My Hockey Alpha novel Chapter 513

Nina

I hurried into HQ, my heart pounding as I wondered why I had been called here. Enzo’s abrupt request had caught me off guard after the serenity of my yoga class, and I was fearing the worst already.

As I burst through the doors into the main communications room, I found him hunched over a monitor with Daphne and Luke peering over their shoulders, all three of their faces drawn with grim concern.

“What’s going on?” I demanded, striding over to them. Enzo’s head snapped up at the sound of my voice, his soft brown eyes tight with an emotion that immediately read as worry.

“We may have a lead on this mysterious Schreiber business,” he said in a low voice. He gestured for Daphne to begin briefing me on the situation.

The petite redhead shifted her weight, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ve been tracking one of their cargo trucks that left the warehouse a few nights ago,” she explained, pulling up a map with a highlighted route on the screen. “It led me here-to an old dock on the shoreline.”

My brows furrowed as I studied the map. On an island like this, old ports were all over the place, many still in use but many also abandoned for newer ones; but I didn’t recognize this one. It was located in a small cove on the east side of the island, a few towns over from Mountainview.

“Okay,” I said cautiously, chewing the inside of my lip. “What did you find there?”

“That’s the disturbing part,” Daphne replied. “From what I could tell, it was like they were receiving… shipments, for lack of a better word.” She went silent then, her green eyes flitting nervously back and forth between me, Enzo, and Luke.

“A shipment of what, exactly?” I pressed, an uneasy feeling settling in the pit of my stomach.

Daphne swallowed hard before replying. “Werewolves, Nina. They were offloading werewolves from a boat that arrived in the middle of the night.”

A stunned silence hung in the air as her words sank in. Smuggling werewolves? But how…? And from where? My mind reeled with a torrent of questions, and it was all I could do to find a nearby chair to sink into before my legs went weak. Even now, I could feel my blood pressure rising. I took a steadying breath to calm myself, a weak attempt at following the doctor’s orders.

“And that’s not all,” Enzo interjected, his jaw tensed. “According to Daphne’s surveillance, the werewolves they were unloading seemed… out of it. Dazed and lethargic, like they were…

“}

“Drugged,” Daphne finished.

My blood ran cold at the implications. Kidnapping werewolves to use as pawns—or worse, supernatural weapons— was a terrifying prospect, one that made the threat of the Schreibers all the more grave. We had already had a similar issue with my father’s Luna, and that had turned out horrifically.

And judging by the stony set of Enzo’s features, he had arrived at the same conclusion.

We spent the next few minutes poring over the grainy photographs Daphne had managed to snap of the incident and drilling her with questions about anything else she might have observed. By the time we had extracted every possible detail, a heavy pall had settled over the room.

“This isn’t much,” I said softly, gesturing to the few photos and notes pertaining to Daphne’s information. “It’s not much to go off of at all.”

Enzo let out a weary sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. “No, it’s not. And we can’t rush into this half-cocked,” he said, more to himself than to any of us. “We need to keep watching them, try to gather more intel before making any moves.”

“We’ll keep spying,” Luke said. “I’ve got my scouts all over the island. No one makes a move without my knowledge.”

It was clear the Schreibers were doing something to the werewolves, although we weren’t sure what. It didn’t seem as though they were building an army. Were they experimenting, maybe?

Either way, the implications of whatever they were up to were terrifying. I couldn’t have another repeat of the Crescents, the rogues that had all but destroyed our town.

Enzo easily sensed my spiraling thoughts, because he was constantly at my side with a steadying hand on the small of my back or a lingering kiss on my temple. His grounding presence was invaluable in those moments when my emotions threatened to overwhelm me.

“We’re going to figure this all out,” he would murmur against my hair. “Don’t worry. We’ll keep ahead of them, nip whatever they’re doing in the bud before it turns sinister.”

Three nights after receiving Daphne’s initial report on the docks, we had just finished our latest strategy session when Luke burst through the door, somewhat wild-eyed.

“We’ve got news,” he panted, out of breath like he had sprinted the whole way there. “From the werewolf realm…”

Enzo and I exchanged a loaded glance, my pulse spiking. News from the werewolf realm could mean any number of things after my father’s disappearance-a challenge for the throne, a civil war breaking out…

But it wasn’t what we expected at all.

“Nina, your father has been found.”