Chapter 57: The One Inside

I stared at the note.

“She’s inside already.”

The words might’ve looked like ink, but they hit like blood. I read them three times just to be sure I wasn’t imagining it. But no—each time, the message was the same.

She wasn’t coming.

She was here.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t call for help.

Instead, I stood perfectly still and listened.

The hallway outside was quiet.

Too quiet.

Then I heard it—just the softest creak of floorboards, like someone stepping back from a door.

I dropped the note and sprinted to the hallway, eyes scanning left, then right.

Nothing.

But I could feel her. That same invisible weight in the air. Like gravity had shifted and my body hadn’t caught up yet.

I called it in through the comm.

“Elena. Ethan. Echo. We have a breach.”

\---

Ten minutes later, the entire estate was on lockdown.

Guards stationed at every entry point. Echo was checking the tunnels. Elena was stalking through the hallways with her knives out like she was hunting a ghost. Ethan set up a thermal scan of the entire estate.

“There’s no signs of entry,” he said, fingers flying across the keyboard. “Which means either she’s cloaked somehow… or…”

“Or someone let her in,” I finished.

He looked up at me. “Yeah.”

I didn’t like the way that sounded.

\---

We called a meeting in the great hall. Everyone—hybrids, wolves, allies. No one got to skip.

I stood at the center and raised my voice.

“Someone left a message in my room. No one saw anything. No one heard anything. That means someone here let her in—or is working with her.”

The room buzzed with whispers and side glances.

Aidan stepped beside me, arms crossed. “We’re not pointing fingers yet. But until we find out who’s behind this, no one leaves their quarters alone. No night shifts without backup. And no contact with anyone outside this compound without authorization.”

A hybrid near the back raised a hand. “What if she’s not trying to kill you? What if she’s trying to replace you?”

The room went dead silent.

I looked at him. “Then I’d like to meet the girl who thinks she can be me.”

\---

Later, while everyone was being checked in pairs, Elena grabbed me and pulled me aside.

“We have a problem,” she said.

“Only one? That’s new.”

She wasn’t smiling. “Mara’s gone.”

My chest tightened. “What do you mean gone?”

“She’s not in her room. She’s not on the cameras. And she left this.” Elena handed me a note.

Not the same handwriting as before—but still cold.

> “I have to fix what I helped build.”

“She went after her,” I whispered.

“Or toward her,” Elena said. “Either way, she left alone.”

\---

I gathered Echo and Aidan in the control room. Ethan was already pulling up surveillance from the past few hours.

“She left through the west tunnel,” he confirmed. “No one noticed because it’s been sealed for months. But I think she knew the override codes.”

“She built the lab systems with Gregory,” I muttered. “Of course she did.”

“She’s going to her,” Echo said. “To Seraphine’s daughter.”

“Why?” Aidan asked.

“Because Mara always believed she could fix what she broke,” Echo replied. “Even if it kills her.”

\---

We didn’t wait.

We gathered a team—Elena, Echo, Aidan, Ethan, and a few trusted hybrids. We left within the hour, tracking Mara’s last location through the woods, weapons ready, tension high.

About an hour in, the fog thickened. Not natural fog—this felt different. Heavier. Like it was clinging to our skin.

“This is a trap,” Elena muttered. “You know that, right?”

“I know,” I said. “But if she’s inside already, we can’t afford to play defense.”

Suddenly, a scream cut through the trees.

High-pitched. Distant.

We ran toward it.

And found Mara—on her knees, bleeding, eyes wide with fear.

She looked up at me, and whispered, “She knew I’d come. She wanted me to. She said she had something for you.”

I knelt beside her. “Where is she?”

Mara raised a trembling hand… and pointed behind me.

I turned.

And saw her.

Gregory’s daughter.

Standing in the clearing.

Calm.

Confident.

Her smile was slow and cruel.

She didn’t speak.

She just lifted her hand—and dropped something onto the ground.

A heart.

Still beating.

Not Mara’s.

A warning.

\---

Everything happened at once.

Echo rushed forward. Elena pulled her knives. Aidan stepped in front of me, shield raised.

But by the time we reached the spot where she’d stood—she was gone.

Vanished into the fog like she’d never been there.

Except for the heart still pulsing in the grass.

“Whose is it?” Ethan asked softly.

Mara whispered, “She said it belonged to a traitor.”

I stood there, shaking with adrenaline, staring at the blood soaking into the dirt.

This wasn’t just a warning.

This was her way of saying…

> I’m already inside your walls.

> And I’m not done yet.

No one slept that night.

Not after the heart.

Not after Mara’s collapse.

Not after the message.

By morning, the estate didn’t feel like home anymore. It felt like a chessboard—one move away from checkmate, and no one knew who was holding the final piece.

Mara was stable, but unconscious. Ethan was monitoring her vitals from the med wing, muttering things under his breath like, “This is worse than that time Elena accidentally fried the east wing power grid.”

