Chapter 234
The wind carried something strange that morning.
Not just chill. Not storm.
Whispers.
By the time I stepped into the council wing, Nessa was already there, standing with a stiff back beside Roman. Her eyes flicked to mine. I saw the hesitation behind them.
She’d found something.
Roman’s tone was low but sharp. “Start from the beginning.”
Nessa took a breath. “I was going over the rota—shifts for the outer watch and the rotation logs for the guardroom. And something didn’t line up.”
She held out a folder. I flipped through it. Pages marked, names highlighted. My stomach dropped.
“You’re sure this isn’t an error?” I asked.
“No.” She looked pale. “Zev. One of the junior guards. He’s been switching assignments with others, covering shifts he shouldn’t even know about. Every time we intercepted a message or caught a runner… he was on duty.”
Roman's expression darkened.
“We have to move now,” I said. “Before he bolts.”
Wyatt was already at the door. “I’ll bring him in. Quietly.”
But we were too late.
Zev wasn’t in his quarters. Or at the training yard. Or his usual patrol route.
Instead, we found the body of another guard slumped behind the armory.
Throat slashed. Still warm.
Wyatt cursed. Roman growled low. “Sound the alert. Lock down the perimeter. He’s still inside the grounds.”
My pulse thundered. “What about Halrick?”
Roman froze.
We both turned and bolted.
The holding cellar was empty.
Halrick was gone.
The chains, broken. One of the guards unconscious. Another missing.
The old snake hadn’t slithered away on his own.
“Zev helped him,” I said, breathless.
Roman nodded grimly. “And now we have a traitor and a fugitive with council secrets.”
Nessa arrived seconds later, her face pale. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I told her. “You caught it in time. We’ll get them back.”
But deep down, I knew what this meant.
The war wasn’t just crawling back into the pack.
It was blooming from within.
Two hours later, the packhouse had shifted into a state of controlled lockdown. No one in. No one out.
We gathered the inner circle—Roman, Wyatt, Nessa, Ella, and me—around the long table. Tension coiled in the room like a living thing.
“They won’t go far,” Roman said. “Halrick knows we’ll hunt him. Zev probably has a safehouse or passage we haven’t found yet.”
“Or someone waiting outside our borders,” Wyatt added.
“I want their names cleared from every archive,” I said. “Remove their access from all perimeter check-ins, remove any tech trace—nothing tied to the pack remains in their name.”
“I’ll handle it,” Ella offered.
Roman leaned over the map. “There’s a passage near the eastern ridge. Old smuggler’s path. Forgotten by most… but Halrick always had a knack for remembering inconvenient things.”
“Then that’s our lead,” I said. “We move fast and quiet. No squads—just the four of us.”
Nessa hesitated. “You want me on that?”
I looked at her. “You found Zev. You’ve earned your place.”
Roman glanced between us and nodded. “Agreed. But this is no training exercise.”
She swallowed hard. “Understood.”
The ridge was quiet.
Too quiet.
Birdsong had stilled. No rustling. Just thick fog creeping through the trees.
We moved in formation—Roman in front, Wyatt flanking left, me to the right, and Nessa behind, watching our backs.
We found the entrance to the passage half-buried in overgrowth. The iron gate was cracked open.
“They went this way,” Wyatt whispered.
The air inside the tunnel was stale, thick with damp stone and moss. Our footsteps echoed faintly. The smell of sulfur clung to the walls—someone had passed through here recently.
We followed the path down into the dark, every sense stretched.
Then we heard them.
Voices.
“…didn’t think they’d react so fast,” Zev said, his voice bouncing off the stone.
“They always react too late,” Halrick replied. “But we’re ahead of them now. They’re chasing ghosts.”
Roman raised a hand.
I nodded.
On his signal, we moved—fast, precise.
We rounded the bend—and the torchlight hit their faces.
Zev saw us first. His eyes widened. “Run—!”
Roman tackled him mid-step. I moved toward Halrick, but the old man had already grabbed a blade and slashed toward me.
I ducked, spun, and kicked the weapon from his hand.
“Still got a spark in you,” he hissed.
“I’ve got more than that,” I snarled, and slammed him against the tunnel wall.
Wyatt cuffed Zev. Nessa stayed by the entrance, eyes wide but focused.
“Why?” I demanded. “Why all this?”
Halrick chuckled bitterly. “Because you forgot your place.”
I leaned closer. “No, Halrick. I rewrote it.”
Back at the packhouse, the sun was beginning to rise.
Halrick was secured in the underground vault this time—no chance of another escape.
Zev was stripped of rank and identity. The trial would come. The truth would be heard.
But in that moment, as I stood at the edge of the main hall and watched the light break over the rooftops, I knew something deeper had shifted.
This wasn’t just about loyalty anymore.
It was about legacy.
About rebuilding a world that didn’t rely on the rot of tradition.
Roman stepped beside me, quiet.
“She did well,” he said, nodding toward Nessa, who stood near the training yard, speaking with Wyatt.
“She’s stronger than she knows.”
He wrapped an arm around me. “Just like her Luna.”
For once, I let myself lean into him. Just for a second.
Before the next storm.
Before the next shadow.
Because there would always be another one.
But this time, we weren’t walking into it blind.
We were ready.
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