Chapter 568

Nina

My breath caught in my throat as I pulled open the front door expecting to see excited party guests, only to be immediately met with the sight of Luke’s grim expression. His brow was furrowed in a deep frown, his lips pressed into a tight line—clear signs that something was very wrong.

“Luke? Are you okay?” I searched his face with mounting trepidation as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

Rather than answering right away, he simply held out his hand, a rumpled photograph clutched between his fingers. My stomach knotted with a sense of dread as I tentatively accepted it from him.

The moment I processed what—or rather, who—was depicted in the grainy image, my knees very nearly buckled beneath me. There, frozen in time, were two figures striding side by side down what looked like a shadowy dock. One I recognized instantly in my bones: that familiar jawline, the shock of messy dark hair smattered with flecks of gray... Edward.

But it was the man keeping pace beside him that made the breath leave my lungs harshly, as though someone had just knocked the air clean out of me.

James.

My head swam as I stared, unblinking, at the photograph of the two men. James, the boy who had posed as my friend only to betray us all and nearly kill me, and Edward, the school counselor who…

Well, who also tried to kill me.

It didn’t make any sense. What could they possibly want with one another? Granted, James’s current whereabouts were something of a mystery to us after what had gone down a few months back; he had simply disappeared without a trace.

But to see him here now, with Edward? It felt as if the knife in my gut had been twisted.

Slowly, I raised my gaze to meet Luke’s pained expression, feeling the first tendrils of dread coiling in the pit of my stomach.

“Where... where was this taken?” I managed, surprised by the tremor in my own voice.

Luke worked his jaw for a moment, seemingly weighing how much to divulge. Finally, he sighed and shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his worn leather jacket.

“The marina over on the southern end of the island,” he said gruffly. “One of my scouts picked up a potential Schreiber trail over there, and, well… we found them there.”

The news that Edward and this wildcard of a once-friend had been lurking around so close to home made me feel vaguely ill. Dozens of scenarios began whirling through my mind, each more unsettling than the last.

“So they’ve been working together?” I breathed. “Is that it? They’re both working with the Shreibers?”

He shifted again, a muscle feathering in his clenched jaw. “I’m not a hundred percent sure. But I think so, yes.”

My heart stuttered in my chest as a new, terrifying thought occurred to me. The taunting words that were left on the note in the warehouse… J…

“‘J’,” I suddenly said, whirling around to face Enzo—who had materialized beside me a few moments ago, his brown-eyed gaze fixed unblinkingly on the picture in my hands. “Do you think… James could me…”

Enzo blinked at me, his eyes as wide as saucers. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Luke’s shoulders slump almost imperceptibly, and I knew I had hit the proverbial nail on the head. If James really was somehow working with Edward and the Schreibers now...

“Shit,” I muttered, pinching the bridge of my nose as a wave of nausea rolled through me. “This is so much worse than I could have imagined. We have to do something about this. If they’ve really joined forces… James knows so much about us, about our pack… We have to capture them.”

“They’re long gone, Nina.”

Those four words, spoken in a low, weary rasp, cut straight through my panicked stream of consciousness like a blade. I blinked, snapping my gaze back up to Luke’s haggard expression.

“What... what do you mean?”

He braced his hands on the doorframe, leaning in closer with a heavy sigh. “I mean, by the time I caught up to them this morning, I only saw them long enough to get that photo before they were boarding a speedboat and taking off. Hell, I’m still not even totally sure which direction they were headed.”

A heavy weight settled in the pit of my stomach as the full gravity of the situation sank in. If Edward and James truly were in cahoots now, working alongside the Schreibers in whatever twisted scheme they were cooking up...

We might already be too late to stop it.

“You had to have at least gotten a glimpse of where they were headed!” I exclaimed, maybe a little more harshly than I intended. Luke visibly winced at the sound of my voice, and I drew in a deep breath to calm myself.

“They were headed south,” Luke said. “That’s all I know; maybe they were headed to the mainland, or…”

“Or maybe they knew you were watching, just as they knew that we were going to raid the warehouse, the entire time,” Enzo said.

Luke nodded. “So it’s possible that they were just throwing me off their trail before they changed direction.”

I cursed under my breath, biting the inside of my cheek to keep myself grounded. The thought of the two of them together, working alongside the Schreibers in some unknown scheme, made me sick.

Before I could spiral too far down that anxious path, however, a familiar pair of strong arms circled my waist from behind. Enzo’s soothing scent enveloped me as he rested his stubbly chin on top of my head.

“Hey,” he said softly, pulling me in a little closer. “I know it seems hopeless, but you have to breathe.”

I let out a shuddering breath that I hadn’t realized I had been holding, my shoulders sagging back against the solid plane of his chest. Always there to anchor me, to keep me present. Despite everything, I appreciated that.

“I just…” My voice trailed off. I didn’t even know what to say, or what to think.

Nuzzling his cheek against my hair, Enzo leaned over and gently slid the photograph out from between my slack fingers, taking a moment to study its contents more closely. When he straightened up again, his expression was carefully neutral.

“Luke’s right—if they’ve already shipped out, there’s not much we can do about it right now,” he said, tucking the photo away in his pocket and out of sight. “But what we can do is not let them control our lives—not give them the satisfaction.”

I let out an involuntary scoff. “So what do you propose?” I asked.

His eyes crinkled at the corners as he nodded towards the backyard, where the beginnings of our little end-of-summer party were coming together. Twinkling strings of fairy lights, flickering mason jar candles lining the steps, the smoky-sweet aroma of the grill firing up...

Despite everything, I managed a faint smile at the thought of all of our friends being here tonight for one night of revelry. One last hurrah before the semester started, before the baby came, before my Alpha Queen duties got in the way.

And one last night before we continued on our hunt for the Schreibers.

For a moment, I chanced a look over at Luke to gauge his reaction; he appeared weathered and tired, and I realized then just how hard we had been working him—how hard we had been working everyone, ourselves included.

We needed tonight, at least.

“You’re right,” I murmured, letting the gentle brush of Enzo’s thumb over the small of my back soothe away the last of my anxious thoughts—for now, at least. “We’ve got a party to throw.”