Chapter 15
1089 Words
They started with the top floor.
It made sense: fewer wolves slept up here, and most of them were on patrol or passed out in the infirmary. Easier to move without questions. Easier to pretend the house still belonged to them and not to whatever eyes glowed red in the dark.
Amara walked point with Gideon; Rowan and Elias followed, Lyra ghosting at the rear. It felt less like a house check and more like a slow‑motion patrol through someone else’s den.
“Again from the start,” Gideon said quietly. “Anything that doesn’t smell like Silverpine, Blackridge, or human cleaning crap, you say it.”
“Got it,” Amara murmured.
Her wolf stretched under her skin, nose first. It felt… good, in a bitter way, to have something to do that wasn’t bleeding over a ripped bond.
They hit the first empty room. Guest bed, dresser, open curtains. No obvious bugs in the corners. No new sharp scents.
“Clean,” she said.
They moved on.
Her own room was next. The broken nub in her pocket felt heavy as a stone.
“You sure you want to go back in there?” Elias asked under his breath.
“It’s my room,” she said. “They’re the ones who don’t belong.”
They went in together anyway.
With four wolves crammed into the small space, every scent pressed thick and close. Under it, Amara caught the ghost of that wrong note again—plastic and some faint chemical.
“Same as the ceiling bug,” she said, pointing to the corner. “They didn’t mask it.”
Lyra ran a scanner over the walls anyway, a slim black wand she’d pulled from her pack. Tiny lights flickered green.
“One only,” she said. “Whoever did this wasn’t generous.”
“Or they were testing,” Rowan said. He stood just inside the doorway, body angled as if part of him refused to fully step into her space. “See how close they could get. How fast we’d notice.”
“Well.” Amara tapped the pocket with the bug. “They got their answer.”
They moved on.
Room after room. Empty bunks, storage closets, a linen cupboard that smelled like detergent and dust. The scanner stayed green; Amara’s nose picked up only the usual living‑wolf mess.
By the time they reached the second floor, her head throbbed. Focusing this hard, this long, when her wolf was already raw, took more out of her than she liked.
“Sit if you need to,” Gideon muttered once, low enough only she could hear.
“I’m fine,” she lied.
They swept the Beta’s office, then Lysander’s study. No bugs. No extra plastic tang. Just paper, ink, the old leather scent of someone who’d spent too many nights here avoiding sleep.
“For the record,” Lyra said, turning off the scanner, “if I ever catch whoever did this, I’m breaking their fingers one at a time.”
“That’s not very diplomatic,” Elias muttered.
“I’m off duty,” she said.
They were halfway down the main second‑floor corridor when Amara’s wolf stopped dead.
She did too.
“Here,” she said.
The others froze.
“Where?” Rowan asked.
“Not strong,” she said, breathing in shallow pulls. “Just… off.”
She followed it a few steps. The smell wasn’t in a room. It drifted from the wall itself—right between two doors, where no one would bother to look.
“Here,” she said again, hand on the plaster.
Lyra stepped up with the scanner, swept it over the spot.
Nothing. All green.
“Cute,” Lyra muttered. “They’re better than my toys.”
Rowan moved closer. “Carpet up,” he ordered.
Gideon didn’t question. He grabbed the end of the hallway runner and yanked, muscles bunching. The carpet ripped back with a puff of dust, exposing old wooden boards underneath.
Amara’s nose flared.
There. Stronger now. Same chemical tang, soaked into the grain.
“Under,” she said.
Rowan knelt, running his fingers along the gaps between planks until he found one nail shinier than the rest.
“Here,” he said.
He didn’t have tools. He used his claws.
They slid out with a quiet snikt, not fully shifted, just enough to wedge under the edge of the board and pry. The wood groaned. With Gideon’s help, it came up in one solid piece.
Beneath, a narrow channel had been carved into the subfloor. In it sat another device—longer than the ceiling bug, wired to a thin cable that disappeared into the wall.
The tiny red light blinked steadily.
“Well,” Lyra said softly. “There’s your house feed.”
Elias swore under his breath.
Amara stared. Her chest felt oddly hollow. “How long has that been there?” she asked.
“Long enough to be worth the work,” Gideon said.
Rowan reached in, careful, and pinched the wire just above the device.
“Wait—” Elias started.
Rowan yanked.
The red light flared once, then died.
Lyra’s scanner, still in her other hand, chirped sharply.
She glanced at the display. Her easy sarcasm vanished.
“What?” Rowan asked.
“It just pinged for an outgoing signal right before you killed it,” she said. “Short burst. Directional.”
“Meaning?” Elias demanded.
“Meaning,” Lyra said, “whoever was on the other end just watched us find their toy.”
Silence fell like snow.
Amara’s wolf lifted her head, ears pricked toward nothing they could see.
“They know we know,” Gideon said.
Rowan stood slowly, still holding the dead bug in his hand.
“Good,” he said, voice low. “Let them feel watched for a change.”
Amara looked at the hole in the floor, the cut channel, the dark wire.
“Rowan,” she said quietly, an ugly thought forming. “If that thing’s been here a while…”
He met her gaze, already a step ahead.
“They didn’t just see the fight,” he said. “They saw the hall. The speech. You.”
Her throat went dry.
“She’s in every story now,” Lyra said. “Ours, theirs. Whether she likes it or not.”
For a moment Amara thought the worst pain tonight had already happened, out on the porch.
Now she wasn’t so sure.
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