“I told you that was lightning,” she snapped. “I’m not a storm goddess.”

Ethan didn’t look up. “We literally have footage of you throwing a wrench at a panel and yelling, ‘Come on, just work!’”

“...Okay but that’s not the point.”

The banter helped. A little.

But no one was really laughing.

We were scared.

And for the first time since Gregory died, it felt like we were losing.

\---

I stood by Mara’s bedside with Echo. She hadn’t moved in hours, her face pale, lips dry. The monitors beeped steadily, but the number of wires attached to her made my skin crawl.

“She walked right into it,” Echo said, eyes locked on the screen. “She knew it was a trap and she went anyway.”

“She thought she could reason with her.”

“She can’t,” Echo replied. “That girl isn’t just Gregory’s daughter—she’s something else. Something darker. She doesn’t want peace. She wants a crown.”

A cold silence filled the room.

Then I asked the question none of us had wanted to ask yet.

“Do you think someone’s helping her from the inside?”

Echo didn’t answer at first. Then she said quietly, “I think someone already did.”

\---

Back in the war room, we reviewed the last three days of movement.

Gate entries. Supply logs. Private comms.

We were looking for a pattern.

We found one.

“I cross-referenced the names of everyone who had access to the west tunnel,” Ethan said. “Only five people in the entire estate could’ve unlocked it. One of them is Mara. Another is… Callum.”

The air froze.

Aidan tensed beside me. “No. That’s not possible.”

“He was on watch the night she left,” Ethan said. “Camera glitch happened five minutes after she passed through. System shut down for twelve minutes. Long enough for her to vanish.”

Elena stood. “You think he let her go?”

“I think…” Ethan hesitated, “he might’ve been protecting someone else.”

That was worse.

Because Callum wasn’t just my uncle.

He was one of the only people I still trusted.

\---

We found him on the training grounds, throwing punches into a sandbag like he was trying to break it in half.

When we approached, he didn’t flinch. Didn’t stop.

“You gonna tell me what this is about?” he asked, sweat dripping down his temple.

“You tell me,” I said, holding up a tablet with the log entries.

He stopped.

Took one look.

And sighed.

“Of course it was gonna come to this.”

“Then explain,” I demanded.

He stepped back, running a hand over his jaw. “Mara came to me three days ago. She said she needed to meet someone outside the walls. That it was important. That it would help you.”

“And you just let her go?”

“I thought she was bluffing. I didn’t think she’d actually do it.”

“So you covered for her,” I said flatly.

He nodded. “Yeah. I did.”

Aidan moved beside me. “You had to know this was dangerous.”

“I did,” Callum said. “But I also knew Mara’s not stupid. If she was willing to risk it, I figured she had her reasons.”

“And now someone’s dead,” I said, the words like poison in my mouth.

Callum looked at me, guilt heavy in his eyes. “I made the call. I’ll take the heat.”

“No,” I said. “You’ll help fix it.”

\---

By nightfall, we were prepping the first scout mission beyond the perimeter in weeks. Our goal? Find where she’s hiding. Gregory’s daughter. The one who calls herself Sylas.

“Seriously?” Elena said, pulling on her gear. “That’s her name? Sounds like a perfume line and a demon had a baby.”

“According to Mara’s notes, it’s short for something older,” Echo replied. “A Harbinger title: Sylastra. The One Who Ends.”

“Oh, great,” Elena muttered. “Nothing like a villain with branding.”

We prepped quietly. Everyone was tense. Ethan double-checked every drone. Echo reloaded her blade harness. Rhea packed the journal. Aidan barely spoke—his jaw tight, eyes sharp.

Me? I couldn’t stop thinking about that heart.

And what it meant.

Not just a warning.

A message.

This was personal.

\---

The forest was darker than usual.

The fog was back.

We moved as a unit—tight formation, no noise.

But after an hour, we saw something strange.

A fire.

Not large. Just a small controlled flame in the middle of a clearing.

And someone sitting beside it.

Sylas.

Alone.

Waiting.

“I’ll go,” I said, stepping forward.

“Roxanne—” Aidan started.

“I have to.”

I walked into the clearing, stopping across the fire from her.

She looked up and smiled. Calm. Confident. Exactly like her father.

“I knew you’d come,” she said.

“You killed someone on my land,” I said flatly.

“No. I punished a traitor. Big difference.”

“What do you want?”

Her eyes gleamed. “The truth. And a choice.”

She stood slowly.

“There’s a war coming, Roxanne. But it doesn’t have to be messy. Surrender your title. Hand over the hybrids. And I promise… I’ll let them live.”

I laughed, bitter and sharp. “You think I’ll bow to you?”

“No,” she said. “I think you’ll bleed.”

Then she raised her hand—and snapped her fingers.

Dozens of eyes lit up in the woods around us.

Golden. Bright.

Hybrids.

Her army.

Already waiting.

Already loyal.

And behind me…

My team stood alone.