Carolina Moon

Seeing Ghosts: K.C.

Seeing Darian Whitmore standing there — clean, composed, and wearing that same arrogant smirk — made my wolf lurch with a violent, visceral need to kill. The sub-basement was thick with the smell of damp stone and a frequency that hummed in my teeth.

This wasn’t the man we dragged out of the smelting plant. There was no soot on his white shirt, no blood on his hands. He looked like he was back in a boardroom rather than in a damp cellar built on a granite shelf.

I didn’t lower the rifle, even with the pack behind me. Their presence was a low, rumbling pressure. Finn and Gabe wordlessly moved Tess into the shadow of a stone pillar — exactly where I preferred for her to be. She was protected, but with a clear sight of the servers.

Darian’s eyes flicked in her direction for a fraction of a second — a possessive, lingering look that made my trigger finger itch — then settled back on me. “You always were a creature of habit, Kayvan. I knew you’d find the sluice gates. I knew you’d bring her. You just can’t help yourself, can you? You have to be the savior.”

He gestured to the green-lit servers behind him. “Stroud provided the capital, I provided the soul. The ‘static’ was just noise. This? This is going to be a symphony. I call it the Sovereignty Protocol. It doesn’t just track Alphas. It’ll overwrite bonds.”

“You always did love to hear yourself talk, didn’t you?” I started, but before I could say anything else, a high-pitched whine began to emanate from the racks.

The frequency rose until it started to feel like needles being driven into my ears. Holden stumbled beside me, his hands going to his ears as he dropped to his knees. The rest of my enforcers followed suit, their breathing quickly becoming ragged.

I forced myself to stay upright, fighting the frequency as best as I could. The granite beneath my boots was humming, amplifying the signal until it felt like the room was spinning. “Shut it down, Darian,” I growled, my voice sounding more wolf than human.

Darian laughed, a cold, hollow sound. “Now why would I want to do that?” he sneered, crossing the room towards me. His footsteps were sharp taps that echoed off the stone walls. “You took everything away from me. Kingsport, the pack, the girl. I lost everything. Why wouldn’t I want you to suffer?”

“She was never… yours to begin… with,” I managed through gritted teeth.

I looked at the pillar where Tess was hidden. Our eyes met for a brief moment. With Darian focused on me, she could find the backdoor she needed.

I took a careful step forward, still trying to resist the frequency. Trying to keep Darian’s attention away from her and the servers. I had to keep him talking, keep him gloating. “You think Stroud is going to let you walk away with this? You’re just another ‘asset’ to him, Darian. He’ll put a leash on you the second I’m dead.”

Darian’s smirk faltered for a heartbeat, but he recovered quickly. “That’s where you’re wrong, Kayvan. The grid doesn’t operate without me. It’s a failsafe I put into the heart of the design to prevent that from happening.” His smile grew wider then, malicious and predatory. “And we don’t want to kill you. We’re leashing you.”

“You want to enslave the other wolves.” It wasn’t an accusation, it was a statement. When he was on top of the corporate food chain, he had declared himself the King of Kingsport, and that didn’t have anything to do with territories or packs. “You want to make yourself a king.”

“Now you’re catching up,” he said, stepping closer.

I forced a burst of Alpha speed out of me so that I could slam into him. We hit one of the server racks, the metal groaning under the impact. Heat was radiating from the machines while the “tether” screamed in my brain, but my hand was around his throat.

“You want an audit, Darian?” I hissed, my eyes fully amber now. “Let’s start with what you owe in Kingsport.”

I heard the rapid fire of Tess’s fingers across a keyboard, taking full advantage of the opportunity I was presenting her with. “K.C., hold him there!” she yelled. “I’ve found the root directory.”

Darian didn’t just fight back, he exploded with energy. The frequency in the room spiked like it was connected to him. A jagged scream of electronic noise burst into my skull, feeling like it was trying to peel my skin from my bones. It was a localized pulse, designed to drop an Alpha, but the rage fueled by the sight of him anywhere near Tess was a stronger anchor than any signal he could broadcast.

