Vicky’s laugh bounced off the hospital walls, thin and wrong, and the sound made the hair on my arms rise. A mont ago, she had been begging, crying, promising anything just to stay alive.
Now she was... calm. Almost purposeful.
That shift hit my instincts like a warning bite.
This wasn’t the laugh of soone trying to survive.
This was the laugh of soone finishing a task.
"No," I breathed, the words spilling out before I could stop them. "This isn’t right. Everyone—move. Get out now. It’s a trap!"
Lewis’s scent sharpened beside , that quiet Alpha-pressure rolling off him as he scanned the room. He didn’t waste ti arguing. "Move fast," he said, voice low and clipped.
I didn’t wait. I shoved him slightly—just enough to break the cluster around the bed—and I sprinted.
I had seen what that shadow-group did to people. I had tasted their cruelty in my own skin, watched what they turned Silas and Linda into. Once their secrets started slipping into the light, they didn’t leave loose ends behind.
They erased them.
Silas and Linda chose poison. Vicky... she had chosen sothing louder.
And she knew it.
Even if we did nothing to her, they would never let her walk away after she talked. That ant she wasn’t talking to save herself.
She was talking to buy ti.
Behind , Adam was still frozen, face slack like his mind couldn’t catch up to the truth being thrown at him. Vicky stared at him with wet eyes and a mouth that still knew how to cut.
"Adam," she spat, raw hatred shaking her voice. "I hate you."
She drew a breath like she wanted it to hurt more. "You couldn’t protect . You couldn’t protect the child. You made us into this, and I’ll never forgive you. Leave. Just leave!"
Theo grabbed Adam hard and hauled him toward the door before he could fight his way back to her. The guards shifted too, moving like trained pack-fighters, shoulders tight, eyes alert.
I turned my head once—only once.
Vicky sat on the bed, tears running down her cheeks, watching Adam get dragged away. But her face stayed strangely steady. No panic. No begging. Just... acceptance.
Like she had already made peace with the end.
"Adam," she murmured to herself, so soft it almost didn’t sound real. "I’ve never regretted eting you."
She swallowed, blinking through tears. "Thank you for your love."
Then her eyes lifted to mine, and for the first ti, her warning felt honest.
"Riley," she said quietly, "stop digging. If you don’t... you’ll die badly."
"Vicky—" My voice cracked.
"Goodbye, Adam." She closed her eyes.
We were almost at the end of the hallway when Adam jerked, trying to break free. Theo held him back, their bodies colliding as they struggled.
And then—
A violent boom ripped through the air.
The floor kicked under my feet. The lights flashed. The sound swallowed everything.
For a second, my mind went blank, like my body had decided thinking was a luxury.
Adam’s cry tore through the chaos, rough and primal, the kind of sound a man makes when sothing inside him snaps.
"Vicky—NO!"
Nurses scread. People ran. Soone shouted about an earthquake, and others echoed it, because fear makes people grab the closest explanation they can hold.
The hallway filled with bodies and panic and sharp, tallic air.
I gripped Lewis’s hand with both of mine. My fingers felt numb, like they didn’t belong to . My legs locked, but Lewis’s arm ca around fast, solid and sure, pressing my shaking body against him like he could anchor back into myself.
"Don’t be scared," he murmured, palm against my forehead, his touch firm. His eyes searched my face. "Riley. I’m here."
How could I not be scared?
We had been a breath away from dying.
Linda and Silas chose quiet endings. Vicky chose fire.
And sohow... she had let us go.
If we had stayed in that ward one minute longer, we might have walked out broken—if we walked out at all.
Adam sank to his knees in the middle of the corridor, like his bones had given up holding him. His whole life looked like ruin piled on ruin. Wives gone. Son gone. Even his pride had been carved up and left bleeding in front of everyone.
I stared at him and felt sick, because the Hale pack wasn’t just powerful.
It was dangerous.
Deeper. Older. More vicious than anything I had seen in the Morrigans’ world.
"Why would Vicky lead us into a trap," I whispered, throat tight, "if she had the chance to set it off while we were still inside?"
Lewis didn’t hesitate. His voice was cold with certainty. "She was stalling."
My stomach dropped.
Camilla.
I felt it at the sa ti Lewis did, like the bond between us tugged on the sa thread.
A few minutes later, a call ca in from one of the guards back at the Hale residence.
"Camilla Morrigan is missing."
The words turned my blood to ice.
We had all rushed to the hospital. Even the guards had pulled people with them. The territory had been thinned out.
Soone created a disaster here...
So soone else could move freely there.
I swallowed hard, staring at the wall like it might give an answer. "Camilla... Silas... Vicky... they’re all different. So who is she, really?"
If Camilla was just a pawn, they wouldn’t risk this much to pull her out. Pawns are replaceable. Pawns get discarded.
But Camilla had been extracted.
Protected.
Chosen.
That ant one thing.
She wasn’t just a piece on the board.
She was a key.
I didn’t know what to say after that. My thoughts jamd together, heavy and ugly, and my heart kept punching against my ribs like it wanted to escape.
Later, when we were finally allowed near the ward again, it looked like a nightmare had chewed through it. The damage wasn’t clean. It wasn’t rciful. It was ssy, cruel, and personal.
The report ca back, and it made my skin crawl: sothing had been planted inside Vicky during surgery. A device, hidden where no one would suspect until it was too late.
By the ti she was wheeled into that operating room, she wasn’t just a patient.
She was a weapon.
My stomach flipped.
Her "last mission."
I stood there, staring at the blood-splattered walls, trying to understand who the real target had been. Lewis? ? It didn’t feel like Jeffrey—going after an old Alpha with limited movent would’ve been too easy. No need for all this smoke and confusion.
This was designed for maximum fear.
Maximum damage.
Maximum distraction.
Lewis’s jaw tightened as he looked around, eyes hard, calculating. I could feel his anger like heat under his skin. Not loud. Not ssy.
Controlled.
The kind that promised repaynt.
Maybe the shadow-group had realized the underground base—the one that swallowed their people—had Lewis’s scent all over it. Maybe he had disrupted their flow, stepped on their hidden deals, broken their quiet system.
So they ca back with punishnt.
And they used Vicky to deliver it.
My throat closed as the reality settled deeper.
We were close to death again.
And next ti, they might not warn us at all.
I took one look at the wrecked room and couldn’t hold it. I spun away, clapping my hand over my mouth, my body reacting before my pride could.
"Ugh—"
I ran, breath ripping from my chest, because so horrors aren’t ant to be stared at.
Not twice. Not ever.
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