Page 28 of Betrayed Knocked-Up Mate

"She's being hidden," I say before I can stop myself. The words come out rough, almost desperate. “Hide her in the pack center—hide heranywhere.”

The look Camila gives me could strip paint. "Like hell I am."

"Marcus," Asher warns quietly. Through our pack bonds, I feel his understanding, his concern. He knows what seeing her in danger would do to me. What it's already doing.

But before I can argue further, Elena's tablet chirps—the final warning that Kane's forces are nearly at the gates.

"Thirty seconds," she announces, already moving toward the door. "We need to move. Now."

Camila sweeps away from me, out of sight. It almost cleaves me in half.

The next moments blur together in a rush of tactical precision. My team disappearing into the pre-dawn shadows, taking different routes to our temporary sanctuary. Aris's voice on the radio, coordinating his people. The growing scent of unfamiliar wolves approaching from the north.

Just before I follow James through the clinic's hidden entrance, I catch one last glimpse of Camila across the street. She's standing with Thalia and Rafael at the pack center’s entrance, phone pressed to her ear, likely in communication with someone else from the Rosecreek team.

When she meets my eyes across the distance, something passes between us—recognition, maybe. Understanding. A strange, heavy thing.

Then the door closes, and darkness swallows me whole.

The clinic basement smells like antiseptic and old stone. Veronica's already there, directing my people into positions that will be masked by medical supplies and equipment. The space is larger than I expected, obviously prepared for exactly this kind of emergency.

"They're good at this," James mutters as we settle into our hiding spots. "Protecting strays."

"Too good," I respond, guilt churning in my gut. Because Camila was right; this is what I've brought to their door—Kane's violence, his twisted ideology, his precise and terrible retribution. Everything I've spent five years trying to prevent has followed me here anyway.

Through the pack bonds, I feel the moment Kane's forces reach the gates. Feel the spike in tension, the collective intake of breath as Rosecreek prepares to face yet another threat. Above us, footsteps move with purpose—Veronica maintaining her cover, treating routine patients as if nothing's wrong.

And somewhere out there, Camila's preparing to face the very danger I left her to prevent.

The irony would be funny if it didn't feel like drowning.

"They're requesting entry," Elena reports through our secured comms. "Standard diplomatic approach. Claiming they're just following leads about suspicious activity."

Standard procedure for Kane's people—maintain the illusion of legitimacy until the last possible moment. Make everything seem official, proper. Just like they did with my parents.

Minutes stretch like razor wire as we wait in our borrowed sanctuary. Through the pack bonds, I track the movement above—Aris greeting Kane's people with diplomatic courtesy, Bigby and the others maintaining a careful perimeter. The faint echo of voices carries through the old stone, too muffled to make out words but clear enough to catch tone. Measured. Professional. Deadly.

A sudden spike of tension through the bonds makes my wolf surge forward. Something's changed. Through our comms, I hear Elena's sharp intake of breath.

"Multiple teams," she whispers. "They're surrounding the pack center."

Above us, the diplomatic dance continues. But we all know how this ends.

Kane never comes in peace.

Chapter 11 - Camila

The pack center’s meeting room breathes like a living thing in the dull light from outside. I've photographed this room a hundred times since coming to Rosecreek—the way sunlight spills through the high windows, how shadows pool in the corners like secrets, the graceful arc of wooden beams that somehow manage to look both ancient and modern.

But this morning, everything feels different. The light falls harder, more clinical, turning familiar spaces into something out of a war correspondent's portfolio. The kind of lighting that makes everything look like evidence, like the moment before catastrophe.

My hands hunger for my camera, currently locked safely away in Rafael's house. The instinct to document is so deeply ingrained now that its absence feels like missing a limb. Five years of chasing increasingly dangerous shots around the globe have taught me to recognize these moments—the calm before violence, the intake of breath before the plunge.

We're arranged around Aris in what looks like casual groupings to untrained eyes. But I've photographed enough conflicts to recognize a defensive formation. Bigby and Rafael flank our Alpha, their massive frames somehow making him look more imposing rather than less. Thalia has drifted to the left, where the morning light catches her knives just so—a subtle warning to anyone paying attention. The rest of the core team positions themselves with careful precision, every placement calculated, every angle covered.

Through the faint thrum of the pack bond, I feel the collective tension—a low hum of readiness that makes my wolf pace restlessly. The bonds themselves feel strange this morning, stretched thin like overtightened wire. I catch Rafael watching me, concern threading through his scent. He knows how new I still am to this, how pack bonds still sometimes overwhelm me after years of deliberately avoiding them.

"Easy," he murmurs, too soft for anyone else to hear. "Just breathe through it."

---