The mont his phone buzzed, Trevor snatched it off the table like a man who had just received a life-or-death transmission from the president.
His hand moved so quickly, Roman—who sat quietly across from him—barely caught the motion. Trevor’s eyes darted to the screen, and when he saw the na that popped up, the tight coil of anxiety in his chest loosened just a bit.
"Freya," he breathed, exhaling a sigh that was soft, almost reverent, like a man praying for calm in the middle of a storm and getting an answer.
His fingers danced across the screen with practiced ease, opening the ssage. A grin flickered across his lips as his eyes scanned the contents, lighting up with a mix of satisfaction and urgency.
"I got the number," he announced, his voice laced with triumph, but he didn’t wait for Roman to react. He was already turning his attention back to the device, opening his tracker app and typing rapidly. His focus had narrowed into a tunnel, nothing else in the room existed anymore.
Roman said nothing. His form remained still, lounging against the back of the leather armchair with an unreadable expression. His fingers were steepled together in front of his face, a predator waiting for the right mont to strike.
He didn’t need to ask questions. He knew exactly what Trevor was doing.
Trevor’s fingers moved quickly, inputting data, his brows furrowing as the application pinged and flickered.
Then his voice cut through the tense silence, a slow, almost theatrical drawl.
"Current location unavailable," he murmured, tapping at the screen again as if sheer determination would force the device to cough up more information. "Last known location..."
He zood in, his knuckles going white from how tightly he gripped the phone. "Monero," he finally revealed, the na tumbling out like a curse. His brows knitted together, each syllable laced with disbelief and anger.
Across from him, Roman’s lips curved into a smirk. Not one of amusent, but the kind that belonged to a man who had guessed right and didn’t like what he knew. "I suspected it was going to be Monero," he said with a dark edge in his voice. "I can’t believe an Oga wolf is conniving with dark witches to kill her own niece." He scoffed quietly, the sound bitter. "Truly mind-boggling. Where exactly in Monero is the bastard located?"
Trevor didn’t respond imdiately. His eyes remained fixed on the screen, scanning, prodding the app for more. "Sowhere in Refina Forest," he finally said. "That’s all I got." He gave the phone a shake, like he could rattle more data loose, but nothing new appeared.
Roman’s eyes narrowed slightly. "Send it to Liam," he said without hesitation. "Tell him I need him to find the bastard."
Trevor glanced up, mouth opening to ask sothing, but before he could speak, Roman was already standing, his powerful fra moving with a suddenness that made Trevor flinch in surprise.
"Where are you going?" Trevor asked quickly, his voice holding a tinge of alarm as he rose from his chair.
Roman didn’t break stride. His voice was calm but carried that undercurrent of danger that always surfaced when he was on the verge of action.
"Don’t worry," he said, his tone clipped, eyes set like stone. "I’m not going to kill anybody. Not yet, at least," he added coldly, then stepped out of the house, leaving Trevor staring after him.
***
"This is most definitely a trap," Freya said, her voice sharp with disapproval as she stared hard at the phone screen. Her arms were crossed, one brow raised in a perfect arc of skeptical disdain. "I don’t believe it one bit. And ’co alone’? Why the hell do you need to go alone?"
The ssage on Tessy’s phone still glowed softly between them, ominous in its simplicity. A ti. A location. And a condition: co alone.
Tessy’s eyes flickered with uncertainty. "So you’re saying I shouldn’t go?" she asked, her voice carrying a trace of suspicion, like a woman walking a tightrope between instinct and impulse.
Freya’s mouth dropped open. "Wait. You were already considering it? Seriously?"
Her tone was incredulous, laced with the kind of disbelief only best friends could muster. She leaned forward slightly, like she was trying to get a better look at Tessy’s face to confirm if she was serious or had just temporarily lost her mind.
"If I wasn’t here," Freya continued, her voice climbing an octave, "you would’ve believed this ssage and actually gone to a park. At eleven. At night. Alone. Just to confirm what?" She threw her hands up. "Is it worth risking your life for?"
Tessy’s voice was quieter this ti, almost guilty. "I wouldn’t be going alone. You’d co with ."
