Page 24 of Betrayed Knocked-Up Mate

The parallel to my situation with Marcus hangs unspoken between us. Because Maia knows—of course, she knows. In a pack this size, secrets don't stay secret long. Everyone and their mother is aware there’s something old and corroded between us.

"It's not the same," I say, turning back to my screen. "Marcus didn't help me escape anything. He just... left."

"It sounds like he hurt you,” Maia says without judgment, just laying the words out there for me as if it could possibly be that simple. “Do you think you’d ever forgive him for that?”

Before I can respond, footsteps in the hallway draw our attention. Elena appears, looking exhausted but alert, with Sara close behind her.

"Sorry to interrupt," Elena says, though her expression suggests this isn't a coincidental late-night visit. "We need to adjust some of the timeline markers. Kane's people are getting better at spotting digital manipulation. Their scouts in Chicago have moved out.”

"Show me," I say, grateful for the distraction from more personal matters.

Sara moves to my other side, pulling up surveillance data on her tablet. In the weeks I've known her, I've come to appreciate her technical expertise almost as much as her dry humor.

"The metadata needs to be perfect," she explains. "Not just timestamps, but device information, GPS coordinates, everything. They've got someone good on their team—someone who knows how to spot even tiny inconsistencies."

"Byron’s better for half of that than I am. Plus, they've got someone better than you?" I tease, trying to lighten the tension I can smell rolling off both Marshall City pack members.

"No one's better than me," Sara returns with a faint smile. "But they're good enough to make me work for it. See here?" She points to a line of code. "They almost caught this discrepancy in the Chicago photos. If James hadn't warned us about their new pattern recognition software..."

"Speaking of James," Maia cuts in gently, "how's he doing? I noticed he was favoring his side again in training yesterday."

Elena's scent darkens with worry. "The wound's still not healing properly. Veronica thinks it's somehow connected to Kane's weapon—even those of us who weren't directly hit seem to be affected. Pack bonds are... strange. Unstable."

"I remember someone from back in the Smoke talking about something similar once," Maia says quietly. "Breaking down pack bonds to take down groups."

The room goes still. Because this is the first time anyone has directly compared Kane's tactics to the Smoke—the violent supernatural crime syndicate that nearly killed my brother, that Maia and Thalia barely escaped.

"Tell me," I say, setting down my coffee. "Tell me what you mean."

Maia looks at me hard, something silent passing between us. It’s as if she’s measuring me, trying to understand how I’ll take her words. Whether I’ll believe her. I get the feeling, looking at her, that she’s a person who has been disbelieved a lot in her life.

Finally, she sighs. "The Smoke... they hadn’t developed it fully by the time they collapsed, and I’m sure the tech is long gone now, with how Rosecreek blew up that compound, but… I remember them talking about researching ways of poisoning pack bonds. Making them unstable and making it harder for packs to work together. It wasn't just physical violence—it was psychological. Breaking down the connections that make us strong. It makes sense, doesn’t it? We’re nothing without each other.”

"That's what Kane's weapon does," Sara adds, her usual humor absent. "It doesn't just suppress shifter abilities. It... it taints everything it touches. Makes it harder to heal, harder to trust, harder to maintain the bonds that keep us whole. They only got two of our pack, and we’re a large group, so the damage was minimal. But imagine if half your pack got hit? It would… it would destroy the lot. Make rogues of them all."

The thought makes me feel cold inside. I have to excuse myself to get some air, Maia’s stare burning into my back as I leave.

Dawn still finds me at my desk, though the others have gone to catch what sleep they can. My mind whirs with everything I learned in those quiet night hours—about Kane's weapons, about the patterns of violence that seem to echo across different supernatural threats, about the ways pack bonds can be poisoned and broken.

Despite myself, I still replay in my mind the way Marcus's body goes rigid every time Kane's name is mentioned over and over, like a film with a break in its reel.

"You need sleep."

His voice startles me—I didn't even hear him approach, too lost in my thoughts and fatigue. Marcus stands in the doorway like a shadow given form, his own exhaustion evident in the shadows under his eyes.

He makes for an imposing silhouette, broad and unyielding. I try not to look at his body for too long.

"So do you," I return, noting the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands clench and unclench at his sides. "Rough night?"

"Intel reports. Kane's people have been moving in patterns we can't quite predict." He steps into the room, and it makes my stomach flip. "Bigby wants to run a security sweep of the borders. Check for any signs they might have scouts in the area."

"I'll come with you."

The words slip out before I can stop them.

Marcus goes still, that familiar mask of Alpha authority sliding into place. "That's not necessary. We have it covered."

"I know these woods," I say, facing him. "Better than you do. And after what Maia told me about pack bonds being targeted, you shouldn't be out there alone."

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