Chapter 109
Cole
"I don't know." Victoria's voice cracks completely. "Connor hung up and never called again. If you find him..." Her voice breaks. "Tell him I never really hated him."
The screen goes dark.
I sit in the sudden silence, feeling Blake and Asher's shock through our bond. Below deck, Kara's sleeping scent ripples with distress—even unconscious, she senses our turmoil.
Blake emerges from the shadows, his face granite-hard. "Konstantin. I've heard stories. He runs everything from drugs to trafficking in the northern territories."
"If Connor truly owed him..." Asher's black ebony scent sharpens with tactical thinking. "We're not just looking for missing wolves. We might be going to war with a criminal empire."
My mint and ozone scent wavers between fear and determination. "Can we protect her? If this gets ugly?"
"We have to." Blake's eyes flash gold. "I promised her."
Asher pulls out his black leather notebook, begins writing in his precise hand:
Priority One: Diana Torres (Northern Lights Salon, Anchorage)—most likely to have recent information
Secondary Lead: Scarlett Reeves disappearance—may connect to Celeste's fate
Risk Option: Track Marcus Finch's paper trail
Final Confrontation: Infiltrate The Aurora Den, investigate Konstantin
I watch him work, feeling the weight of what we've set in motion. Below, through our bond, Kara stirs in her sleep. Her white musk scent carries bitterness—the taste of her nightmares.
"We tell her tomorrow?" I ask quietly.
"We let her enjoy one more peaceful day," Asher says. "When we return to Alaska, we start hunting."
Blake stares out at the dark ocean. "If her parents are dead, I'm keeping my promise. Everyone responsible bleeds."
"And if we find Connor alive?" I press.
"Then Kara gets her answers." Blake's voice turns cold. "And I get to ask him how a father chooses drugs over his daughter."
Through the bond, I feel Asher's grim agreement. My own mint scent sharpens with resolve.
We've crossed a line tonight. Manipulated my mother. Committed to a hunt that might end in blood. All for the girl sleeping below deck—the one we tortured for years before claiming her as ours.
The things we do for love, I think bitterly.
As if sensing my thoughts, Kara's scent pulses through our bond—fragile, trusting, still carrying the shadow of abandonment.
"We should sleep," Asher says finally. "Tomorrow, we give her sunshine and safety. The darkness can wait."
But as we head below deck, I catch Blake's eyes. We both know the truth.
The darkness isn't waiting.
It's been hunting Kara since the night her parents left her in the snow.
And now, finally, we're hunting it back.
Kara
The airport smelled wrong. Even through the terminal's filtered air, I could taste the difference—salt and plumeria fading into something sharp and medicinal. I stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows, watching the black sand beaches and volcanic peaks blur into memory as boarding announcements echoed around me.
My white musk scent rippled with something sour. I could smell my own anxiety, and I fucking hated it.
Don't be a coward, I told myself. You're not that scared little girl anymore.
Except I was. Deep down, beneath the Luna title and the engagement ring and the marks on my throat—I was still eight years old, standing in the snow, watching taillights disappear into a blizzard.
Blake's gunpowder hit me first—sharp, protective. His chin settled on my shoulder, beard scraping my skin in a way that should've annoyed me but instead made my wolf purr. "We'll come back."
"When?" The word came out smaller than I intended. Pathetic. Pull yourself together.
"Whenever you want." His arms wrapped around my waist, and I let myself lean back into two hundred pounds of solid muscle. "I'm an Alpha now. I can make it happen."
Can you make it so your mother doesn't look at me like I'm a tumor she's trying to cut out? Can you make it so I don't feel like I'm walking back into hell?
I didn't say any of that. Through the bond, I felt Asher's black ebony and tobacco—steady as always, trying to be the rock I could cling to—and Cole's mint and ozone, sweet with reassurance. They were trying to calm me down like I was some skittish horse about to bolt.
Maybe I was.
I let myself sink into Blake's warmth for one more moment before the flight attendant called our boarding group, her chirpy voice grating against my nerves like nails on a chalkboard.
---
The private jet's leather seats were too perfect. Too expensive. Too much like everything in my life now—beautiful on the surface, but I kept waiting for someone to rip it all away and shove me back in that goddamn storage room.
I pressed my forehead against the window, watching paradise dissolve into clouds, then endless gray ocean. The tropical heat I'd finally gotten used to was already fading from my skin, replaced by the bone-deep chill I'd carried for ten years.
You're going back. You're actually going back to that place.
My stomach twisted.
Beside me, Asher's hand found mine, his fingers threading through mine with that careful gentleness he'd been using since Hawaii. Like I was made of glass. "This time is different." His voice was quiet. Certain. "You're not the girl in the storage room anymore. You're our Luna."
Am I? Or am I still just the debt slave playing dress-up?
"The whole pack will know your status," Cole added from across the cabin, tablet balanced on his knee. He'd been researching Luna protocols since yesterday—typical Cole, trying to prepare me for every possible scenario like this was some kind of exam I could study for.
Yeah, they'll know. They'll know I'm the orphan who got knocked up by three Alphas and trapped them into mating. That's what they'll whisper.
Blake stretched out in the seat behind us, long legs invading everyone's space because personal boundaries were apparently optional when you were six-foot-four and built like a tank. "We could still move the whole operation to Hawaii. Who says Alphas have to freeze their asses off in Alaska?"
Despite everything—the anxiety eating my stomach, the fear coiling around my ribs—I almost smiled. Blake's solution to every problem was to throw money at it or relocate.
Through the bond, their affection rolled over me like warm water. But underneath—guilt. Sharp and metallic, like biting down on aluminum foil.
The hot tropical green outside faded to white. Snow appeared on distant mountains, creeping closer like a disease. Then the Alaskan coast—jagged, brutal, beautiful in its harshness.
My stomach knotted tighter.
Home, my wolf thought, already reaching for our mates' scents, stupid animal that she was.
Hell, my human mind corrected. We're going back to hell, and this time we're bringing three idiots who think they can protect us from ghosts.
---
Anchorage hit like a bitch-slap. The cold air knifed through my Canada Goose jacket the second the airport doors opened, turning my breath to steam and making my eyes water. My nose went numb instantly—a sensation I'd almost forgotten in Hawaii's endless summer, and now it came rushing back with all the memories I'd tried to bury.
Fuck. Fuck, I can't do this.
Marcus stood in the arrivals hall like some kind of Old Testament monument. Six-foot-six of silver-touched black hair and cold authority, looking exactly like he had when I was eight—ageless, untouchable, carved from ice and disappointment. His oak and leather scent forced a three-meter bubble around him—other wolves instinctively giving the former Alpha space.
Or maybe they just didn't want to get too close to the man who'd let a child sleep in a storage room for ten years.
His eyes found us immediately. Found me.
Specifically, found my left hand. The three ice-blue sapphires caught the fluorescent light, throwing prisms across my knuckles like some kind of spotlight I definitely didn't ask for.