Chapter 129 Two Plans
THIRD POV
The rain had started an hour before they reached the pack border, which suited all three of them perfectly well. It kept people inside, reduced visibility, and muffled sound in a way that made moving through the outer edges of the territory considerably easier than it would have been on a clear night.
Hannah knew this pack. She had lived here long enough to know which routes were patrolled and which ones the guards considered too peripheral to bother with on wet nights when they would rather be inside.
She led them through the eastern edge and into the cluster of abandoned structures that sat far enough from the main settlement that no one came here without a specific reason.
The building they settled in smelled of damp wood and old ash. There was no furniture. They arranged what they had brought with them and made do.
The Grandmaster reached them shortly after they had settled.
His voice arrived the way it always did now. From somewhere inside the mind.
“Your first task is straightforward. There is a wolf in this pack who has recently come into her power. A newly emerged wolf, but not an ordinary one. I need you to find her. You’ll be able to sense her when you’re close, her energy will register as significantly stronger than anyone around her. It will feel like standing next to something that outweighs you. You’ll know it when you feel it.”
Lisa frowned.
“Why are we looking for her? What has she done?”
“You’re not required to understand the reason. You’re required to complete the task. Keep yourselves invisible, generate no attention, and report back by end of tomorrow. If you’re found out, I won’t be retrieving you.”
His presence withdrew as cleanly as it had arrived.
The three of them sat in the quiet that followed.
Lisa was the first to speak.
“This isn’t what any of us agreed to. We’re doing his reconnaissance work now? Finding people for him so he can do whatever he wants with them? I didn’t break out of a cell for this.”
Luke looked at her from across the dim space.
“Keep your voice at a manageable level and do what you’re told. He can hear more than you think he can. If you want to argue the terms of your arrangement, do it when you’re somewhere he isn’t.”
She pressed her mouth shut, visibly unhappy, and said nothing further.
Hannah said nothing either. She was turning her own thoughts over carefully, not wanting either of them to see what was behind her eyes. She had her own calculations running about what the Grandmaster wanted with this wolf, and none of the conclusions she was arriving at were particularly comfortable.
They slept in shifts.
In the morning they split up before the sun had fully cleared the horizon, spreading out to cover as much of the pack territory as they could without drawing attention. Hannah pulled a plain dark wrap over her hair and kept to the quieter outer paths. Lisa worked the market area, head down, moving like someone with somewhere to be. Luke went deeper into the residential areas, slow and methodical.
Hannah walked for several hours and felt nothing that matched what the Grandmaster had described. The energy around her was ordinary. The routine texture of a pack going about its morning. Nothing that outweighed her. Nothing that registered as extraordinary.
She was back at the cottage before midday.
Lisa returned not long after, shaking water from her jacket, expression flat.
“Nothing,” Hannah said before Lisa could ask.
“Same.” Lisa dropped onto the floor and leaned against the wall.
They waited for Luke.
He came back close to noon, moving quickly, and the look on his face when he came through the door made both of them go still. He was not the type to display frustration openly, which made seeing it now considerably more alarming than it would have been from someone else.
He didn’t explain. He just moved around the space, tightly wound, until he had worked enough of it off to sit down.
The Grandmaster’s voice returned shortly after.
“I assume from the silence that none of you found what I asked for.”
Luke lowered himself to one knee.
“Forgive us. We covered the entire accessible territory. There was nothing matching your description present.”
“That’s because she’s no longer in the pack.” His voice carried no particular surprise, as though he had already suspected this. “She left before you arrived. You would have detected her immediately if she had still been there. Go back to where you came from. I’ll give you your next direction when you’re on the road.”
The connection closed.
Lisa looked at the ceiling.
“We just spent a night in the rain and an entire morning walking around this pack for nothing. I could have been here doing something useful.” She didn’t elaborate on what useful meant. It was clear enough from the way she said it.
Hannah didn’t respond to her.
Hannah was thinking about Adriana. She had known, even when the Grandmaster didn’t say the name, who the wolf was that he was looking for. The description was too specific to be anyone else. A newly emerged wolf with power that outweighed everyone around her. In this pack, in this moment, it could only be one person.
And now Adriana was somewhere out there, moving, and the Grandmaster knew it and was redirecting all three of them toward her.
Hannah had her own reasons for wanting Adriana out of the picture. Those reasons had nothing to do with whatever the Grandmaster was building. She didn’t want her dead. She wanted her gone, which was different, or at least she had always told herself it was different.
But the Grandmaster’s interest in her felt like something else entirely. Something that wouldn’t end cleanly.
Hannah had been quieter than usual all morning, and as the others gathered their things she sat apart from them, working through something internally that she wasn’t sharing.
She had felt it when Adriana had shifted. She had been close enough that night that the energy had been unmistakable. She had told herself it wasn’t significant. That Adriana’s wolf, newly emerged and unformed, wouldn’t be enough to matter.
She was beginning to think she had been wrong about that.
The Grandmaster had no interest in unimportant things. If he was redirecting all three of them toward one person, that person was not ordinary.
The others were ready to leave.
Hannah had made her own private decision. She would leave with them. She would stay close enough to the Grandmaster’s operation to remain useful. And when the right moment came — when she could get to Adriana alone, without Luke and without Lisa, and without the Grandmaster watching — she would handle things in the way that served her best.
Adriana out of the picture. Elijah, eventually, turned back in her direction.
That was still the plan. It had always been the plan. Everything else was just the road to get there.
She picked up her bag and followed the others out into the grey morning.