Shattered Plastic, Shattered Trust
I grabbed my father's Glock from the safe, fingers shaking so badly I dropped the magazine twice before it clicked home.
Three hours. Three fucking hours to figure out who wanted me dead and why they'd moved up the timeline. The phone still lay on the floor where I'd dropped it, screen dark, like it hadn't just delivered a death sentence.
My wolf clawed at my ribs, wanting out, wanting to run straight to the lumber mill and tear apart whoever was threatening my pack. But that's what they wanted. Maya Castellanos, young and stupid and desperate, walking into a trap alone.
I wasn't my father. Couldn't be. But I could be smart.
The jacket felt heavier as I shrugged it on, leather creaking in the silent house. Dad's scent had faded from it weeks ago, replaced by my own sweat and fear and the lingering smoke from the funeral pyre. I'd burned his body myself, watched the flames consume what was left of the man who'd taught me everything except how to lead without him.
My phone buzzed again.
I lunged for it, pulse hammering against my sternum hard enough to bruise.
Tick tock, little alpha.
The number was blocked. Of course it was. I typed back with trembling fingers: Who is this?
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Someone who knows you called Dominic Thorne. Someone who knows you're weak. Someone who's going to enjoy watching you break.
The phone cracked in my grip. Plastic bit into my palm, sharp and grounding.
They were watching me. Had to be. The message to Dominic had been less than an hour ago, and already they knew. Which meant someone in my pack was feeding them information, or they had eyes on my house, or—
The wolf surged, and I let her. Let the shift take me halfway, bones grinding and reshaping until my senses sharpened to something beyond human. I could smell the old coffee in the kitchen, the dust gathering in corners I hadn't cleaned since Dad died, the faint trace of Sienna's perfume still lingering in the hallway.
And something else.
Something wrong.
I moved through the house on silent feet, half-shifted, claws extended. The Glock felt awkward in my partially transformed hand, but I'd trained for this. Dad had made sure I could shoot in any form.
The scent led me to the living room window. Fresh. Male. Unfamiliar.
Someone had been standing outside, watching. Recently enough that their scent hadn't dispersed yet.
I yanked the curtains aside. The street was empty, sodium lights casting everything in sickly orange. Mrs. Chen's porch light flickered across the way. A cat darted between parked cars.
Normal. Everything looked completely normal.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I can see you right now. That jacket's too big for you. Just like the job.
I spun, scanning rooflines, parked cars, the dense shadows between houses. Nothing. No movement. No—
There. A glint of light from the oak tree two houses down. Moonlight on glass.
Binoculars. Or a scope.
The wolf wanted to charge, to hunt, to kill. I forced the shift back, bones cracking as I returned to human form. Couldn't think clearly when she was in control, and I needed to think.
I needed help.
The realization tasted like copper and defeat. I'd spent three months proving I could do this alone, that I didn't need Dominic or his pack or the mate bond that pulled at me like a fishhook lodged in my chest. Three months of silence and distance and pretending I didn't wake up every morning reaching for someone who wasn't there.
And now I had three hours.
I pulled up Dominic's contact. My thumb hovered over the call button.
Come alone, or your pack members start dying one by one.
But they already knew I'd contacted him. Already knew I was weak enough to ask for help. So what did I have to lose?
I hit call.
He answered on the first ring. "Maya."
Just my name, but the way he said it—careful, like I was something fragile that might shatter—made my throat tight.
"They moved it up," I said. "Midnight. Tonight."
Silence. Then: "I'm coming over."
"No. They're watching the house. They know—" I worked her jaw. "They know I called you."
"Then they know I'm coming regardless." His voice shifted, went harder. "I'm ten minutes away."
"Dominic—"
"Ten minutes. Lock the doors."
He hung up.
I stood there with the phone pressed to my ear, listening to dead air, and something in my chest that had been clenched tight for three months loosened just enough to let me breathe.
He made it in seven.
I heard his truck before I saw it, the diesel engine's rumble distinct even from inside the house. He didn't park in front. Smart. He pulled into the alley behind my house, killed the engine, and was at my back door before I could cross the kitchen.
I opened it before he could knock.
We stared at each other.
Three months. Three months since I'd seen him this close, close enough to count the new lines around his eyes, the shadow of stubble on his jaw, the way his shoulders filled out his black henley like he'd been spending his grief in the gym same as me.
The mate bond snapped taut between us, and I felt it in my bones, in my blood, in the wolf that whined and pressed against my skin wanting out, wanting him, wanting to close the distance and—
"You cut your hair," he said.
I touched the short strands self-consciously. I'd hacked it off two weeks ago with kitchen scissors at three in the morning, couldn't stand the weight of it anymore. "Yeah."
"It suits you."
"Don't." The word came out sharper than I meant. "Don't do that. Don't be nice to me right now."
