Chapter 3 What We're Hunting
KIRA POV
I watch through the nurse's office window as Declan reaches Uncle Matthias's truck.
They're too far away for me to hear what's being said, but I can read body language. Matthias goes rigid the second Declan approaches. His shoulders square, his stance widens. Protective. Aggressive. The way wolves position themselves before a fight.
Declan stops exactly six feet away. Respectful distance. Non-threatening. But his hands stay loose at his sides, ready.
They're talking. Matthias shakes his head sharply. Declan says something else, gestures toward the school. Toward the nurse's office. Toward me.
My uncle's face goes from defensive to dangerous.
Mrs. Palmer's phone rings, making me jump. She answers it, listens for a moment, then looks at me with confusion. "Your uncle says to stay here. He'll be right in."
My stomach drops.
Through the window, I watch Matthias point at Declan, say something that makes the younger wolf's jaw tighten. Then my uncle turns and walks toward the school entrance, leaving Declan standing alone in the parking lot.
Declan's eyes find mine through the window.
Even from this distance, I feel it. That pull. That recognition. Whatever woke up inside me when he touched my wrist is awake now and won't go back to sleep.
He doesn't look away. Neither do I.
The office door opens. Matthias walks in, and the temperature in the room seems to drop ten degrees. He nods at Mrs. Palmer with forced politeness. "Thank you for calling me. Kira, let's go."
"But that boy said he needed to—" Mrs. Palmer starts.
"That boy," Matthias says, his voice sharp enough to cut, "doesn't need anything from my niece. Come on, Kira. Now."
I grab my bag and follow him out, but I can't help looking back at the window. Declan is still there, still watching. His expression is unreadable, but something about the set of his shoulders makes him look resigned. Like he expected this.
Like he knows what comes next and he's not happy about it.
Matthias doesn't speak during the drive home. His knuckles are white on the steering wheel, his jaw clenched so tight I can see the muscle jumping. He's never been this angry. Not even when I destroyed Mom's suppressant herbs in a fit of rage two months after she died. Not even when he found me passed out on the bathroom floor.
This is different. This is fear disguised as fury.
We pull into the driveway of his house—our house now, I guess, though I still don't think of it that way. He cuts the engine but doesn't get out.
"Tell me what happened," he says quietly.
"In chemistry class? The beaker fell and—"
"Tell me what happened when he touched you."
My throat goes dry. "How did you know he touched me?"
Matthias turns to look at me, and his eyes are wolf-gold. Fully shifted, barely holding human form. "Because I can smell him on you. Because the suppressants I've been giving you for seventeen years just shattered like glass. Because your scent just changed, Kira, and every supernatural being within a mile radius knows exactly what you are now."
The world tilts. "What?"
"The binding I placed on you when you were born, the magic that's been hiding your wolf—it's gone. Whatever happened between you and that boy broke it." He closes his eyes, takes a shaking breath. "How much did he tell you?"
"Nothing. He touched my wrist and then left. Uncle Matt, what's happening?"
"We need to go inside. Now."
He's out of the truck before I can ask more questions. I follow him into the house, my mind racing. The suppressants didn't just hide the pain. They hid my wolf entirely. From everyone. Including me.
Inside, Matthias goes straight to his office and pulls out a locked box from his desk drawer. His hands shake as he opens it. Inside are files, photographs, newspaper clippings. He spreads them across the desk.
Three photographs of three dead people.
"These are the murders," he says. "The ones that match our curse signature. Someone is killing using Tidecaller magic, and the Council sent an investigator."
I stare at the photos. The hiker. The young woman. The Council representative. Their faces frozen in expressions of terror. "You think we did this?"
"I know we didn't. But the Council doesn't care about truth. They care about closing cases." He looks at me, and for the first time since Mom died, I see fear in his eyes. "That boy in your chemistry class isn't a student, Kira. His name is Declan Silvermaw. He's a Council Enforcer, and he's here to find out which Tidecaller is weaponizing the curse."
The air leaves my lungs. "He's Council?"
"His father runs the Pacific Northwest division. Declan's been trained since childhood to hunt down rogue wolves and eliminate threats." Matthias's voice goes hard. "And now he knows about you. He felt your wolf wake up, and he knows you're cursed. Which makes you either a victim or a suspect."
I think about Declan's eyes flashing gold in the classroom. The way he looked at me—shock and recognition and something else. Something I couldn't identify.
"He didn't seem like he wanted to hurt me," I say quietly.
