Chapter 226

Chapter 226
Lynette's POV

I helped Elara through the front door as quietly as I could. The house was dark except for the dim hallway light Mom always left on.

"Can you make it upstairs?" I whispered.

Elara nodded, gripping the banister. Her face was pale, tight with pain. That ankle was worse than she'd let on during the car ride home.

I watched her limp up the stairs, one slow step at a time. Waited until I heard her bedroom door click shut.

Then I stood there in the hallway. Listening.

Dad's snoring drifted from the master bedroom. Steady. Deep. Mom's lighter breathing underneath it. Ethan's room was silent—he was a quiet sleeper.

Good. Everyone was out.

I stepped onto the front porch and pulled the door shut behind me. The night air hit my face, cool and sharp. I breathed it in deep, let it clear my head.

Sophia's voice kept playing in my mind. "Next time I'll make sure both of them disappear. The cripple and her psycho sister."

My hands curled into fists.

She'd called whoever was pulling her strings. Reported the failed plan. And that voice on the other end—male, deep, authoritative—had given her new orders.

I'd dealt with enough Pack politics in my past life to recognize a chain of command when I heard one. Sophia wasn't the top of this food chain. Someone bigger was backing her.

And I had a pretty good idea who.

Blythe Harrison didn't have the balls or the brains to orchestrate something this organized. But his connection to the Harrington Pack? That was the link.

Kael's father.

The current Alpha of Pinehollow.

I leaned against the porch railing, thinking it through. Marcus getting fired from Harrison's factory. Sophia's confidence even after I'd humiliated her publicly. The resources to track Elara's schedule, sabotage her routine, plant someone to injure her right before the showcase.

This wasn't random teenage bullying. This was calculated. Strategic.

Someone wanted my family broken. Wanted us desperate and scrambling.

The question was why.

I thought about what Kael had told me. His father's paranoia. His need to control every aspect of the Pack. His hatred of anything that threatened his authority.

And here we were—the Grey family. Outcasts who'd been banished for refusing a direct order. Living on the edge of his territory. Marcus had refused to kill human witnesses. Had chosen morality over obedience.

That kind of defiance? To an Alpha like Kael's father?

It was a disease that needed to be eradicated.

I straightened up. Rolled my shoulders back.

Fuck waiting around for the next attack.

If someone wanted a war, I'd give them one. But on my terms.

I glanced at the house next door. Kael's place. The windows were dark except for one—second floor, corner room. His study.

He was still awake.

Perfect.

---

I changed into dark clothes in my room. Black joggers, black hoodie, hair tied back tight. Moved through the house like a ghost—twenty years of hunting in the North had taught me how to walk without making a sound.

Out the back door. Across our yard. The fence between our properties was barely four feet high. I vaulted it without breaking stride.

Kael's backyard was neat. Too neat. Trimmed grass, organized flower beds, a stone pathway leading to the back porch. It looked like something out of a magazine.

I crossed to the side of the house. His study window was on the second floor, but there was a trellis running up the wall. Covered in some kind of climbing vine.

I tested it with one hand. Solid enough.

I climbed. Fast and smooth. My muscles remembered this—scaling cliffs in the territory, climbing trees to get a better vantage point during hunts. This was nothing.

I reached the window in seconds. Peered through the glass.

Kael was sitting at his desk, head bent over some papers. The lamp cast shadows across his face, made his jaw look even sharper. He was wearing a plain black t-shirt, hair slightly messy like he'd been running his hands through it.

I knocked on the window.

His head snapped up. Those amber eyes locked onto mine, widening for just a second before his expression smoothed into something calmer.

He stood, crossed to the window, and opened it.

"What happened?" His voice was low. Urgent. His gaze swept over me like he was checking for injuries.

I climbed through the window, dropped onto his study floor. "We need to talk."

Kael closed the window behind me. "It's past midnight."

"I know what time it is."

He studied my face. Whatever he saw there made him nod slowly. "Alright. Talk."

I kept my voice quiet. "Elara got hurt today. Someone sabotaged her ankle right before the swim showcase."

Kael's jaw tightened. "Sophia?"

"Her or someone working with her." I paced to his desk, back again. "I covered for Elara. Did the routine myself. Afterward, I heard Sophia on the phone. She was reporting to someone. Said the plan failed. Said next time she'd make sure both of us disappeared."

