This isn’t law enforcement.
This is containment.
I step out, boots crunching on gravel, senses already shifting into something older than procedure. Voices carry through the clearing—low, controlled, rehearsed.
“Perimeter’s secure.”
“Where’s the Alpha?”
The word lands heavy, familiar, unavoidable.
“I’m here,” I say, and every head turns. “Hold them back until we’re finished.”
I don’t see her at first. I’m too focused on the circle, on the body on the ground, on the tension thrumming through the pack like a held breath.
And then metal clatters.
Sharp. Wrong.
Every instinct I have snaps hard in one direction.
Ellie.
She stands half-hidden near the old conveyor belt, phone in her hand, eyes wide—not with fear yet, but with the terrible clarity that comes right before understanding shatters.
“Ellie, stop…”
Too late.
One of them shifts.
There’s no easing into it, no cinematic grace. One second he’s human, the next he’s something else entirely—silver fur catching moonlight, bones realigning with wet, brutal sound. Power rolls through the clearing like heat.
Her phone slips from her fingers.
Every head turns.
Every eye—human and otherwise—locks on her.
“Shit,” I mutter. Exhaustion bleeds into the word. Not surprise. Never surprise. Just the final confirmation of the thing I’ve been dreading since the day she arrived in town.
The wolf pads toward her, then pulls back, reverses the change with the same violent efficiency. A naked man stands where the animal was, breath steaming in the cold.
Ellie doesn’t move.
She can’t.
I cross the distance in three strides and stop at her shoulder, close enough to shield her without touching her.
“You need to come with me,” I say quietly.
“What…” Her voice cracks. “What was that?”
I meet her eyes. There’s no version of this where I lie again.
“Something I should’ve told you weeks ago.”
The words land between us like broken glass.