The Lost Pack (Paige) novel Chapter 136

Chapter 136

** Remy’s POV **

I can’t sleep.

I lay there for an hour, listening to the sounds of even breathing from my bond group before I give up and head downstairs. My mind is too busy to sleep.

I take a glass from the cupboard and fill it with water, grabbing a slice of leftover pizza from the fridge and taking a bite as I head out the back door to sit on the porch. The air is cold, damp, and sharp with the scent of pine. I’m not sure how long I sit there, watching the clouds pass in front of the moon, just enjoying the peace of an uneventful night.

The pack is quiet, the kind of deep silence that only happens after midnight. My mind keeps circling back to the bullets we’ve found. The hunters are adapting. The lethality of that poison. We are missing something; I’m sure of it, but I can’t work out what it is.

Someone must be backing them. Someone who understands how we work. Could they be connected to the person who’s feeding them intel from inside the pack? Callen’s Rumour Roulette has been unsuccessful so far, but with everything happening, we haven’t made it through our suspect list yet.

A faint rustle from the trees pulls me from my thoughts, and my wolf perks up on instant alert. I sniff the air and pick up the musky scent of a rabbit, which equally calms and excites my wolf. He wants to run.

Pushing up to my feet, I strip off my shorts and allow the shift to take over me, my bones twisting and reshaping, and fur erupting across my skin. Maybe a run is exactly what I need; it might help me finally sleep.

My paws pound the ground as I push my wolf faster and faster, loving the feeling of the cool night air in my fur and the burn in my muscles. I run at full speed for a good mile before slowing as I approach the small creek. I stop on the bank and lower my head to the water for a drink.

A split second before my tongue touches the water, I catch a scent that has me jumping back. It’s a scent I recognise after being in the lab with Jake today.

“Don’t touch the water, don’t even let it touch your skin!” I send out a full pack warning in the mind–link.

A flurry of responses comes in, confirming my order.

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“What’s going on?” Callen asks.

“It’s in the f*****g water, Cal. They’ve put it in the water!”

“s**t. They’re trying to flush us out.”

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I shift to my human form before responding. “I don’t think it’s in our main water lines, or not yet at least, but we shouldn’t risk it.”

There’s a brief pause before he speaks again. “Where are you?”

“The creek to the north,” I say as I crouch to look at the water that shimmers as it ripples under the moonlight.

“I’m on my way.”

I nod, even though he can’t see me. I watch how the water moves over the small rocks. How can they poison running water? They’d have to manually add it continuously from upstream, or they’ve put some kind of slow–release device somewhere. I take slow steps as I walk upstream, my eyes scanning the water for anything that shouldn’t be there.

A series of snaps up ahead breaks my focus, and I freeze, scanning the treeline. It was subtle, too subtle for an animal. My every sense sharpens. The wind shifts and I catch a new scent. It’s acrid, metallic, and faintly chemical. My heart kicks once, hard.

I move slowly to the nearest tree, my eyes narrowing into the dark. There’s nothing visible between the trees, but the scent lingers. It smells wrong and artificial, not anything that shouldn’t be out here.

Then, faintly, I hear it, a click. A sound I’d know anywhere. The safety latch on a gun.

I shift instinctively, calling the wolf just beneath my skin, but before I can move, a soft metallic ping cuts through the silence, and something small hits the ground at my feet. Kicking up dirt on impact.

A bullet.

I shift back, making myself a smaller target, and drop into a crouch behind a tree, peeking out and scanning for movement, but the forest is empty.

“Shots fired, I’m not hit,” I say into the mind–link with the enforcers and Callen.

No one responds; they know better than to distract me right now, but I feel their response, their call to action. They’re heading my way.

I stay there for several seconds, heart hammering, forcing my breathing to steady. Whoever’s

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out there isn’t trying to hit me, not yet.

They’re taunting me, testing me.

I lean around the tree again, and a blinding flash tears through the darkness, white, searing, and violent. I throw an arm over my eyes, but it’s too late. The light burns my eyes, leaving them useless. I stumble backwards, crashing into the damp earth, growling in frustration as the night explodes with ringing in my ears.

Then comes the sound I hate most… laughter.

I can’t tell how close they are; my wolf can’t even pinpoint the exact direction. My vision is useless, nothing but bursts of red and white behind my eyelids. I can only just hear them over the high–pitched hum, boots pounding against the forest floor, twigs snapping under their weight, their laughter echoing like they think this is all just a game.

“Cowards!” I snarl into the darkness, my voice rough and low. The word bounces off the trees and fades. The sound of retreating footsteps only grows fainter.

When my vision finally starts to clear, all that’s left are the afterimages of the flash and the faint chemical tang of the poison still drifting from the creek. Whoever they were, they’re gone, and I’m not reckless enough to go after them blind. Not when I know what they’re carrying.

I crouch, pressing my fingers into the cool earth, breathing through the pulse of anger and adrenaline. My wolf claws at me, begging to give chase, to hunt them down, but I force him back with a low growl, not alone, not tonight.

“Remy?” Callen’s voice hits the link a second before I hear him in real life, crashing through

the brush.

“Over here,” I call, standing and blinking hard to clear the lingering blur from my sight.

A few heartbeats later, he bursts through the trees, his eyes wild. The instant he sees me, he shifts down, the bones of his wolf melting away as he crosses the distance between us in three long strides. Before I can say a word, he pulls me into a hug so fierce it knocks the air from my lungs.

For a second, I let him hold me. I even let my hands come up to grip his back, grounding myself in his scent, something that’s always been home, but it doesn’t soothe me like it used

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The warmth that used to settle between us, the unspoken calm that came from knowing exactly where we stood, it’s fractured now. There’s a gap that Paige somehow fills without even trying, and the realisation makes my chest tighten. I hate that I can’t find the same

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comfort here anymore. Hate that what was once everything now feels like only half of something.

He pulls back, his eyes searching mine, still wild from worry. “You’re okay?”

“Yeah,” I rasp, my throat dry. “Flash bomb. Must’ve been loaded with silver dust or something. It didn’t last long, but it was enough.”

Callen’s jaw tightens, his gaze scanning the trees behind me. “Did you see who it was?”

I shake my head. “No. Just heard them laughing. They wanted me to know they were here.”

He swears under his breath, low and vicious, before tapping into the mind–link. “Everyone get to my position. North Creek, bring containment kits and UV filters. We’ve got pollution and possible contact.”

A series of confirmations ripple through the pack link, and within minutes, the rest of the patrol team arrives along with Ryder.

“What the hell happened?”

I nod toward the creek. “They’ve tainted it. Smells like the same compound Jake found on the bullets. I caught the scent right before I was about to drink. Then they shot at me, a warning shot before the flash bomb hit.”

“Poisoning running water…” Ryder mutters, crouching beside the stream. “That’s not just reckless. That’s strategic.”

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