"Fuck." Kael's hand came up, rubbed his face. "You think it's my father."

It wasn't a question.

"Yeah," I said. "I do. Sophia doesn't have the resources to pull this off alone. And the timing—right after my dad got fired from Harrison's factory? That's not coincidence."

Kael was quiet for a long moment. Then he moved to his desk, pulled open a drawer, and took out a rolled-up paper. He spread it across the desk surface.

A map. Hand-drawn, detailed. I recognized the layout—Pinehollow Pack territory.

"My father controls sixty percent of the Pack's military strength," Kael said quietly. He pointed to several marked locations on the map. "And about eighty percent of the economic infrastructure. Harrison's factory, the lumber mill, the processing plants—all of it runs through him."

I leaned over the map, studying it. "What about your mother?"

Kael's laugh was bitter. "She's Luna in name only. He's spent the last decade systematically cutting her out of any real power." He paused. "But she still has loyalty from some of the old guard. A few elders on the council who remember what she was like before he broke her."

I looked at him. "If you challenged him now. Formal challenge. What are your odds?"

"Thirty percent. Maybe less." His voice was flat. "He's got twenty years more combat experience than me. And Drake, the others—they respect you, respect the training you've been giving us. But when it comes to an Alpha challenge? Blood loyalty might override everything else."

"So we can't go head-to-head."

"No."

I circled the desk slowly, fingers trailing along the edge. My mind was already working through possibilities, strategies, weak points.

"Then we don't fight him directly," I said. "We make him remove himself."

Kael's eyes sharpened. "How?"

I stopped at the map, looked at the marked location of Harrison's factory. "Sophia's a chess piece. Useful, but expendable. The real player is Blythe Harrison—he's the one who fired my father on orders from above."

"You want to go after Blythe?"

"No." I tapped the factory location. "I want to create a crisis. Something big enough that your father has to personally handle it. Something that pulls him away from the Pack's power center."

Kael moved closer, studying the map with me. I could feel the heat of him at my side. "What kind of crisis?"

"Harrison's factory." I traced the supply lines marked on the map. "Major equipment failure. Supply chain breakdown. Make it look catastrophic but keep it contained enough that no one actually gets hurt."

Understanding dawned in Kael's eyes. "He'd be completely consumed by it. The factory's too important to the Pack's economy. If it goes down, he'd have to personally oversee every repair, manage the investors, handle the workers. He wouldn't have time for anything else."

"Exactly. And while he's distracted—"

"I consolidate power here." Kael's eyes gleamed. "He can't fight on two fronts at once. If he's scrambling to save the Pack's economic backbone, he won't notice me making moves with the council."

"How long would you need?"

"Forty-eight to seventy-two hours minimum."

I nodded. "That's doable. A factory crisis of that scale? He'll be at the site around the clock—managing damage control, dealing with investors, keeping the workers from panicking. He won't have the bandwidth to monitor Pack politics."

Kael was quiet for a moment. Then he looked at me directly. "This plan has one non-negotiable requirement. We can't actually hurt anyone. No workers get injured. No one dies."

"I'm not a monster, Kael." My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. "I've done this before—took out an entire supply depot in the North without a single casualty. You target the right systems at the right time. Coolant lines during off-hours. Electrical panels when the floor's empty. Make it look catastrophic but keep the danger contained."

His eyes narrowed slightly. "You've sabotaged industrial sites before?"

"Rival Packs don't just fight with claws and teeth," I said flatly. "Sometimes you cripple their economy instead. Cleaner. More effective."

His expression softened slightly. "Okay. Then I'll handle the political side. Contact the elders. Set up emergency council meetings for when he leaves."

We stood there, facing each other across the map. The desk lamp threw shadows between us.

I held out my hand. "Three days from now. We move."

Kael's hand closed around mine. His grip was firm, warm. "Three days."

Our eyes met. Held.

For a second, I felt it again—that pull. The same one I'd felt in the forest that night. My wolf recognizing something in him. Something that called to the deepest part of me.

His thumb brushed across my knuckles. Just once. So quick I might have imagined it.

Then he let go.

"You should get back before someone notices you're gone," he said quietly.

"Yeah."