Chapter 131
Chapter 131
Blake’s POV
Keeping things from Fiona was never something I was particularly good at.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it. I had managed it well enough in the early days before she knew what we were, before she knew what she was to me. But that was then. Now, after everything we had been through, she knew me too well and I knew it. She could read the tension in my jaw and the shift in my breathing the way most people read words on a page. Standing in that hallway watching her walk back toward the backyard with questions she had chosen not to ask yet had taken more out of me than I was willing to admit.
I turned back to the man standing in my entryway.
His name was Garrison. He was the Beta of the Crestwood Pack, a territory that sat roughly two hundred miles north of ours, and he had driven through the night to get here which told me everything I needed to know about how seriously his Alpha was taking this. We had crossed paths a handful of times over the years at inter-pack summits and border meetings. He was not the kind of man who showed up unannounced without a very good reason.
“Your father is waiting in the office,” Anthonio said quietly from behind me.
I nodded and led Garrison down the hall, closing the door behind us once we were inside. My father was already seated behind the desk, his expression the one he reserved for situations that required him to be the Alpha before he was anything else. Controlled. Measured. Revealing nothing.
Garrison took the seat across from him without being offered it, which told me his urgency outweighed his formality right now.
“I’ll get straight to it,” Garrison said, leaning forward and resting his forearms on his knees. “Three packs in the northern region have reported the same thing over the past two weeks. Unfamiliar wolves on their territory. No aggression, no direct confrontation. Just presence. Like they were mapping something.”
My father’s eyes didn’t move from Garrison’s face. “How many.”
“At least a dozen individual scents across the three territories. Could be more. They’re careful. They don’t stay long enough to be tracked properly.”
I stood with my back against the bookcase and kept my expression steady even as my wolf stirred restlessly inside me. A dozen unfamiliar scents across multiple territories in a two week window wasn’t a coincidence. It was coordination.
“And you’re bringing this to us because?” I asked.
Garrison glanced at me. “Because the pattern is moving south. And because one of our trackers picked up a trail two nights ago that led directly toward your border.” He paused. “We lost it at the tree line.”
The tree line.
I kept my face neutral but my wolf had gone very still inside me in the way he did when something shifted from a concern to a threat. Last night on the porch. The faint scent that didn’t belong. The direction it had come from.
It wasn’t carried by the wind from miles out. I had told Fiona that and I had known it wasn’t entirely true when I said it.
“You should have contacted us the moment your tracker found the trail,” my father said. His voice was even but there was an edge beneath it.
“I got in the car the moment he reported back,” Garrison said simply. “I didn’t want this going through channels until I had spoken to you directly.”
My father was quiet for a moment, his fingers laced together on the desk in front of him. Then he looked at me.
I already knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“Double the border patrol. I want warriors on rotation through the night, no gaps. And I want every unmated or lower ranked member of the pack accounted for and inside the territory before dark.” He looked back at Garrison. “Do you have any indication of who they are or what they want?”
Garrison’s expression shifted just slightly. Not much. But enough. “There’s a name that has come up in the northern packs over the past few months. Nothing confirmed. But it keeps coming up.”
The room was quiet.
“Maxwell,” I said.
It wasn’t a question. I watched Garrison’s jaw tighten and that was all the confirmation I needed. My wolf let out a low growl deep inside my chest that I kept from reaching the surface by sheer force of will. My father’s hands, still laced together on the desk, had gone very still.
Maxwell. My brother. Who I had not seen or heard from since the night we had found Fiona in that cave, half chained to a wall with his hands on her. Who had disappeared so completely after that night that even our best trackers had eventually come back empty handed. Who I had spent months telling myself was gone. Not because I believed it but because Fiona needed to feel safe and I needed her to feel safe and the alternative was something I had refused to sit with for too long.
He wasn’t gone. He had just been quiet.
And quiet, I was beginning to understand, was a great deal more dangerous.
“I need everything your trackers have,” I said to Garrison. “Every scent, every location, every detail no matter how small.”
He nodded. “That’s why I’m here.”
I pushed off the bookcase and looked at my father who was already reaching for his phone. There were calls to make, warriors to position, a perimeter to tighten before nightfall. All of that needed to happen in the next few hours and it needed to happen without the pack falling into panic and without Fiona, who was currently somewhere in my backyard helping set up a baby shower, knowing the full extent of what was unfolding until I could sit down with her properly and tell her myself.
That last part was going to be the hardest.
I stepped out into the hallway and pulled the office door shut behind me. Anthonio was waiting, leaning against the wall with his arms folded and an expression that told me he had already worked out most of it on his own.
“Maxwell?” he said quietly.
“Looks like it.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then, “Fiona is going to want to know.”
“I know.”
“Tonight isn’t going to be soon enough if he’s already been at the border.”
“I know that too.” I ran a hand through my hair and looked toward the back of the house where I could hear the faint sounds of the baby shower setup, laughter drifting in through the walls. Sara’s voice. Fiona’s laugh underneath it, short and bright and completely unaware. “But I need today to still be Sara’s day. She deserves that much. Tonight I’ll tell her everything.”
Anthonio studied me for a second before nodding once.
“Then we better make sure nothing gets past that border before tonight,” he said, pushing off the wall.
I followed him toward the back of the house, already running through everything that needed to be done before the sun went down. My wolf was restless and alert and had been since last night, and I understood now that the feeling wasn’t going to ease until I had eyes on every corner of this territory and Fiona within arm’s reach.
Whatever Maxwell was planning, he wasn’t getting near her. Not again. Not ever again.
That was the only thing I was completely certain of.