Detective Zoe

Chapter 2

By the time Riley and I got back to the office, three more people were waiting outside the door.

One of them was Alpha Gerald's assistant, a thin man named Samuel with small eyes and a habit of looking at everything like he was calculating its value. The other two I did not recognise, but they wore different pack markings on their jackets, not Crescent Ridge marks. They were outsiders.

"The Alpha wants a report by tonight," Samuel said the moment he saw me, not bothering with a greeting.

"I have been on the case for two hours," I told him.

"Tonight, Zoe." He said my name the way some people say a word they are not sure how to spell.

I looked at the two strangers. "Who are they?"

Samuel's expression shifted slightly. "Observers. They are from the Northern Region."

"Observers for what?"

"That is not your concern right now. Your concern is the report." He turned and walked away, the two strangers following him without a single word to me.

I watched them go, noting the way they moved. Straight-backed, controlled, like every step was deliberate. Wolves with rank, serious rank.

Riley appeared beside me. "That was strange."

"Very," I agreed.

We went inside, and I spread my notes on my desk. The circular mark on the ground around Callum's body, the complete absence of any struggle, the drained colouring of his skin, and the fact that his wolf was simply gone. Not hurt. Not weakened. Gone, like it had never existed.

I knew what that felt like, the absence of a wolf. But mine left slowly, fading over weeks as I turned seventeen, like a candle burning out. What happened to Callum was not like that. His wolf was taken.

I spent the afternoon going through old records Riley pulled from the pack archives, dusty files about dark magic incidents from decades past. Most of them were vague, written by people who did not want to commit too much to paper. But in one file, buried near the back of a stack, I found a case from thirty years ago. A wolf in the Eastern Pack, found dead, no wounds, no struggle, with a circular mark burned into the ground around him.

The file had no conclusion. The case was never solved.

I sat back in my chair and stared at the ceiling. "Riley."

"Mm?" She was at her own desk, going through witness statements from people who lived near the north border.

"This has happened before," I said. "Thirty years ago. Eastern Pack."

Riley's head came up slowly. "The same marks?"

"The same everything." I tapped the old file. "And it was never solved. Which means whoever did it then either stopped or moved."

"Or waited," Riley said.

That word sat in the air between us for a moment.

"Or waited," I agreed quietly.

I finished the report for Alpha Gerald and sent it with a pack runner before evening. It was honest but careful, because Gerald was the kind of Alpha who liked reassurance more than truth, and I needed him to let me keep working the case without interference.

I was putting on my coat to leave when the door opened and my stomach dropped.

It was not Gerald's assistant this time.

It was my mother.

She stood in the doorway with her hands folded in front of her, dressed neatly, her dark hair pinned up the way she always wore it for important occasions. She looked at me the way she had looked at me for three years, with a complicated mix of guilt and distance that she had never once tried to close.

"Zoe," she said.

"Mom." My voice came out flat. I was not doing it on purpose. It was just what happened when I saw her now.

She stepped inside, and Riley very quietly gathered her things and slipped out the back, which I was grateful for.

"I heard about the case," my mother said.

"Most people have."

"I am worried about you working it." She moved toward the desk, looking at the files with anxious eyes. "This kind of magic, it is dangerous. It targets wolves, yes, but you are still connected to this pack. You are still"

"Still what?" I said. "Still an Omega? Still wolfless? Still your daughter that you pretend not to know at pack gatherings?"

The words were out before I could stop them. They were not new words. I had thought them a thousand times. But I had not said them out loud to her face before, and the silence that followed was heavy with everything we had both been carrying.

My mother's face did not crumble. That was the hardest part. She just looked tired.

"I did not come to fight," she said quietly.

"Then why did you come?"

She reached into her bag and placed something on my desk, a folded piece of paper. "Someone left this at our house this morning. Addressed to you."

I picked it up and unfolded it. The handwriting was careful and even, and the words were short.

Stop looking at the border. What you want is already inside.

I read it twice. Then I looked up at my mother.

"When did this arrive?"

"Before sunrise," she said. "While we were still asleep. Nobody saw who left it."

I folded the note carefully and put it in my jacket pocket. My mind was already running, already pulling threads, already asking questions. If someone left this note at my mother's house before sunrise, they knew where I came from. They knew my family. They had been watching.

"Go home," I told her. "Lock the doors. Do not let anyone in that you do not know."

She hesitated. "Zoe"

"Please, Mom." The word came out softer than I expected, and I saw something shift in her expression. "Just go home."

She left. I stood in the empty office, holding the weight of the note in my pocket, and thought about Callum's peaceful, drained face, and the circle burned into the earth around him.

What you want is already inside.

Inside the pack. The killer was not outside our borders. They were already here, walking among us, maybe sitting at pack dinners and greeting the Alpha at gatherings. Someone who knew enough to send me a warning. Or a threat. I was not yet sure which it was.

I grabbed my coat and walked out into the evening.

I had a feeling that by morning, everything was going to be different.