Page 51 of Savage Trap

“New York,” Cam says quietly. “They want the territory, don’t they?”

I shrug, since I have a few theories on that. “It’s possible they’re going after the whole east coast. Or feeling it out, at least, to see what opposition they might get if they set themselves up as High Alpha.”

They exchange a long angry look before Cam asks, “So, how do we get them to lose interest?”

“I have a few ideas. But first, Lucas’ doctors have confirmed the poison. It’s a variant of Compound X like they suspected. Manufactured almost exclusively in Italy, and the company keeps a controlled supply of the antidote. It’s possible they’re planning to blackmail us with it.”

“Fuck that!” Rory snaps. “Give me the address and I’ll go fucking get a batch.”

I smile at him, and I can tell by the way he touches his neck that I’m showing a hint of fang. “Leon’s already put in a request to Vadini,” I inform them. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll take a more direct approach.”

They both slump a little – in relief, rather than disappointment. They are strong men and powerful wolves, but they’re not built for this kind of burden. I thought to keep it from them, but how can they defend themselves – defend our omegas – if they don’t know what is hunting us?

“I have a theory on our ghost.” Cam perks up at that, and I nod. “I call him that for a reason. Fantazëm. He’s a contract killer, and I’ve discovered it’s the name he uses with his clients. But we grew up together, so I know him as Luca.”

Cam nods, his eyes distant. “Kelly told me about him. That’s how you learned to control omega heats.”

“Yes. We were outcasts together, in our youth. He came from amongst the Gabrdýn; a gypsy tribe in the mountains. The men who ran the orphanage were scum, and they lived to torture him through his heats. He’d go feral, so we’d run away into the woods. I had no choice but to learn how to calm his beast.”

“And you think he’s after us now?” Rory frowns. “Why?”

“I left him.” Something shifts in that chasm in my chest, as if a hand is pressing deep into the wound. “Not in the orphanage. He was older than me, and had already left by the time I was adopted by Jarvis Ferrier. But I made a promise to him in those woods. That if he ever reached out to me, I’d offer him a safe place to live. But when he contacted me, I was living on the estate, tangled up in Ferrier affairs, and already trying to help the Omega Underground. I didn’t have anything to offer him.”

“So, what?” Rory asks in a belligerent tone, his eyes hard. “We all had a shit start in life. Asshole fathers and bullshit promises. Why is he coming after you for that?”

I could tell them that as an omega, he felt he had some connection to me beyond the bonds of our childhood. Some claim to my wolf, or place earned in my pack. But it could also be as simple as a job he is carrying out for one of his European masters. So I leave it at a shrug. “I don’t have the answer to that. But Luca is broken, and very, very dangerous. They don’t just call him the phantom because he completes his missions without leaving a trace. They call him that, because he once terrorized a shifter so badly, he turned his black wolf completely white.”

“Well fuck, that’s just what we need,” Rory mutters, rubbing his hands over his arms. “And you think this spook put Daddy Ferrier into a coma?”

I open my mouth to tell them it’s unlikely. The timing doesn’t match. Luca was harassing my pack in the woods at the time Lucas was poisoned. Not that he couldn’t be working with an accomplice…

“We think we might have something,” Link says as he enters the room with Nate on his heels. He shoots me a half smile, even though I’ve had the bond open to him since I entered the suite, but I turn my gaze on his beta shadow. Nate’s perfume, I note, is sweeter, his eyes lit up with excitement behind his glasses. I can’t tell if it’s the glow of finally freeing his wolf, or if he’s decided to let us see behind the mask he usually wears. Either way, it lights him up from the inside, and I can suddenly see why he’s caught our angel’s eye.

“This is Nate’s work, so he should show you,” Link says, interrupting my lingering scrutiny. He clicks a few buttons, projecting his laptop onto the bank of screens. “This is just a summary tab. Nate, you want to talk us through it?”

A faint pink blush touches the beta’s cheeks, but he nods. “I have certain tools that monitor financial accounts, and when Link mentioned there might be a European connection, I fed their information into a database.”

Cam blinks at him. “You have access to the accounts of the European packs?”

“I’ve been tracking them since the Wolf of Washington got involved in council business.” He looks around at us, his blush deepening. “I started with Alpha Loup’s accounts and found a couple of transactions with the European Liaisons. I followed the trail from there, and now I’m seeing some crossover.” Nate looks at us with an excited gleam in his eyes. “Over the last six months, they’ve been purchasing a lot of property on the east coast.

Cam looks understandably concerned. “You mean the Italian pack?”

Nate shakes his head and pushes his glasses up his nose. “I mean all of them. Or the five main ones, anyway. The Head Alphas of Italy, Norway, Spain, the UK, and Albania.” He nods in my direction. “You call them pesë fangët?”

“The Five Fangs.”

Nate smiles and ducks his head back to the spreadsheet. “Well, we ran a cross-check between the bank accounts they used to purchase these properties and any deposits that have recently been made into the account of the Leon Head of Security.”

“Trenchfoot?” Rory snarls.

“He’s on the run for a reason,” Nate tells us. “And I already have proof that he let the Alpha of Atlanta into the private party for a fee. He’s as dirty as they come, and would be a logical choice for whoever wanted to get into the hotel to poison Alpha Ferrier. He controls all the access points and cameras, which were conveniently scrubbed right before he disappeared.”

“Well, maybe it’s Rawson,” Rory argues. “He was pissed Angel didn’t pick one of his shitstain offspring.” He gives Nate an apologetic grimace. “Not including you, I mean.”

But Nate just smiles. “They are shitstains,” he agrees, “but I’ve had them under surveillance, and they left the hotel immediately after the council meeting and caught a flight straight to the west coast. Besides, the accounts lead us somewhere else.” A picture appears on the screen and we all groan. It’s Phillip Prior, Kelly’s uncle, and a man I should have ended a long time ago. “He’s the proxy head of the London Pack at the moment, and is also the new owner of this property in Hartford, Connecticut.”

The sting just burns deeper as Nate brings up a picture of a familiar manor house. It’s garish in the extreme; a fortress built on top of what was once a beautiful building. “The Crouch Estate.”

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