Carolina Moon

The Balance Sheet: Tess

I was wrapped in the smell of Marcus’s burnt toast and K.C.’s soap. The bungalow had become a strange, jarring mix of a tactical base and the home I’d spent months trying to build. Not just that, but I had tried, desperately, to make this a place that looked and felt nothing like Whitmore Terra Acquisitions.

I had watched the enforcers quietly move furniture, making sure any potential sight lines were blocked. The living room curtains were taped down with painter’s tape to ensure no one could peek in from the outside.

Everything in the house now felt different. The wooden floorboards, the ceramic of my favorite mug. None of it was just objects anymore. They belonged to something else now, something I might never see again.

I stood at the sink washing the few dishes we’d used. Through the small window, I could see the backyard where the Spanish moss hung like heavy velvet. I thought about my “auditor life,” the one I thought I had left behind in the city. I really had believed a retail boutique in a quiet town would be the ultimate escape. For a while, at least, it had been. Even after K.C. had shown up at Rebel Rose, I hadn’t expected Kingsport to follow him.

The skills I’d used for tax returns and inventory logs were being turned into something else. The “Oracle” that the wolves in Kingsport believed in wasn’t a psychic power. It was the ability to look at every angle, every number, and see the rot in the foundation before everything fell. I couldn’t just be a shop manager anymore. I had to once again become the person holding the detonator to a corporate empire.

K.C. came up behind me while I was drying my hands. He didn’t say anything. He just leaned his head against my shoulder, his arms snaking around my waist. I sighed, relaxing into him, and we stayed like that for several minutes. The only sound was the distant thrum of the cicadas.

“We brought the static here,” I eventually whispered, breaking the relative silence. Marcus and Holden were likely asleep in the living room by now, but if they weren’t, their wolf senses were sharp, and I didn’t want to make it easy for them to eavesdrop.

“No,” K.C.’s voice was soft but firm as his arms around me tightened. “Stroud brought the static. We’re just a lightning rod.” He told me about the black sedan and the look in the sheriff’s eyes. Even if we won tonight, I wasn’t sure the town would ever look at us the same way. I was certain the “agents” asking about K.C. in connection to the fires were Stroud’s men. There hadn’t been enough left of either building to find evidence of K.C.’s presence, and we weren’t gone long enough for anyone not connected to know we were there.

My nerves were starting to get to me. I needed to find a way to kill time. I decided to cook a meal. Nothing fancy, just some pasta with jarred sauce I had in the pantry and some frozen bread.

Feeding five enormous, hungry werewolves in a small, bungalow kitchen was a surreal experience. For forty-five minutes, the tension seemed to dissipate. There was some low-level teasing between the younger enforcers, and Holden told a story about his last hockey game in Kingsport. K.C. actually laughed. It was a real, chesty sound that made my heart ache.

For a moment, we were just people having dinner. Then, the clock on the stove chirped. It was ten clock now. We had two hours until midnight.

I returned to the laptop and checked my emails for any updates from Julian Vane. The injunction status was holding, but the Lowcountry Development Group has filed an appeal claiming there was an “immediate and urgent public safety concern.”

I looked at K.C. He was currently checking the seal on a tactical radio. We weren’t the same people who had met at Wharton years ago. We weren’t even the same people who had went out for coffee in the marsh, and decided to try and rebuild something I thought was gone for good. In twenty-four hours, we’d become sharper. Deadlier.

I went to my closet and pulled out a leather jacket and the Dr. Martens I usually wore to work. I wasn’t going to just sit in a van and be “the brain” of the operation. I was part of the strike team.

I looked at my reflection. I might not have been wearing the typical uniform of a Beaumont — a crisp, tailored suit — but I certainly felt like one.

“Ready?” I asked as I stepped into the living room.

K.C. looked up from the radio, his amber eyes traveling from my boots to my face. The room went quiet as the enforcers stopped their gear checks. I saw Marcus look at K.C., waiting for the Alpha to put his foot down, and say “the brain” was too valuable to go along.

Instead, K.C. stood up slowly. He didn’t look at me like I was a liability. He looked at me with a terrifying kind of pride. “Holden,” he turned as he spoke, “you’re with the transport. Ronan, you and the others are the perimeter. Marcus is on point. Tess will be with me. We don’t engage unless they do, but if that pulse starts to ramp up, all bets are off.”

We spent the next ninety minutes in a state of hyper-focused preparation. I packed my laptop into a protective sleeve and checked my phone. I had one last message from Julian: Injunction is being bypassed. Stroud has local deputies on his side. Move fast.

Thirty minutes before midnight, we cut all the lights in the bungalow.

Leaving my house in total darkness felt like a finality. As I locked the front door, I wondered if I’d ever get to turn that key again. We moved through the yard, staying in the deep shadows of the live oaks.

We piled into the SUVs, keeping the lights cut as we slowly pulled away. Holden navigated the backroads, his eyes two glowing pinpoints in the dark. We crawled through the streets like ghosts while the Spanish moss outside the windows passed by.

K.C. reached over and took my hand. His grip was steady, but his skin was burning hot. He was already fighting the urge to shift, his wolf reacting to whatever frequency it was hearing. “Almost there,” he whispered.

We pulled off the street and parked under cover of some pines, about three hundred yards from the water treatment facility’s fence. I could see it through the windshield, a brick building, standing against the dark under a lone floodlight. It was old and no longer in use by the town, but now it was glowing with an unnatural purple light.

“Midnight,” Marcus whispered, checking his watch.

K.C. looked at me, his eyes glowing in the dark of the car. “Stay behind me. Don’t stop for anything.”