My fingers dug into his throat, but Darian’s face began to contort. The refined boardroom executive vanished as his own eyes flared a toxic, sickly yellow. His bone structure shifted with a series of sickening cracks, his muscles bulging beneath the seams of his white shirt until the fabric shredded. He wasn’t fully shifting, but he was close enough.

He slammed a heavy, clawed fist into my ribs, the air leaving my lungs in a sharp wheeze. It was a struggle, but I didn’t let go. Instead, I drove my knee into his midsection, feeling the unnatural density of his half-shifted form. We rolled across the granite floor, a blur of grey and black fur, snarls, and the metallic tang of blood.

“You think… you’re different…” Darian gasped, his voice distorting as his jaw lengthened. He caught my wrists, his strength surging. “You’re just a beast… in a nicer cage!”

I could feel the tether clawing at my mind, trying to find the cracks in my willpower. Around us, the enforcers were losing their struggle, as they lay on the floor, hands clamped over their ears as they writhed in pain from the frequency. I felt like a thousand needles of ice were being driven into my brain, telling me to submit, to stop, to crawl.

Darian pinned me against the stone floor, his teeth bared inches from my throat. The green light from the servers cast him in a ghoulish hue, making him look like a demon pulled from the static. “This time… I won’t… make the same mistake.”

He laughed, “What mistake would that be, Kayvan?”

“Letting you live,” I ground out as I brought my knee into his mid-section again, causing him to fall forward for a brief second before he recovered.

“K.C.!” Tess’s voice cut through the digital scream. “He’s got a hard-link! I can’t kill the signal while he’s still connected to the biometric sensor.”

“Alpha,” I heard Finn’s voice, barely a whisper, through the weakening pack link. My eyes found his in the dark, two amber points glowing faintly in the pillar’s shadow. “His wrist.”

I looked past Darian’s snarling face and saw the sleek, black band glowing in sync with the server racks. It wasn’t just a failsafe, he was the key. It wasn’t just that the grid didn’t work without him. It fed off him. He was using his own Alpha signature as the carrier wave.

I didn’t try to pull away. I surged upward, slamming my forehead into his nose with a crunch that echoed off the pillars. Darian howled, his grip loosening for a split second. It was all the opening I needed. I twisted, grabbed his arm, and pinned it against the granite.

“Tess! Now!” I roared, the sound vibrating through the very foundation of the mill.

I used my teeth as I clamped down on the biometric band. The metal taste of the casing and the copper of his blood filled my mouth. Darian screamed, a high-pitched sound that blended with the dying whine of the machines. I tore the device — and skin — from his arm. The feedback loop snapped with a shower of white sparks that blinded me for a heartbeat.

The high-pitched frequency vanished instantly, replaced by a silence so heavy it felt like a physical blow. Around the room, I heard my enforcers gasping for air, the pressure on their minds finally lifting.

Darian collapsed back against the stone, his shift receding. He looked up at me, his eyes fading from yellow to a dull, defeated grey. Blood dripped from his shredded sleeve, and he cradled his wounded forearm against his chest.

I stood over him, my chest heaving as my claws retracted into shaking hands. I looked at Tess. She stood there, laptop clutched to her chest. Her face was pale, but her eyes still held that same fierceness. She had done it. She turned the “Sovereignty Protocol” into a mess of dead code.

“It’s over, Darian,” she said firmly.

I turned my head as the heavy thud of tactical boots echoed from the stairs leading up to the main floor. Leon and his “DOJ” team burst into the room, rifles raised, but they stopped cold at the sight of the wreckage.

Leon looked at me, then at the broken man on the floor, and finally at the dark servers. He lowered his weapon, a grim set to his jaw. “The real Feds are five minutes out, K.C. If you’re gonna get out before they get here, you need to do it now.”