His teeth pressed together. "What would you prefer?"
"I'd prefer you tell me how we're going to keep my pack alive."
He stepped inside, and I caught his scent—pine and smoke and something underneath that was just him, just Dominic, and the wolf rolled over in submission. I shoved her down hard.
"Show me the messages," he said.
I handed him my phone. Watched his face as he read, the way his expression went carefully blank. That was new. Or maybe not new, maybe I'd just never noticed before how much he hid behind that formal, measured mask.
"They're well-informed," he said finally.
"No shit."
"Which means either someone in your pack is compromised, or—"
"Or they've been watching me for a while." I crossed my arms, felt the leather jacket creak. "I checked the perimeter. Found a scent by the living room window, fresh. Male. And someone was in the oak tree down the street with binoculars or a scope."
"Past tense?"
"They're gone now."
He moved to the window, careful to stay out of sight lines, and scanned the street with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd done this before. "How many pack members do you have that they could target?"
"Twelve. Most of them are scattered, staying with family outside the territory until this blows over."
"Most?"
I looked away. "Three are still here. Jenna, Marcus, and Dev. They refused to leave."
"Where are they now?"
"Jenna's at her apartment downtown. Marcus and Dev are sharing a place on the east side."
Dominic pulled out his phone, typed something quickly. "I'm sending people to watch them. Discreetly."
"I can't afford—"
"You're not paying." He looked up, and something in his eyes made my breath catch. "This isn't a transaction, Maya. This is—" He stopped. Started again. "One might consider this a matter of personal investment."
There it was. That pause. The one that meant he was lying to himself, trying to make this about strategy or pack politics when we both knew it was about the bond neither of us could break.
"Personal investment," I repeated flatly.
"Yes."
"Right." I laughed, and it came out bitter. "Because you're just so invested in the Castellanos pack's wellbeing."
"I'm invested in you not dying."
The words hung between us, too honest, too raw. His formal mask cracked just enough for me to see what was underneath—fear, and anger, and something that looked like the same desperate longing that kept me awake at night.
I turned away. Couldn't look at him and keep my walls up at the same time. "We need a plan."
"We need to not go to that lumber mill."
"They'll kill my pack members."
"They'll kill you if you show up." He moved closer, and I felt it like heat against my back. "This is a trap, Maya. You know it's a trap."
"So what do you suggest? I just let them pick off my people one by one?"
"I suggest we figure out who's behind this before you walk into an ambush."
I spun to face him. "I don't have time to figure it out. I have—" I checked my phone. "Two hours and forty minutes."
"Then we use those two hours."
"To do what?"
"To think." He gestured at the kitchen table. "Sit. Tell me everything. Every message, every threat, every strange thing that's happened since your father died."
I wanted to argue. Wanted to grab my keys and my gun and drive straight to that lumber mill and end this, one way or another. But the wolf was quiet now, watching Dominic with something like trust, and maybe she was smarter than I was.
I sat.
An hour later, we had a list of suspects and no good options.
"Sienna's the obvious choice," Dominic said, studying the notes he'd made in his precise, slanted handwriting. "She has motive—wants control of the pack. She has opportunity—she's been in your house, knows your movements. And she has the resources to hire surveillance."
"But?"
"But this feels too crude for her." He tapped his pen against the paper. "Sienna's a politician. She'd maneuver you into a position where you had to step down voluntarily, make it look like your choice. Threatening your pack members, moving up timelines—that's not her style."
I pulled my father's jacket tighter. The kitchen was cold, or maybe I was just cold, had been cold since the funeral. "Who else?"
"Your father had enemies. Other packs who didn't appreciate his territorial expansion. Rogues he'd exiled. Business rivals from before he took over the pack."
"That's a long list."
"Yes."
"And we have—" I checked my phone again. "One hour and fifty minutes to narrow it down."
Dominic set down his pen. Looked at me with those dark eyes that saw too much. "Or we don't go."
"We've been over this."
"No, we haven't. Not really." He leaned forward, elbows on the table. "You're assuming they'll follow through on the threat if you don't show. But perhaps they won't. Perhaps the threat itself is the point—to make you act rashly, to isolate you from potential allies, to—"
"To get me alone and vulnerable." I finished. "Yeah. I get it. But what if you're wrong? What if I don't go, and tomorrow morning I find Jenna's body, or Marcus's, or—"
My voice cracked. I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek, tasted blood.
Dominic's hand moved across the table, stopped just short of touching mine. "I won't let that happen."
"You can't promise that."
"No," he admitted. "But I can promise I'll be there. Whatever you decide, wherever you go—I'll be there."
The mate bond pulled tight, and for a second I let myself feel it. Let myself acknowledge what I'd been denying for three months—that having him here, in my kitchen, planning and strategizing and refusing to let me face this alone, felt right in a way nothing else had since Dad died.
