Carolina Moon

The Quiet in the Dark: K.C.

Trying to focus while Tess gave her report on Gideon Stroud was proving difficult. The edge of my vision had started to swim, and my head was pounding. Not from the static or the sickness, but from something far more basic. I was exhausted. We’d been awake for well-over twenty-four hours, went to Florida, and then back to South Carolina.

And that didn’t count everything that had happened in between.

The room was tilting now. The adrenaline that had carried me back from the smelting plant had worn off a long time ago. My legs felt like lead, and the burns on my back weren’t just stinging anymore. They were throbbing.

On top of the exhaustion, the lone wolf sickness was attempting to take hold of me again. I was far from the Steelclaw territory, and the pack bond with the men outside was weak, like a flickering candle. “Tess,” I rasped, my voice cracking. “We can’t move yet. If I shift now, I’m not sure I’ll be able to shift back. My wolf… he’s spent.”

“Okay.” I could see her brain working through her own exhaustion too. She was stubborn, but she was smart. She shut her laptop, closing off “the auditor” for now. Now, she was just the woman who cared for me. “Stroud’s guy said we have forty-eight hours. Assuming he wasn’t lying, and that Vane’s injunction actually accomplishes something, we can spare a few hours.”

I checked in with Marcus and Holden. They were in far better shape than I was, but even they were still starting to droop. We set up a rotation. Two men — Marcus and Holden to start — would stay on the perimeter while the others slept on the living room floor. Then they’d swap.

The last time I’d been in Tess’s bedroom, I’d been too sick to worry about my clothes. Today, I was too tired to worry about my jeans. I did manage to pull what was left of my flannel and my polo over my head though. I dropped the rags in the waste basket by Tess’s desk, and pushed my boots off in the doorway. Then I collapsed, face down, against the mattress.

The room was dark, the only light was coming from the gap between the curtains and the wall. I felt Tess’s weight dip into the mattress beside me. She didn’t lay down yet though. I turned my head so that my cheek rested against the pillow, and cracked an eye open. Her silhouette was a darker shadow watching the door.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered as I reached for her hand in the dark. “I was supposed to give you a quiet life. Instead, I brought a war to your table.”

She leaned over and kissed my temple. “You didn’t bring it, K.C. This was going to happen whether you were here or not. They were already building the cage, and if you hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t have the tools to break the lock.”

I’m not sure when I fell asleep, and when I woke up, it felt like no time had passed at all. The smell of burnt toast and the sound of Marcus’s voice came from the kitchen. I pushed myself up and looked around the still-dark room. The sun was lowering, causing the shadows to grow darker.

I felt better. Not perfect. But the raw, jagged edge of exhaustion had smoothed over. My skin was tight where the burns were healing. My wolf was awake, pacing, and ready to reclaim his yard.

I took a quick shower, finally washing the soot from the smelting plant of my skin and out of my hair. I pulled on the fresh clothes I’d bought at Grady’s. The heavy denim and clean cotton felt like armor.

I walked into the kitchen to find Tess at the table again. Her laptop was open, her hair was slightly damp, signaling that she’d showered too, and she now wore a pair of black skinny jeans and a lavender tank top she’d bought at Rebel Rose when the spring collection had went on sale. She was staring at the map, her face pale, but determined.

I grabbed a piece of the burnt toast Marcus had left on a plate and bit into it. The kitchen felt different now. The panic of the morning had settled into a grim, professional preparation. Marcus and Holden were by the back door, removing their gear as they readied themselves for their living room nap.

“Has Vane said anything else?” I asked, leaning over her shoulder. The scent of her shampoo cut through the lingering scent of gun oil that the enforcers brought with them.

“The injunction was served two hours ago,” Tess replied, finally looking up at me. There were still shadows of fatigue under her eyes, but the focus in them was sharp and bright. “Stroud’s legal team is fighting it, of course, but for now they can’t move anything onto the property. It’s only a paper shield though, K.C. It’s only going to hold for so long.”

She turned the laptop toward me. "While you were sleeping, I did a deep dive into the water treatment plant’s schematics. It’s an old facility, but the internal server they’re using for the mesh is brand new. It’s isolated from the main grid to prevent remote hacking. That’s why I have to be there. I can’t do this from my kitchen table."

I shook my head immediately. "No. You stay here with Holden and two others. Marcus and I will take the drive. We’ll get into the server room, plug it in, and you can talk us through it over the comms."

Tess stood up, her lavender tank top shifting as she crossed her arms. "K.C., look at the encryption on this drive. I had to write the bypass script in a language Leon’s tech barely recognizes. If a single port is misaligned or the handshake fails, the system will lock down and trigger the pulse immediately as a fail-safe. You’re an Alpha, not a systems administrator. You go in to clear the path. I go in to turn off the lights."

I wanted to argue. Every protective instinct I had was screaming at me to lock her in the cellar and handle this with teeth and claws. But I looked at the map, then back at her. She wasn't just my mate; she was the only person who understood the math of the war we were fighting.

"Marcus," I called out, not taking my eyes off Tess. "How's the perimeter?"

"Quiet for now, Alpha," Marcus reported, stepping into the kitchen. "The black sedan moved to the end of the block. They’re watching, but they’re keeping their distance. They think they have us pinned down for the night."

"They're wrong," I said. I looked at Tess. "We move at midnight. That gives us a few more hours of dark to get into position. If we're going to do this, we do it before the town wakes up and sees what we've become."

Tess nodded, a small, sad smile touching her lips. "Once the mesh goes down, the census stops. But Stroud... he's not going to just walk away from his investment."

"I know," I said, checking the weight of the silver-jacketed rounds in my pocket. "Neither am I."