The Mole

It took three days to find the smoking gun.

It was Thursday night. The city below was a grid of light in the rain. Dominic was asleep—or pretending to be—on the leather couch in the corner of the office.

Harper cracked the encryption on Marcus Thorne’s private email server.

She didn't find bank transfers. She found coordinates.

*Subject: The Nest.*

*Attachment: GPS\_Upstate\_Farm.xml*

*Body: The Alpha will be at the Spire tonight. The perimeter at the farm is weak. Strike at dawn.*

"Alpha?" Harper whispered.

She opened the next email. It was a correspondence with a group called "The Cure."

*Sender: Commander\_Vance (No relation, thank god).*

*Body: Payment received. We will cleanse the city. The Wolf must die.*

Harper felt a chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning.

"The Wolf," she murmured.

She looked at the shipping manifests again. The raw meat. The steel cages. The "at-risk youths."

She looked at Dominic sleeping on the couch. The way he moved with unnatural grace. The strength in his hands. The amber eyes.

"Oh my god," she whispered. "He's not raising tigers."

She stood up. The chair scraped loudly against the floor.

Dominic was awake instantly. He didn't wake up like a normal person—groggy, blinking. He went from stillness to a combat crouch in zero point two seconds.

His eyes were glowing. actually glowing.

"Harper?" he growled.

"I found the leak," Harper said, her voice trembling. "It’s Marcus. He’s selling you out to a group called The Cure."

Dominic’s face went pale. "The Cure. They're a paramilitary hate group. They hunt..."

"Werewolves?" Harper finished.

Dominic froze. He straightened up slowly, his movements predatory. "You figured it out."

"The meat. The fencing. The 'Alpha'. It wasn't hard math," Harper said, backing up until her hips hit the desk. "You're a werewolf."

"Yes," Dominic said. He took a step toward her. "And the kids in those safe houses? They're pups. runaways. Orphans who shifted for the first time and got kicked out by their families. I protect them."

Harper’s mind reeled. She was a hacktivist. She dealt in code, in corruption, in tangible reality. Werewolves were fairy tales.

But looking at Dominic—the raw power radiating off him—it made terrifying sense.

"Marcus sent them the coordinates to the farm," Harper said urgency overriding her shock. "They're attacking at dawn."

Dominic roared. It was a sound that shook the glass walls. He pulled out his phone. "I need to send the security teams. We have to—"

The lights in the penthouse went out.

Red emergency strobes began to pulse. A mechanized voice echoed from the ceiling speakers.

*SECURITY LOCKDOWN INITIATED. UNPERMITTED BIOLOGICAL AGENT DETECTED.*

"What’s happening?" Harper yelled over the siren.

Dominic stumbled. He grabbed the back of the couch, his knees buckling. He coughed, a wet, hacking sound.

"Ventilation," he gasped. "Wolfsbane. Aerosolized."

"Marcus," Harper realized. "He’s not attacking the farm. That was a decoy. He’s here."

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