Chapter 14 - Ado

A week passes, and I burn alive. I have Keira to thank for that, but I say nothing, and she says nothing, and I think of her every waking moment—and when I’m asleep, I dream of her. It becomes my only pastime.

She wakes me in the night with her soft hands on my face, on my chest. I reach out for her in the darkness and then tumble out of bed. I stumble through my everyday work at the pack center—training our teammates, working this job, sitting in meetings—like a zombie. I feel like a madman most of the time.

Seeing her transformed and halfway to the ground, cowering as that thing swung his foot toward her, switched something inside of me. Now, I feel it every day.

I become almost mute again overnight. The days of my uncharacteristic interruptions in meetings are decisively over. At one point, Rafael passes me in the hallway and asks me if I could check the time for him on my phone—his is dead, and of course, he doesn’t wear a watch—and I don’t even slow down, just walk right past, not an ounce of capacity within me for conversation. He asks what my problem is to my retreating back. I only have enough energy to feel slightly bad about it.

Aris narrows his eyes whenever he sees me. I know the others are speaking about me behind my back. I don’t care. I can’t care. If I try to care, I know in the end, I’ll run to Keira’s room in the middle of the night and beg her on my knees to let me in. She doesn’t need that. She doesn’t deserve it.

I hardly eat. I subsist almost solely on coffee. Sleep is worse, I tell myself. When I sleep, she is there.

She is there in meetings, too, which makes them torturous. I would consider skipping out if I had ever skipped anything for the pack before in my life, but I haven’t, and so I won’t. I still won’t meet her eyes as we pass each other on our way into the meeting room.

Everyone seems keyed up. Byron, Olivia, and Keira hunch over a laptop at the far end of the table, murmuring in urgent tones. The rest of the team is spread out, waiting, the usual banter muted by the seriousness of the situation.

Something has happened.

Aris calls the meeting to order, and the room falls silent. Byron looks up, glancing at Olivia, who nods slightly, prompting him to speak.

“We’ve been monitoring the Dark Web, tracking activity related to the auction ring,” Byron begins. He drums the fingers of one hand on the tabletop rhythmically, back and forth. “Olivia and Keira have been helping me sift through the chatter. There’s been an uptick in communication over the last few days—something big is happening.”

Keira straightens in her seat, her eyes still fixed on the screen. Even from across the table, I feel her intensity as if I’m sitting too close to a campfire. It’s like sunburn. She’s in her element, and all I can do is watch her. Her fingers move fast across the keys as she pulls something up. Her eyes raise to the rest of the room, and she could be a statue; she could be made of stone.

“It’s an auction,” Olivia says, her voice calm but firm. “A big one. Bigger than anything we’ve seen so far.”

“How big?” Aris asks, his expression grim.

Byron hesitates before answering. He exchanges a long look with Olivia.

“Important enough that every major player in the area seems to be getting involved. We’re talking high-profile buyers, big money. They’re auctioning off… everything. Weapons, drugs, and... people. Women. And our Attlefolkers are major contributors to the latter. We think they’ve been preparing for this for a while.”

A low murmur runs through the room, but it’s quickly silenced when Keira speaks up. “It’s taking place at a hideout twenty miles north of here, in four days. Up in the mountains. Big, isolated mansion. It’s called Border Ridge. Whoever’s facilitating owns the land for miles, so infiltration will be difficult unless we move covertly.”

My chest tightens at her words. Twenty miles. It’s too close. Everything we’ve been working toward is coming to a head, and the thought of Keira being anywhere near that place makes me want to be sick. I force myself to stay quiet, to stay focused.

Aris leans forward, his eyes narrowing. “Then we need to focus on gathering intel and keeping a low profile. Multiple infiltrators—we need new fake IDs, Percy, get on that, please, and extraction points on map before anything else, so we’ll need an overhead of the whole site.”

“That’s the plan,” Byron says. “Multiple agents on the ground. Blending in won’t be easy, but with the right covers, we should be able to get close enough to identify key targets.”

“Who’s going in?” Bigby asks, his tone casual, but I can see the way his eyes flick around the table.

Byron looks at Aris, who gives a singular nod. “We’ll decide that today. I want everyone ready to move. We can’t afford any mistakes on this one.”

Keira stays focused on the screen, her fingers still moving rapidly over the keys, gathering every scrap of information she can. She’s always been hyper-focused when something needs doing, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something more driving her this time. Maybe it’s the same thing that’s been driving me. Perhaps we both feel the same heavy presence of our ghosts in the room with us, the girl I cannot go back in time to save, but I can maybe try to avenge.

“Keira, Olivia, Byron—I want you three to finalize the details. Get us maps, get us entrances and exits, and narrow down the profiles we’re seeking on the ground,” Aris says. “Everyone else, make sure you’re prepared for any eventuality. We’ll be moving fast on this one, and we’ll need everyone able in the field, even if you’re on standby. Let’s do this.”

The meeting dissolves, people dispersing to their tasks, clustering in murmuring twos and threes, discussing their responsibilities. I already know mine will be securing weapons and body armor and ensuring everyone is the safest they can be.

I linger in the meeting room doorway for a second too long, my eyes drawn to Keira despite myself. She’s still at the laptop, her brow furrowed in concentration.

I want to talk to her. I want to say… something. Anything.

Instead, I turn and walk out. Four days. Four days until everything comes to a head, and all I can think about is how to keep her safe, how to make sure that this time, I don’t fail her.

As I walk down the hallway, a knot of worry squeezes inside me. I don’t know if I deserve the responsibility of protecting her, but I’ll die before I fail. And I know one thing: I need to talk to her before we go out on the field, or I might regret it forever.