Page 10 of Claimed By Werewolf
I wouldn’t.
The cursor blinked on the screen and taunted me.I dug deeper.I had become an expert at finding anything I wanted on the dark web.I flipped through old notes I’d scribbled in a rush—coffee-stained and frayed around the edges.Most of it was guesswork and dead ends, but one page caught my eye.
A list of numbers I’d pulled from his last month of phone calls.
I’d highlighted the last call.The one to a number linked to someone in the Broken Sons, but tonight my eyes snagged on something different.A number he’d called twice in the week before his death.Not the last call, but close.
And one I hadn’t noticed that I figured out belonged to a burner phone after doing a few deep dives.
My stomach flipped.
Burners weren’t random.Burners meant someone was hiding.And if Tyler had been calling that number, maybe he’d been onto something bigger than I realized.
I pulled up a search window, and my fingers flew across the keys.It took hours of digging, cross-referencing, and pure stubbornness, but eventually I found a match.The burner was tied to a prepaid card, purchased at a gas station not far from the Sons’ territory.
My pulse kicked hard when I saw the address.That gas station sat one block over from the warehouse where Tyler worked before he died.I’d driven past it a hundred times and tried to pretend the building didn’t make my skin crawl.Now I knew why—it wasn’t just a job site.It was part of the Sons’ world.
It wasn’t proof, not yet.But it was a thread.And if I pulled hard enough, maybe it’d unravel the whole thing.
I sat back and rubbed my eyes.It was nearly three a.m.and my body buzzed with exhaustion and adrenaline.
All roads still pointed to the Broken Sons.
And one name kept circling back in my head.
Werewolf.
I thought about the way he’d looked at me.Pinned me against the wall like he could crush me with a twitch of his hand.His eyes had been cold, but not empty.No, behind that steel was something else, something I couldn’t name.
Regret.Conflict.Maybe even guilt.
He knew.I was sure of it now.
And I wasn’t going to stop until I made him tell me.
-
The next morning, I tried to act normal.
I went to work at the coffee shop down the street, poured lattes, and smiled at regulars.Pretended I was just another girl with just another life.
But every time I rang up an order, I saw Tyler’s face.Every time the bell over the door jingled, I looked up expecting him to walk in, a grin on his face, and tease me for the apron tied around my waist.
And every time he didn’t, the hollow ache in my chest deepened.
By lunch, my manager told me to take a break because I was dropping cups and forgetting orders.
“Demi,” she said gently, “maybe you should take a few days off.”
I nodded and pretended it was about the lack of sleep, not the fact that I had stayed up plotting how to corner a biker twice my size and demand answers about my brother’s death.
On my break, I sat in the alley behind the shop, phone pressed to my ear as I called my mom.
She picked up after two rings, voice warm but tired.“Hey, honey.”
I swallowed.“Hey, Mom.How are you?”
“Good.Busy.”A pause.“Are you okay?You sound… off.”
