LOGINChapter 117: Ryker's POV "Breach on my signal," I say into the radio, and Ronan and Rafe both go silent on the other end, waiting.We're positioned at three points around the caretaker's cottage... Ronan at the front, Rafe at the side entrance he scouted while I was still four minutes out, me at the rear where a narrow window looks like the weakest structural point. The building is old, wood rotting at the corners, exactly the kind of forgotten property that makes sense for someone trying to hide something without drawing attention.I can hear Landon's voice through the wall.Calm. Explaining something, from the cadence of it, the specific rhythm he uses when he's walking someone through a structural concept they haven't quite grasped yet."Now," I say.Three doors go down simultaneously, Ronan's shoulder through the front, splintering old wood like it's nothing, Rafe through the side with the controlled efficiency of a man who has done this a hundred times, and me through the back
Chapter 116: Elara's POV "Faster," I say, though I'm already running as fast as my legs will carry me, the search party spreading out around me through the dark forest, pack security moving with the coordinated precision Ryker built into this territory months ago.Something is happening in my chest that has nothing to do with fear.Fear I understand. Fear has lived in me constantly since Serena's phone call sharp, immediate, the specific animal terror of a mother whose child is somewhere she cannot see. This is different. This is older, deeper, something that feels like it's been sleeping under my skin for twenty-four years and has just, suddenly, violently, woken up.The bond is roaring.Not the low warm hum I've grown accustomed to over the last several months. Something enormous, something that presses against the inside of my ribs like it's trying to break out through bone, and underneath it underneath the bond, deeper than the bond, in a place I've never once felt anything bef
Chapter 115: Rafe's Pov "You need an appointment to be here."The guard steps into my path at the Kane estate entrance, hand already moving toward his sidearm, and I don't slow down. I take his wrist before the weapon clears its holster, twist, and he's on the ground with a sound that's more surprise than pain before he fully registers what happened.The second guard comes from my left. I redirect his charge into the stone pillar beside the door and he goes down without getting a hand on me.I walk through the front door."Victor Kane," I say, to the first member of staff I encounter, an older man in formal dress who takes one look at my face and points, wordlessly, toward the east wing. I go.I find him in his study, exactly where I expected — behind a mahogany desk, phone already in his hand, mid-conversation with someone about the Council investigation from the sound of the fragment I catch before he sees me and drops the phone entirely."What is the meaning of — ""Vivian took La
Chapter 114: Ronan's POV The scent hits me the moment I clear the treeline.Landon's specific mix of soap and wool and something underneath that's just him, just his blood, and beneath it three unfamiliar scents overlapping in a way that tells me exactly how many hands have been on him in the last twenty minutes. I don't think. I move, wolf close enough to the surface that my vision has sharpened into something more precise than human sight, every sound in the forest suddenly distinct and separate — birds, wind, the distant rush of the stream that cuts through this section of woodland.I've always tracked on instinct rather than strategy. Ryker builds cases and Rafe reads terrain like a chess board, calculating every angle before he commits. I just follow the scent and let my body do what it was built to do, and right now that instinct is the only thing standing between my son and whatever Vivian Kane thinks she's accomplishing with this.The trail runs northeast, clean and unbroken
Chapter 113: Ryker's POV "Talk to me. Now."I'm three minutes from the park when I get Elias on the phone, and my voice comes out flatter and colder than I've heard it in years, the specific register I haven't needed since Shadow Ridge — the one that shuts down everything except function."Pack security has secured the treeline entry point," Elias says. "No visual on the boy or the abductors. I've pulled the footage from the market square cameras, three individuals, unfamiliar faces, moved with clear coordination. This wasn't opportunistic. It was planned.""Vehicle?""None visible. Which means they're moving on foot through the forest, or they had transport waiting somewhere off the main paths."I turn the corner into the park at a dead run and the scene hits me all at once Serena on her knees near the fountain, Elara standing over her with a phone pressed to her ear and a face gone completely white, pack security already fanning into the treeline with the organized precision I bui
Chapter 112: Elara's POV My phone rings during a patient consultation.I glance at it out of habit, ready to silence it, and the name on the screen stops my hand halfway to the button.Serena.She never calls during the day. She texts, casual updates about whatever she and Landon have gotten up to, photos of block towers and fort inspections and the small ordinary details of a grandmother falling in love with a grandson she didn't know existed three weeks ago. She doesn't call."Excuse me," I say to my patient. "I need to take this."I step into the hallway. My hand is already unsteady before I answer, some instinct in my chest tightening before I've heard a single word."Serena?""Elara." Her voice is wrong. Shaking, high, nothing like the steady warm woman who's been sitting at my kitchen table for three weeks. "Elara, I need you to listen to me carefully.""What happened." The words come out flat, clinical, the specific calm I've trained myself to use in emergencies even as every
Chapter 6“Mom, I don’t want to go back if they’re just going to make me say sorry for something I didn’t start.”Landon’s voice was small but edged with frustration as I helped him into his school uniform. My fingers paused on the buttons of his shirt, the bruise on his cheek still faintly visible
Chapter 5Ryker’s POV The scent of her still clung to the inside of my nose like smoke after a wildfire—sweet wild honey, soft vanilla, and that faint trace of defiance that had always driven me insane. Six years, and one accidental collision in a school hallway had ripped open every scar I’d trie
Chapter 4“Mom, please… just keep walking.”My voice came out as a broken whisper, barely audible even to my own ears. Landon’s small hand felt impossibly fragile in mine, his fingers sticky from the dried blood on his knuckles. I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead, refusing to meet any of their gaz
Chapter 3“Take it back!” Landon’s furious shout cracked through the air the second I stepped into the principal’s office. My son stood rigid in the center of the room, small fists clenched at his sides, blood smeared across his knuckles and a fresh bruise blooming on his cheekbone. Opposite him,