"The ssage said to co alone," Freya snapped. "And no. I’m not coming with you. And neither are you going anywhere. No way I’m letting you walk into that trap."
There was a beat of silence between them.
Tessy’s eyes burned with sothing deeper than curiosity.
"Aren’t you curious?" she asked quietly, her voice low but intense. "Don’t you want to know what it could be?"
Freya sighed heavily, dragging a hand down her face. "Of course I’m curious, Tess. But I’m not a fool either."
"So, you’re saying I’m foolish?" Tessy asked, her tone sharper now, her back straightening like a shield had gone up.
"No." Freya’s voice softened, and she reached across, her hand hovering as if unsure whether to touch Tessy’s. "I’m saying you’re hurt and desperate right now. You’re not thinking clearly. I understand the need to know the truth. But we have to be smart about this, Tess. We have to be cautious."
Tessy leaned back, folding her arms. "What if this is our only chance to find out the truth? You said we needed to investigate. How do we do that if we shy away from sothing like this?"
Freya’s shoulders sagged under the weight of the mont. She looked at her friend and saw the raw vulnerability that peeked through her anger.
"You’re not going to let this go, are you?" Freya asked quietly.
Tessy’s eyes were fierce, steady. "I just want to find out the truth about what happened. I think my mom deserves that. If there is sothing she wanted to know... if that video was her trying to tell sothing, then I don’t want to pass up the chance to hear it."
Freya inhaled slowly through her nose, nodding slightly as if trying to accept the inevitable. Another sigh slipped from her lips, a long, weary sigh, filled with resignation.
"Maybe," Tessy said carefully, "we should involve the police. As a safety asure."
"No," Freya said imdiately, her voice sharp with finality. "We’ll only be stirring up bigger problems if we do that." Her eyes locked with Tessy’s, serious and unblinking. "This... this isn’t sothing we can just throw to the cops. There are things in motion here we don’t fully understand. Involving outsiders could blow everything up in our faces."
"So, what?" Tessy whispered. "We do nothing?"
"I didn’t say that," Freya replied, conflicted. "My heart is screaming that sothing’s not right."
***
~ Luminera ~
Williams had only just concluded an intense strategy session with the warriors of his pack, the kind that left his mind buzzing and his shoulders tight from the sheer weight of responsibility. The mont he stepped out of the eting hall and into the open air, seeking a mont to clear his head, his phone buzzed in his pocket. It was a ssage from Trevor.
He quickly opened it and read its content, but the ssage was incomplete. A furrow ford between Williams’s brows as he stared at the screen, ntally weighing what was wrong and who they wanted him to find.
He turned sharply on his heel and began walking toward his office, intending to call Roman imdiately for more context. His fingers had barely hovered over the screen when a different call lit up his phone, the na flashing across the display: Ed.
"Ed?" Williams answered as he pressed the phone to his ear, his tone calm but edged with urgency. He wasn’t sure what to expect. Hope had beco a cautious thing these days, a flicker always threatened by the winds of disappointnt.
Ed was the lead on the current search party combing through Monero and its environs, trying to track down Charlotte—the old witch who knew far more than she let on.
"Alpha, we arrived at the east mountain of Monero," Ed began, his voice steady but heavy with the weight of a problem. "We found the cottage. It’s exactly where the source said it would be. But... there’s a problem."
Williams’s jaw tightened instinctively. "What’s that?" he asked, already bracing for bad news. His fingers tightened around the phone, and his brow furrowed deeper.
"There’s a fog," Ed said, his voice dropping slightly, as if even he couldn’t quite believe it himself. "A thick, unnatural fog surrounding the entire area. We can see the cottage through it, like it’s taunting us, but we can’t reach it."
Williams’s steps slowed. "How do you an?"
"We tried to reach it several tis," Ed confird. The frustration in his voice now bled through, no longer held back. "Every path we take seems to lead us right back to our starting point. It’s like we’re walking in circles. No matter what direction we move in, we can’t break through the fog’s boundary."
A tight silence followed his words, filled only by the faint rustling of wind on Ed’s end and the slow exhale of breath from Williams’s.
"Wait there," Williams finally said. "I’ll be with you shortly."
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