They opened the package in the same reinforced room where the compound kept its weapons, a windowless space lined with steel that Ronan's father assured me had survived worse things than a mystery parcel over the years. I wasn't entirely comforted.
Inside the paper was a single object — a small, tarnished motorcycle keychain, the metal worked into the shape of a wolf's head, old enough that the details had softened with decades of handling. Ronan went very still the moment he saw it, his face draining of color in a way that told me, before he said a word, that this wasn't a random threat.
"That's my father's," he said. "The original one. He gave it to the man who used to run maintenance on this compound's bikes, back before my time. It's been missing since—" He stopped, jaw working.
"Si
