THE ALPHA’S GHOST

5

ETHAN'S POV

The conference room lights were too bright for dawn.

Maps covered the table, territory lines marked in ink and pins. I was halfway through patrol rotations when the bond hit.

It was not a thought. It was not a feeling with edges I could name. It was panic, sharp and tearing straight through my chest. My wolf surged hard enough that my breath caught. Heat flared under my ribs, then dropped away, leaving something hollow and wrong behind.

Lucas was still talking. Everyone was still talking.

I was not.

My voice stopped in the middle of a sentence. I stood before I decided to. My chair scraped back loud enough that the room stilled.

“Alpha?” Lucas asked. His concern was real. He had learned to read the space around me. Right now it scared him.

I did not answer. I could not explain something that came in fragments and instincts. The bond did not send words. It sent urgency. Fear. Cold.

I left the room.

The hallway felt longer than usual. The packhouse pressed in around me, stone and wood carrying a hundred familiar scents. None of them mattered. The bond pulled in one direction only, tight and unrelenting.

The kitchen doors swung open.

Heat rushed out, along with the smell of coffee. Miriam stood at the stove, her posture rigid as always. She did not turn.

“Alpha,” she said flatly.

“Where is Kaye?” I asked.

The ladle paused midair. Miriam’s jaw tightened. “Cleaning,” she said. “The walk in freezer. Like I told her.”

The bond screamed.

“Is she still in there?”

Miriam shrugged too quickly. “Last I saw.”

That was not enough.

I crossed the kitchen in three strides. The freezer door stood closed, its metal rim edged with frost. I pressed my palm to it. Cold hummed straight into my bones. The lock light was on.

My wolf growled low.

“Open it,” I said.

“It’s locked, Alpha,” Miriam replied. Her voice had shifted, defensive now. “No one touched it.”

I did not argue. I kicked the door. The hinges held. I knocked hard, then harder, my fist echoing uselessly against steel.

Nothing answered from inside.

The bond stretched thin, a fragile thread tugging at my chest. I reached down it, ignoring everything else. I felt Kaye dim and unsteady, her heartbeat faint, her body shutting down to survive.

“Now,” I said, and people moved.

Lucas was suddenly beside me. Someone jammed a pan edge into the latch. Metal shrieked. The lock gave with a sharp snap, and freezing air spilled out like a living thing.

Kaye lay on the floor near the drain.

She was curled inward, skin pale, lips blue, her breath barely lifting her chest. The sight hit hard but clean, cutting through everything else. She was alive. Barely.

I lifted her without thinking. She weighed almost nothing. Cold soaked through my clothes where I held her. Her wolf was folded deep inside her, conserving the last scraps of strength silver had not burned away.

The kitchen went silent.

People stared. Not with hatred this time. With something uneasy and human.

Her eyelids fluttered. A breath shuddered through her.

“They’re watching us,” she whispered.

Then she went slack again.

I looked up.

Tucked high in the corner where pipes met steel was a small black lens, no bigger than a button. A camera. Hidden. Deliberate.

My grip tightened around Kaye.

This had not been an accident. Someone locked that door. Someone watched her freeze. Someone wanted to see what would happen.

The bond warmed faintly, a fragile answer to my own pulse. My wolf settled, alert and patient, her fury focused.

I carried Kaye out of the freezer and did not look back.

Someone in my pack had crossed a line.

And they were going to answer for it.