CHAPTER 9

ETHAN'S POV

The report comes in at three in the morning, Lucas's voice crackling through the radio with the kind of tension that means something is very wrong. Owen didn't return from patrol. I am awake immediately, the Alpha in me responding to threat before my conscious mind fully processes the words.

"How long overdue?" I ask, already pulling on clothes.

"Four hours. He was due back at eleven." Lucas's voice is steady but I can hear the concern underneath. "I sent Marcus to check his route but Marcus isn't responding either."

My stomach drops. Two enforcers, both experienced, both overdue. That is not coincidence. That is a problem.

"Organize search parties. I want every available wolf on this. Cover his entire route, check in every fifteen minutes, no one goes out alone." I am moving through my room, grabbing weapons, strapping on the tactical vest I keep for emergencies. "I will meet you at the garage in five."

"Ethan, maybe you should stay here. If something is targeting enforcers—"

"Four minutes now," I cut him off and end the transmission.

The mate bond pulses as I head downstairs, Kaye stirring in the basement even though it is the middle of the night. She must feel my anxiety bleeding through. I consider going to her, telling her what is happening, but there is no time and no point. She is a prisoner, not pack, not someone I need to brief on security issues.

Except she is pack in the way that matters to my wolf. He wants to check on our mate, make sure she is safe before we go into potential danger. I force him down and keep moving.

Lucas is waiting by the garage with six other wolves, all armed and alert. The search parties are already mobilizing, wolves heading out in groups of three, covering different sections of Owen's route. The energy is tense, worried. Owen is well-liked, a senior enforcer who has been with the pack since the rebuilding. If something happened to him, every wolf here will take it personally.

"What was his route?" I ask as Lucas hands me a map.

"Northern border, the section that backs up against old Moonstone territory. Standard patrol, nothing unusual." Lucas traces the path with his finger. "He checked in at eight PM, everything normal. Then silence."

"And Marcus?"

"Went to investigate an hour ago, hasn't responded since."

Two wolves, same route, both vanished. The pattern is too specific to ignore. Something is happening at that border and it is hunting my enforcers.

We take three trucks, groups of three wolves each, maintaining radio contact as we drive. The northern border is forty minutes from the packhouse, winding roads through dense forest that eventually opens up into the buffer zone where pack lands used to meet. No one has claimed the old Moonstone territory in six years. The land is cursed in the eyes of most supernatural creatures, soaked with the blood of too many dead wolves.

I have not been back here since the night I came to identify the bodies. The night I saw what remained of Kieran Muani's pack, burned beyond recognition, the stench of death so thick it took weeks to get it out of my clothes.

The memory sits heavy in my chest. I thought I was looking at justice that night. Retribution for what Moonstone did to my pack. But if Kaye is right, if the plague theory is real, then I was looking at another crime scene. Another set of victims killed by the same person who killed my parents.

The mate bond flares suddenly, sharp and insistent. Kaye is awake, I can feel her, and she is afraid. Not for herself, I realize with surprise. For me. She can sense through the bond that I am heading toward danger and it is making her wolf frantic with the need to protect her mate.

I push reassurance through the connection, not sure if she can feel it but trying anyway. I am fine. We are fine. Go back to sleep.

The bond settles slightly but does not release. She is monitoring me, staying connected, ready to feel if something goes wrong. It should bother me, this constant awareness of each other, but instead it feels almost comforting. Like I am not alone in the dark.

We reach Owen's last known position, a stretch of road that runs parallel to the old border. Lucas points out the spot where Owen should have called in his final check but didn't. We spread out, searching on foot, following scent trails and looking for any sign of struggle.

I find the truck ten minutes later.

It is pulled off the road, half-hidden behind a stand of pine trees, positioned like Owen parked to investigate something. The driver's door is open, keys still in the ignition, headlights off. I approach carefully, every sense on high alert, looking for threats or ambush.

The truck is empty. No Owen, no signs of violence, nothing disturbed inside except the driver's seat pushed back like someone tall exited quickly. I inhale deeply, cataloging scents. Owen's scent is strong inside the truck, fresh enough that he was here recently. But outside the vehicle, his scent trail just stops.

I circle the truck, marking the boundary where his scent ends. Ten feet. Maybe twelve in one direction. His scent is clear and strong and then it is just gone, like he walked to the edge of an invisible line and ceased to exist beyond it.

That is impossible. Scent does not just stop. Even if someone tried to mask it, there would be traces, chemical signatures, something to indicate tampering. This is clean disappearance, surgical precision, like Owen was plucked out of reality itself.

"Ethan," Lucas calls from twenty feet away. "You need to see this."

I find him standing over a torn piece of fabric, dark blue, the same color as Owen's tactical vest. The fabric is shredded, not cut cleanly but ripped like something with claws or teeth tore through it. Blood stains the edges, fresh enough to still smell strongly of Owen.

So there was violence. Just not here. Wherever Owen is, whatever happened to him, it happened after he was taken from this location.

"Spread out," I order the search teams. "Look for more evidence. Blood trail, drag marks, anything."

They move efficiently, covering ground in organized patterns. I return to the truck and search it more thoroughly, checking the glove box, under the seats, the cargo bed. Looking for anything that might explain what Owen was investigating, why he pulled over, what made him get out of a secure vehicle in the middle of the night.

That is when I see it.

A syringe in the cup holder, empty, the plunger pushed all the way down. It is the kind used for medical injections, large gauge needle, the barrel still slightly wet inside like it was used recently. I pick it up carefully and inhale.

