Page 94 of The Fated Hunter Wolf
SABLE
“Wait,” I said, squeezing Rhys’s hand and whispered, “don’t attack.”
“Sable?” Eve’s voice drifted from the shadows ahead.
I stepped forward, dragging Rhys with me. “We’re here,” I called softly.
Two figures emerged from the darkness—Eve in her oracle dress, Astrid beside her with that focused expression she wore when maintaining complex magic.
Rhys went absolutely still. Shock hit first—then calculation, the swift assessment of a beta realizing pack members were deep in enemy territory where they didn’t belong.
“What the hell are they doing here?” He kept his voice low.
“There are shifters in transit here,” Eve said to him. “We followed the Crux scent. There was no way to communicate with you when we found the tunnels. This place is completely cut off from the world above. That’s why we came to the assembly hall to get you.”
Rhys looked between the three of us, his golden eyes taking in details he’d probably been unconsciously noting for weeks—the way Eve and I moved with similar grace, the scent markers that connected us, the pack dynamics that were so different from Orion hierarchy.
“So I already know that Eve and you are Crux,” he said slowly. His gaze shifted to Astrid, whose arms were crossed and her eyebrow raised. “Is the pup Crux too?”
“Thepup?” Astrid’s indignation flared through the bond, but she held her tongue and nodded.
“Fuck,” Rhys muttered, dragging a hand through his hair. “You girls are everywhere.”
“We can intercept the transport,” I said, taking Rhys by the arm and leading him forward. “We just have to find them in a glamoured underground ecosystem designed to throw off supernatural senses.”
“You two head south,” Eve said. “Astrid and I will take the north tunnels. These walls may have magic in them, but that won’t be enough to stop the Crux bond.”
Eve put her hand on Astrid’s back. Astrid started to walk away with her, but looked back at me. “Nice to finally save Crux with you, Mama Sabe.”
“You just take care of yourself out there.” I sighed. There was no protecting her anymore. She was holding her own.
The corridors of the underground transport system stretched endlessly ahead. My vampire nature worked automatically—seventeen exit points between here and the main staircase, heartbeats still pulsing in the assembly hall above us. The tang of old blood had seeped into these stones over centuries of supernatural politics.
Underneath that scent, something else curled through the recycled air, and my wolf recoiled. A heavy musk hung in the air, though we hadn’t seen a soul since leaving the assembly hall.
My steps faltered as the Crux bond hit me, all thoughts of the acrid scent disappearing. Rhys’s wolf caught the shift in my body chemistry—the spike of adrenaline, the involuntary tension of recognizing predators in your territory.
“Sable,” he whispered. “I’ve got nothing. What do you sense?”
The Crux bond pulsed in my consciousness. Eve was urgent, broadcasting images that made my hybrid nature snarl: dozens of supernatural beings in cells, guards moving with military precision, the scent of terror so thick it was almost visible.
“Eve senses the captured shifters—she’s sharing her vision,” I said, voice strained. “Dozens of supernatural beings. Being prepared for auction.”
The pieces were finally coming together. The Council’s emergency session called with such precise timing when Rhys was gone. The trafficking operation Eve sensed when we left Orion territory. The way every political maneuver tonight had felt choreographed, designed to keep the alphas distracted while something else unfolded in the shadows.
“Where?” Rhys hissed.
“Somewhere south of here.” I closed my eyes, letting Eve’s oracle visions flow through our bond. The images came in flashes—cramped cells, injured prisoners, the systematic organization of beings sorted by species and potential value. “This isn’t random trafficking, Rhys.”
Rhys went absolutely still beside me, his wolf’s attention sharpening until it was laser-focused. His protective instincts flared—not just for me, but for everyone who mattered to me.Onlybecause they mattered to me.
My enhanced senses reached deeper into the tunnel systems, parsing scent signatures with the precision my mother drilled into me during those early years when survival depended on knowing exactly who had passed through an area and when.
Pack wolves. Multiple families. Multiple families. Not rogues—these were scents from territories I’d mapped during years of Crux rescue operations.
“They’re the missing members from territories the Council absorbed,” I continued, each word feeling heavier than the last. “The Centaurus pack that was absorbed after refusing Cassiopeia hunting rights. The Lyra wolves who supposedly died in territorial disputes after their luna was lost. They weren’t killed. They were taken.”
Understanding flared in Rhys’s golden eyes—then fury, so fierce it made the air itself quiver with heat.
