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I leaned over her, securing her between our bodies as our hearts beat in sync.
We held still, letting her feel us together, and my mind blanked as we fell over the edge, tangled in each other.
Chapter 14
Gentry
Hidden Creek was on high alert.
Two of our wolves were taken overnight: an elder named Lancel and his grandson, one of our youngest Enforcers, Leon.
They were abducted while most of the pack was sound asleep. There were signs of a struggle, but from what Alaric had gleaned from the evidence left behind, they were outnumbered. The commander identified five sets of tracks around the scene of the crime.
We didn’t find their bodies, and there was minimal blood at the site of the attack, which led us to hope they were still alive.
The other possibility was that Blood Moon took them as hostages and wished to interrogate them. What they would do afterward, I could only imagine.
My wolf snarled. The violation of his packmates set him on edge.
We were all wound tight. Our last battle with an unsanctioned pack resulted in dozens of deaths.
But this time, we weren’t weak. We were solid, stronger than before, and the coming battle would test how far we’d come.
Alpha Wynn issued a lockdown. Every member of our pack was restricted to the den and market sectors. Only Enforcers, healers, and security had access to the third and fourth sectors closest to our borders.
I’d been in the security building for nine hours, overlooking the camera feeds. Everything seemed normal until I came across a skip in the time stamps. I frowned at the screen and rewound the feed.
“What is it?” Ezra, our head of security, asked.
“There’s a time jump. The feed cuts out, but the audio is still intact,” I said.
Ezra pushed his rolling chair toward me and looked over my shoulder, a scowl on his face. Tensions had been high since the lockdown. The past nipped at our heels, and we were determined not to let Hidden Creek fall back to its agonizing history.
My fingers flew over the keyboard as I pulled up the video and hit play.
Lancel and Leon were coming back from a run when Leon heard something and stopped to investigate. The screen went black as if an object physically covered the lens. Growls and shouts erupted, and someone cried out in pain.
“Grab them! Quick, before the patrol comes around,” a voice ordered.
There were faint scuffling sounds, followed by the rustle of dry leaves.
The audio quieted, and the visuals returned without a trace of Leon, Lancel, or their attackers.
“Pull up the internal security system,” Ezra said. “I want to check the functionality alongside the recording.”
The vein in his temple pulsed. I knew the gesture all too well. He was trying to figure out how they managed to jam the video without damaging the audio.
What concerned me most was why they went through the trouble. Was this tampering the result of a calculated effort, or was it an oversight on their part?
We replayed the video, focusing on the system’s internal command.
“Do you see that?” Ezra said, taking a closer look at the screen.
I scanned the code, looking for errors. “The video is still running.”
“They didn’t jam the system. Something blocked the camera lens.”
Which meant they knew exactly where our surveillance was. Our gazes clashed. The Blood Moon pack had been sniffing around for longer than we realized.
