounds of white wolf slamming into her back, driving her face-first into frozen ground.
My jaws close around the back of her neck—not biting, not yet, but holding her pinned with the promise of violence that needs only the slightest provocation.
Lia screams. Not pain—rage. Pure, concentrated fury pouring from her throat into the frozen night air, the sound of a woman whose years of careful planning just collapsed beneath the weight of a sister she underestimated.
"Get off me!" She thrashes beneath my wolf's weight. "You can't do this—I'm outside pack territory—you have no jurisdiction—"
I shift back, one hand replacing jaws on the back of her neck, pressing her face into the dirt.
"Hello, Lia," my voice is calm in ways that should terrify her. "We need to talk about what you've been doing all this time."