"That's what makes him dangerous." Matthias starts pacing. "The Council is efficient because their Enforcers are true believers. They think they're protecting the supernatural community from chaos. Declan will investigate you, question you, get close to you—all while gathering evidence to either clear you or condemn everyone you love."
My wrist still tingles where Declan touched me. Three seconds of contact and my entire world shifted. "What do we do?"
"We keep you away from him. We—" Matthias stops mid-sentence, staring at something on the desk. One of the newspaper clippings. His face goes pale. "No. No, this can't be right."
"What?"
He grabs a file, flips through pages with shaking hands. Pulls out a photograph that looks decades old. Two men standing in front of the ocean, young and smiling. I recognize one of them as Matthias, maybe twenty years younger.
The other looks almost exactly like Declan.
"That's Declan's father," Matthias breathes. "Marcus Silvermaw. He was on the Council team that investigated the original ritual forty years ago. He was the one who ordered the Tidecallers disbanded. And now his son is here, investigating murders that perfectly match our curse."
The implications settle over me like cold water. "You think the Council is setting us up?"
"I think someone wants the Tidecallers eliminated permanently, and these murders are the justification." He looks at me with something close to desperation. "Your mother and I have been hiding you your entire life to keep you safe from exactly this. If the Council discovers our pack survived, that we've been living in secret—"
"They'll execute everyone." I finish the sentence because he can't.
"Yes."
We stand in silence, the weight of seventeen years of secrets pressing down on us. The suppressants. The hidden pack. The lies about my father leaving, about my mother's death being natural. All of it designed to keep me invisible.
And Declan Silvermaw just made me visible.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Unknown number.
I pull it out, and Matthias tenses. "Don't answer that."
But I already see the message preview:
We need to talk. Tonight. Marina dock, 10 PM. Come alone. This is about the murders—and about what happened when I touched you. -D
"He contacted you." Matthias's voice is flat. "He's making his move."
I stare at the message. Every instinct says delete it, block the number, hide. But another part of me—the part that woke up when Declan's hand touched mine—wants answers. Wants to understand what I felt in those three seconds. Wants to know why my wolf recognized him like she'd been searching for him my entire life.
"I'm going," I say.
"Absolutely not."
"Uncle Matt, he knows about me now. He knows I'm Tidecaller. If I don't talk to him, he'll come here. He'll investigate you. He'll find the pack." I meet his eyes. "At least if I meet him, I can find out what he knows. What he wants."
"What he wants is to solve his case. And you're the key to it." Matthias grips my shoulders. "Kira, listen to me. Enforcers are trained to manipulate. He'll use the bond—"
"What bond?"
Silence. Matthias's face goes carefully blank.
"What bond, Uncle Matt?"
He releases my shoulders and turns away. "You're too young to understand."
"I'm seventeen and dying from a curse. Try me."
Long pause. Then: "When wolves touch their fated mate for the first time, a bond forms. It's biological, irreversible, and it makes rational thought nearly impossible. Your wolf recognized Declan as her mate, which is why the suppressants broke. Your body thinks it found what it needs to survive."
The room spins. "Fated mate. You mean like soulmates?"
"I mean like a biological imperative that will make you trust him, want to be near him, defend him even when logic says you shouldn't." Matthias finally looks at me. "The mate bond is powerful, Kira. Powerful enough to override everything—pack loyalty, family, survival instinct. And Declan Silvermaw knows exactly what happened between you two."
My wrist burns where he touched me.
"So he'll use it," I say quietly. "Use the bond to manipulate me into giving him information."
"Yes. Which is why you can't meet him."
I look down at the message on my phone. Ten PM at the marina. Six hours from now.
Six hours to decide if I'm going to let fear control me or if I'm going to face the wolf who's hunting my family.
The wolf my body thinks is my soulmate.
The wolf who might destroy everything I love.
"I'm going," I say again, and this time Matthias doesn't argue.
He just looks at me with something that might be resignation or might be grief, and says, "Then at least go armed with the truth."
He hands me a file.
Inside are crime scene photos, Council reports, and a handwritten note in my mother's handwriting dated three weeks before she died:
If the curse doesn't break by the eclipse, the pack dies with us. Find another way. Protect Kira. Don't let them make her pay for our mistakes.
I stare at my mother's words.
Fifty-five days until the eclipse.
Fifty-five days to break a curse that's killed everyone who's carried it.
And the only person who might be able to help me is the Enforcer sent to destroy my family.
The wolf I'm apparently fated to love.