CARVED IN MOONFIRE

EPISODE THREE: THE JUDAS ILLUSION

The floodlights from the Council’s tactical vehicles slice through the kitchen windows, turning my home into a strobe-lit slaughterhouse. Blue and red lights dance across Reid’s face, highlighting the cold, hard guilt etched into his jaw.

"Nora, listen to me," Reid says, his voice a low, vibrating growl. He takes a step toward me, but I scramble back, clutching Wren so tight she gasps.

"Don't you dare," I snarl. The word feels like it’s being ripped from a throat made of broken glass. "I saw the message, Reid. 'The deal is done. Bring her to me.' You sold our daughter to Gregor? After six years of pretending to love us?"

"It’s not what you think!"

"Then what is it?" I scream over the roar of the engines outside. "Because it looks like the man I’ve shared a bed with—the man who watched me give birth to this child—just turned out to be a mercenary for the man trying to erase us from the map!"

Reid’s eyes flicker to his phone, then to the door. He isn't acting like the protector I knew. He’s acting like a wolf who’s been caught in a trap of his own making.

Wren is trembling in my arms, her small hands fisted in my shirt. "Mommy, Daddy's heart is beating too fast," she whispers, her green eyes wide and terrifyingly vacant. "It sounds like... it sounds like a drum in the dark. It sounds like a lie."

"It’s okay, baby," I lie. It’s a lethal lie. Nothing is okay.

The front door of the mansion groans under the force of a battering ram. BOOM. The sound echoes through the house—a death knell for my pack, my safety, and my heart.

Suddenly, Reid lunges. I expect a blow, or a reach for Wren, but instead, he slams his fist against the hidden panel behind the refrigerator.

ZAP.

A high-pitched whine pierces the air, and then—absolute, suffocating silence. Every light in the house dies. The hum of the Council’s surveillance drones outside cuts out as they fall from the sky like dead birds. The electronic locks on the doors click into a deadbolt state.

In the sudden, pitch-black void, I feel a hand wrap around my arm. I’m ready to fight, ready to bite and claw, but Reid’s voice is at my ear, a frantic, jagged whisper.

"They have a thermal sniper on the ridge, Nora. If you walked out that door with her, you’d be dead before your foot hit the gravel. The message wasn't from Gregor. It was from the man inside the Council who is trying to stop him."

"You expect me to believe you?" I hiss, even as I let him pull us toward the basement stairs.

"I don't expect anything from you," he says, and the bitterness in his voice is a physical weight. "But if you want Wren to live through the next ten minutes, you’ll follow me into the shadows."

We reach the basement, the smell of damp earth rising to meet us. Reid stops at a wall that should be solid stone. He presses a brick, and the wall slides back to reveal a tunnel I never knew existed.

"How long have you had this?" I ask, horrified.

"Since before she was born," he says. But as he ushers us in, a red dot appears on his chest. A laser sight. A voice rings out from the top of the stairs—the cold, smooth voice of Alpha Gregor himself.

"Step away from the girl, Reid. You've fulfilled your part of the contract. Now, give me the key."