Chapter 154 Chapter 154

Chapter 154 Chapter 154
Hunter's POV

I didn't sleep that night, sitting instead in the quiet of my apartment with Priya beside me, her hand resting steady on my knee while I stared at nothing.

"You don't have to talk about it," she said softly. "But I'm here if you want to."

"My dad might not make it," I said finally. "Or he might. Nobody actually knows yet. And someone's spreading rumors that Taylor's father is dead, timed exactly with the accident, and I can't shake the feeling that both things are connected."

Priya listened without judgment, without the complicated history everyone else in my life carried into every conversation about this family. She simply held my hand and let me talk until the words ran out, and I fell asleep eventually with my head against her shoulder, grateful in a strange, guilty way for how uncomplicated she made everything feel.



I called Maria first thing the next morning.

"I need everything you have on the rumor about Elias," I said. "Every trace, every source, everything."

"I've been up all night on it," she said. "The burner accounts spreading the story all activated within the same twenty minute window last night, right around the time of the King's accident. That's not coincidence, Hunter. That's coordination."

"Same playbook as Kessler," I said grimly.

"Almost exactly," Maria confirmed. "Which worries me more than a completely new method would. Whoever's doing this studied him closely. Knows what worked, what didn't, and is refining it."

"Is my father's accident connected too," I asked.

"I can't confirm it yet," Maria said. "The road showed no signs of tampering, no other vehicles involved. But given the timing, I'd be surprised if it wasn't."

I sat with that, dread settling heavy in my chest. "What about Elias himself? Is there any way to actually reach him?"

"I've been trying," Maria said. "His usual contact channels have gone completely dark. Two weeks of silence, exactly like your mother told Taylor."

"That's not automatically bad news though, right," I said. "He's gone dark before during his mission."

"It's not automatically bad," Maria agreed. "But it's not nothing either."



I spent the rest of the day working with Maria's team, cross referencing every lead we had, trying to separate truth from manufactured panic. By evening, we'd traced the rumor's origin back through several layers of false accounts, finally landing on something concrete.

"Found it," Maria said, turning her laptop toward me. "A message board post from three days ago, before the rumor ever went public. Someone discussing Elias's last known location, specific enough that only someone with real intelligence access could have known it."

"So whoever started this actually does know something about where my father's been," I said slowly.

"It looks that way," Maria confirmed.

My phone buzzed. Taylor.

"Hunter," she said, her voice tight with barely controlled emotion. "Mom got a message. From an encrypted line she doesn't recognize, but it used a code phrase only my dad knows."

"What did it say?"

"That he's alive," Taylor said, relief and confusion tangled together in her voice. "But that he's been dark on purpose. He found something, Hunter. Something big enough that he couldn't risk any communication being intercepted."

"What did he find?"

"The severance text," Taylor said. "The one he's been searching for since before I was born. The ritual that could separate Doran's power from the covenant completely, without needing completion at all."

My chest tightened. "That's what everyone's been fighting over this entire time. If that's real—"

"It changes everything," Taylor finished. "Again."



I met her and Asher at the palace an hour later, the three of us gathering in the same study where so much of this had unfolded over the past year.

"If Elias actually found it," Maria said, once we'd all settled, "and if whoever's targeting this family right now knows that too, that explains the timing perfectly. This isn't just about destabilizing the pack through grief and rumor. It's about controlling the narrative before Elias can actually deliver what he's found."

"So someone wants to stop him," Asher said.

"Or capture whatever he's carrying before he reaches Taylor," Maria said grimly. "The severance ritual would end this entire conflict permanently. That threatens whoever's picking up where Kessler left off."

"We need to protect him," Taylor said, fierce determination cutting through her exhaustion. "Whoever's out there, whatever they're planning, my father can't complete this journey alone if people are actively hunting him down for it."

"Agreed," I said. "Maria, can we send a secure team to meet him?"

"I'll need his last confirmed location," Maria said. "Which we don't have yet, given how carefully he's been avoiding contact."

Taylor's phone buzzed suddenly, cutting through the tense planning. She checked it fast, her face draining of color.

"It's him," she said. "Dad. He says he's three days out. He's coming home. With the text."

Relief flooded through the room, fragile but real, everyone absorbing the news with cautious hope.

"Three days," I said. "We need every guard we can spare protecting his route home."

"Already on it," Maria said, already typing fast.

We sat together a while longer, working through logistics, the exhaustion of the last day finally starting to ease under the weight of actual, tangible hope.

My phone buzzed again just as I was getting ready to leave.

Unknown number.

I opened it slowly, dread pooling cold in my stomach even before I read the words.

Three days, is it? How convenient that you all know exactly when to expect him now. Thank you for confirming that, Hunter. I was beginning to worry I'd have to work much harder to find him myself.

My blood ran cold, understanding hitting fast and horrible.

Someone had been listening. Somehow, impossibly, our entire conversation, meant to be secure, private, protected within the palace's own walls, had reached exactly the person we were trying to keep it from.