Fifty Five

There are people in this world who watch fire burn down things to ashes and feel nothing. They don't feel the heat, or horror, not even dread. Just the silent assessment of how the flames will spread and what they might consume before they're finished.

I had always been one of those people.

Tonight was no different.

The Black Shadow Pack compound sat miles northeast of my territory borders, deep in the forest. And although I couldn't see it from here—the forest was too dense and the ridges too high—I didn't need to see it.

I could hear it.

Or rather, I could hear the absence of it.

That specific silence that only existed when something significant was happening inside a heavily guarded space. The kind of silence that had gone entirely inward on itself, like a fist closing around something it didn't want to drop.

Despite how dark and quiet it looked from here, I knew exactly what was happening tonight.

A wedding ceremony, which was involving the crowning of an heiress about to become Luna.

Howard Quinn had been building toward this night for years.

So had I.

I had planned to ruin it and I would definitely do it.

"Aiden. Tell me—do you think tonight will be any different?"

Rex. My wolf who was ancient, powerful, and perpetually unimpressed with my answers.

"I have no certainty," I said, my voice barely above a murmur, low enough that Nathan wouldn't catch it from his position to my left. "But I have a feeling."

"Blood is going to stain my hands tonight." I paused, watching the distant flicker of lights through the tree line. "And I can't wait."

Rex went quiet, which was his version of agreement.

I pulled the cigarette pack from the inside pocket of my jacket and lit one in the flame briefly illuminating my face before I snapped the lighter shut. Then I raised the top again. Snapped it shut. Raised it. Snapped it.

Each time it gave that clean metallic *clang* I felt something in my chest settle slightly.

It was an old habit. It kept me present when waiting threatened to make me impatient.

I was never impatient. But on nights like this, I had to remind myself of that.

Howard Quinn was always on high alert during pack ceremonies. He'd earned the paranoia—done enough damage in his life to know what damage looked like when it was headed back toward him. But I had planned for this. Planned around it, through it, years ahead of it.

Tonight was not going to go wrong.

My bike was parked twenty feet behind me.

Nathan was somewhere to my left. I could hear him breathing—steady, measured, the kind of breath that was either sleep or meditation. With Nathan, it was always one or the other, and he managed both with the same unnerving calm. The rest of my team was positioned along the southern borders, spread thin and silent, waiting on my word.

No one moved without my command.

That was the rule. That had always been the rule.

"What if this is the one?" Rex said. "I can feel something this time. Something is different."

"You said that the last three times. You were wrong all three times."

"Do not hold that against me. I have been right far more often than I have been wrong, and moreover—this time I can genuinely feel it. I am right. Or close to right. I have a strong feeling."

"Well." I took a long drag. "If you say so."

"I do say so."

Rex was always impatient and I couldn't get used to him.

I didn't argue with him. Not because I agreed, but because Rex had this specific quality of certainty that made arguing feel like speaking into weather. The certainty had been wrong before—three times, as I'd pointed out—but it had also been correct enough times that I'd learned not to dismiss it entirely.

Something had shifted in him tonight. Something had gone focused and alert in a way it hadn't been in a long time.

I noticed. I filed it.

"Something is coming," Rex said, quieter now.

"The plan is enough."

"It is never only the plan with the things that matter."

I didn't respond to that.

My name for the Black Shadow Pack was not, technically, a name.

It was a verdict.

Howard Quinn had built his empire on territory that should never have been his. The details of how were not a story I told—not to my men, not to anyone—but I knew it, these memories were horrible and painful,

The parts that left scars.

I had been patient. That was perhaps the only thing Howard Quinn fundamentally did not understand about me. Everyone assumed the hatred was hot—that rogue packs ran on rage, impulse, on the kind of snarling territorial aggression that made enemies predictable. They assumed I wanted to burn his pack down the way fire wants to burn: no plan, no patience, just consuming everything within reach.

They were wrong.

They had always been wrong about that.

Hot rage burns itself out.

Cold hatred keeps indefinitely.

I had been patient for a very long time. Eleven years of patience, to be exact. Eleven years of building, positioning, placing pieces where they needed to be, waiting for the precise moment when all of them could move at once.

Tonight, finally, something was happening inside three miles of forest that I had spent a considerable number of years arranging.

Nathan materialized at my shoulder with that particular silence that made him irreplaceable.

He had a report—I could tell by the angle of his jaw—but he was reading the air around me first, deciding whether to give it now or wait. That was why I kept him.

Most men delivered information the moment they had it, as though the act of reporting discharged some obligation they felt toward the facts. Nathan understood that timing was part of the information.

"Scouts confirm the ceremony started an hour ago," he said quietly. "Heavier guard presence than usual on the northeast perimeter. Four more on the south road."

"Where is Quinn?"

"Still not in sight."

I took another drag. Watched the distant flicker of lights through the trees.

Nathan was quiet for a moment. I felt rather than saw him glance toward the compound—doing his own reading of the distance, the darkness, the strange too-quiet quality of the night.

"Something feels different tonight," he said finally.

"Rex said the same thing."

"Rex is usually right."

"Rex is right about sixty percent of the time. That's not usually “

Nathan almost smiled. "Still better odds than most intel sources."

“You see, someone trust me more than you”

Then my phone vibrated.

I picked it up. Mirabelle's voice came through, I wasn't surprised, she was my informant, a powerful witch and a friend.

"Aiden. It's done. I have successfully brought chaos to the Black Shadow pack. She's on the run now, currently being chased….Aiden they are hunting her to be killed."

I said nothing for a moment. I took one last drag and watched the ember die.

"There," Rex said, and his voice had dropped to something I hadn't heard from him in years. Something that sounded almost like anticipation. "There it is."

"Let's move out," My voice sounded loud and I passed the order everyone had been waiting for.

Then I dropped the cigarette and crushed it under my boot.

My plan was in motion.