"Your father would kill you," I said quietly. "If he knew you were here."
"My father doesn't control me."
"Doesn't he?"
Dominic's jaw worked. "That's not fair."
"Isn't it?" I pulled my hand back, tucked it under the table where he couldn't almost-touch it. "Three months ago, you chose him. Chose the pack politics and the feud and all the bullshit reasons why we couldn't—" I stopped. Couldn't say it. "You chose him."
"I chose to give you space." His voice went quiet, dangerous. "You were grieving. You'd just lost your father and inherited a pack you weren't ready for. You needed time to—"
"I needed you."
The words came out before I could stop them. Raw and honest and so fucking vulnerable I wanted to take them back immediately.
Dominic went very still. "Maya—"
"Forget it." I stood, chair scraping against linoleum. "We should go. If we're doing this, we need to scout the location first, figure out—"
"I think about you every day."
I froze.
"Every morning I wake up and the bond is there, pulling at me, and I think perhaps today I'll drive to your house. Perhaps today I'll stop being a coward and tell you that I—" He stopped. That pause again, the one that meant he was lying to himself. "That I made a mistake."
I turned slowly. "What?"
He stood, and suddenly the kitchen felt too small, the space between us too charged. "I made a mistake. Three months ago, when I walked away. I told myself it was the right thing, the noble thing, giving you space to grieve and lead without the complication of—" He gestured between us. "This. But I was wrong."
"Dominic—"
"I was a coward." He took a step closer. "I let my father's disapproval and pack politics and a decades-old feud matter more than—" Another pause. Longer this time. "More than you."
My heart was doing something complicated in my chest, something that felt like hope and terror mixed together. "Why are you telling me this now?"
"Because in—" He checked his watch. "One hour and forty-three minutes, you're planning to walk into a trap. And if something happens, if I lose you before I've said this, I'll—" His voice roughened. "I won't survive it, Maya. The bond won't let me."
I should've been angry. Should've told him it was too little, too late, that three months of silence couldn't be erased with one pretty speech. But the wolf was pressing against my skin, whining, wanting, and I was so tired of fighting.
"I'm still going," I said.
"I know."
"And you're still coming with me."
"Yes."
"Even though your father will lose his shit."
"Especially because of that." something close to amusement crossed his face. "Perhaps it's time I stopped letting him dictate my choices."
I wanted to close the distance between us. Wanted to feel his arms around me, solid and real, wanted to stop pretending the bond was something I could ignore. But my phone buzzed before I could move.
We both looked at it.
One hour. Don't be late. And Maya? I hope you said goodbye to Dominic. You won't be seeing him again.
The screen went dark.
"They know you're here," I said.
Dominic's expression hardened. "Good."
"Good?"
"It means we're making them nervous." He pulled out his own phone. "Which means we're close to something they don't want us to figure out."
"Or it means they're watching the house right now and we're both about to die."
"Always so optimistic."
Despite everything—the threats, the fear, the ticking clock—I almost smiled. "Fuck you."
"Perhaps later." He typed something quickly. "I'm calling in reinforcements."
"I thought you said—"
"I said I'd be there. I didn't say I'd be stupid about it." He held the phone to his ear. "We're going to that lumber mill, but we're going prepared. And if whoever's behind this wants a fight—" His eyes flashed gold, wolf rising to the surface. "We'll give them one."
The lumber mill sat on the edge of pack territory, abandoned for fifteen years since the owner died and his kids moved to California. Dad used to bring me here when I was young, let me run wild through the empty buildings while he conducted business he didn't want witnesses for.
Now it just looked haunted.
Dominic killed the headlights two blocks away, and we approached on foot. He'd changed into tactical gear—black cargo pants, boots, a vest with more pockets than I could count. I'd kept Dad's jacket but added my own vest underneath, Glock holstered at my hip, two knives strapped to my thighs.
We looked like we were going to war.
Maybe we were.
"Your people in position?" I whispered.
He nodded. "Four on the perimeter. Two on the rooflines. They won't engage unless necessary."
"Define necessary."
"If you're about to die."
"Comforting."
We moved through the shadows, and I let the wolf rise just enough to sharpen my senses. The mill smelled like rot and rust and old wood, but underneath—
"Someone's here," I breathed.
"I know."
We crept closer. The main building loomed ahead, windows dark, door hanging crooked on broken hinges. No lights. No movement. But the scent was there, fresh and human and—
Familiar.
I grabbed Dominic's arm. "Wait."
"What?"
"I know that scent."
He went still. "Who?"
But before I could answer, the door swung open. Light spilled out, harsh and blinding after the darkness. A figure stood silhouetted in the doorway, and when she spoke, her voice was honey and steel.
"Hello, dear," Sienna said. "Right on time."