Chemicals. Definitely chemicals, something antiseptic and sharp. But underneath that, something else. Something organic and wrong and horribly familiar in a way that makes my wolf recoil.

I know this smell.

I know it because I smelled it six years ago in the packhouse after the fire, when we were pulling bodies from the wreckage and some of them were not burned enough to hide what had happened to them. I smelled it in the medical examiner's report when Sarah Vance walked me through what she found, the internal damage that made no sense with fire as cause of death.

I smelled it the night my parents died.

The syringe shakes in my hand. I force my breathing to steady, force my mind to work through the implications instead of the emotion. This scent, these chemicals, they are connected to the plague. This is how it was delivered six years ago, injected directly into wolves who were then left to die while the bioweapon worked through their systems.

Someone injected Owen with plague.

Someone took him from this location, injected him with the same bioweapon that killed two hundred wolves, and is doing it again right now under my watch.

The mate bond screams suddenly, Kaye's terror flooding through with such intensity that I actually stagger. She felt it, felt my realization, felt my horror and rage bleeding through the connection. I try to lock it down, try to shield her from this, but the bond is too strong and I am too angry to control it properly.

Lucas appears beside me. "Ethan, what is it? What did you find?"

I hold up the syringe and watch his expression carefully. Looking for surprise, shock, concern. Looking for any sign that he knows what this is or what it means.

His face does exactly what it should. His eyes widen, his posture shifts to high alert, and he reaches for his radio immediately. "All teams, we have a medical emergency situation. Owen may have been exposed to contamination. No one touches anything without gloves. Mark any evidence you find but do not handle it directly."

He sounds perfect. Concerned, professional, exactly what a Beta should sound like in a crisis. But Kaye's words echo in my mind: His scent is wrong somehow, like it does not quite match the rest of him.

I study Lucas as he coordinates the search teams, and I try to see what Kaye saw. His scent is normal, pine and earth and wolf. His movements are familiar, the same efficient grace he has had since we were teenagers. There is nothing obviously wrong.

But I am looking now. Really looking. And I notice small things I never noticed before.

The way his eyes track movement with predatory precision that seems sharper than it should be.

The way his scent does not quite mix with the forest around us, like it sits on top of the environment instead of blending with it.

The way he moves through the search grid with the confidence of someone who already knows what we will find.

Stop it. This is Lucas. Your best friend since you were eight years old. The person who survived the fire with you, who helped you bury your parents, who has stood by your side through six years of rebuilding. You are looking for suspicion because Kaye planted doubt and you are stressed and two wolves are missing and you are grasping at anything that makes sense of this nightmare.

Except what if she is right?

What if the person I trust most in the world is the person I should trust least?

"We need to get this to Sarah," I say, holding up the syringe. "She needs to analyze it, confirm what it is."

"Agreed." Lucas looks at the trees, at the darkness beyond the search perimeter. "But Ethan, if someone is using bioweapons again, if this is the same plague from six years ago, we have a much bigger problem than missing enforcers."

"I know."

"The pack will panic. When word gets out that wolves are disappearing and plague might be involved, they will run. We will lose everything we rebuilt."

He is right. I can feel it already, the fragile stability of Blackwater Pack balanced on the edge of collapse. One more push and we fracture, two hundred wolves scattering to other territories, leaving me Alpha of nothing but ghosts and accusations.

"We contain the information," I decide. "Only senior wolves know about the plague connection. Everyone else thinks this is a rogue attack or a kidnapping. We have time to investigate before we cause mass panic."

Lucas nods slowly. "And the Muani girl? She knows about the plague theory. What if she talks?"

"She won't." I say it with more confidence than I feel. "She is in the basement under guard. She is not talking to anyone."

"Except you." Lucas meets my eyes and I see something in his expression I cannot identify. "She talks to you. And you listen because of the bond."

"What is your point?"

"My point is that you need to be careful, Ethan. That girl is connected to all of this somehow. Her father's name, the plague, the timing of her arrival right when wolves start disappearing again. It is too much coincidence."

"You think she is involved?" The idea is absurd and also terrifying because if Kaye is somehow connected to what is happening, the mate bond makes me vulnerable in ways I cannot defend against.

"I think she might know more than she is saying. I think you should question her properly, Alpha to prisoner, without letting the bond influence your judgment."

He is being reasonable. Logical. Everything a good Beta should be in a crisis. But something about the way he says it makes my wolf bristle, protective instincts flaring in a way that has nothing to do with logic.

"I will handle Kaye," I say, and my voice comes out harder than intended. "You handle the search. Find Marcus. Find out where these wolves are being taken. And do it before anyone else disappears."

Lucas holds my gaze for a moment longer, then nods and moves away to coordinate the teams. I watch him go and I hate that I am suspicious, hate that Kaye's observation has poisoned something that should be certain.

The syringe sits in my pocket, heavy with implications. I need to get it to Sarah, need confirmation that this is what I think it is. But first I need to secure the scene, make sure nothing else is out here that we are missing.

The mate bond pulses again, Kaye's presence a constant hum at the edge of my awareness. She is still awake, still monitoring me through the connection. Still afraid.

I am afraid too, I realize.

Afraid that the plague is back.

Afraid that my best friend might be a traitor.

Afraid that everything I thought I knew about the past six years is built on lies.

And afraid that the daughter of Kieran Muani might be the only person telling me the truth.