Chapter 103 The blind spot
Kane walked into the command room with Aria. The twins were already there, sitting on the floor near the far wall, stacking blocks with the kind of focused indifference that only very small children could manage. Aria glanced at them before she looked at Marcus.
Marcus was standing at the table with a tablet in his hand. He looked like he had not slept.
“You asked me to dig,” he said. “This is what I found.”
Kane crossed his arms. “Go.”
Marcus started with Amanda. “Her bloodline is real. She is your father’s daughter. Her mother was a powerful witch, and Amanda inherited that. But what she has shown us is not everything she has.”
“How much is she hiding?” Kane asked.
“Enough that I could not find a clean record anywhere she has lived. She moves. She leaves. Whatever happens in between, she makes sure it does not follow her.”
Aria kept her eyes on the twins. “Has she hurt people?”
“There are suggestions of it. Nothing I can prove. But the pattern is there.”
The room stayed quiet for a moment.
“Jacob,” Kane said.
Marcus swiped to the next screen. “Loyal to Amanda. But he is also connected to a hybrid community. Part witch, part wolf. They have been positioning themselves for a long time. They see Alphas as the primary obstacle to what they want.”
“And what do they want?” Aria asked.
“Werewolves weakened enough that the power balance shifts. If that happens, they move into the space left behind.”
Aria looked at Kane. He was already watching her.
“Jacob is not a hybrid,” Marcus continued. “But he operates inside that network. They have resources we have not been able to map yet. And someone is feeding them information. Someone with access.”
Kane’s jaw tightened. “Inside the pack.”
“Possibly. Or outside. Alexander and Victoria are not off the table. I cannot narrow it yet.”
Aria turned away from the twins and faced the table. “So Amanda is my half-sister. And she may be working against everything we are trying to protect.”
Neither man answered her. They did not need to.
She looked down at her hands. Thought about the first time she had seen Amanda. The way she had held herself. Careful. Measured. Like someone who knew exactly how much space they were allowed to take up.
She had read that as nerves.
She understood now it was something else.
“Her magical signature is distinct,” Marcus said. “If she is working with others and they are amplifying each other, the combined output becomes something harder to track and harder to stop.”
Kane unfolded his arms. “Then we stop guessing and start watching. Surveillance on both of them. Their communications, their movements, any magical activity in or around where they are being held.”
“Already running,” Marcus said. “I set it up before I called you.”
Kane nodded once.
Aria glanced at the twins again. The older one had knocked the stack over and was laughing about it. The younger one looked personally offended.
She thought about what it would mean if Amanda got close to them. If any of this got close to them.
Kane’s hand found hers without her asking.
“Nothing reaches them,” he said quietly. Not a promise. A fact.
The tablet pinged.
Marcus looked down and his expression shifted. “This is coming from the containment site.”
Kane dropped her hand and moved to the table. “They should still be there.”
Marcus pulled up the map. The magical signature had moved. Faint but legible. Something had been disturbed, and recently.
Kane was already heading for the door. “How long ago?”
“Minutes,” Marcus said.
They moved fast through the forest. The ground was soft from rain and the trees were dense enough that the light from the compound disappeared quickly behind them. Kane ran ahead, his senses pulling him forward. Aria kept pace. Marcus directed them through an earpiece.
When they reached the site, Kane stopped first.
The door to the containment building hung open. The locks had not been picked. They had been taken apart, cleanly, by someone who understood exactly what they were dealing with.
Aria stepped inside. Empty cots. A knocked over cup. The faint residue of magic still sitting in the air like a smell that had not cleared.
They were gone.
She stood in the middle of the room and felt the weight of it settle.
All the monitoring. All the caution. Someone had moved faster.
Kane came to stand beside her. He did not say anything for a moment.
“They had help,” he said finally. “Someone on the outside knew the layout, knew the locks, and knew exactly when to move.”
Marcus appeared in the doorway. He crouched near the threshold and studied the ground. “Two sets of tracks moving north. And a third set. Whoever helped them came from that direction and left the same way.”
Kane looked at Aria.
She was already thinking about Amanda standing in their home. Walking their halls. Watching the twins play with that careful, measured expression on her face.
“She was gathering information the entire time,” Aria said.
Kane’s eyes went to the tree line. “Then we move before she uses it.“