The archive was hidden beneath a mountain clinic hidden from every registered pack, protected by a lock that required two blood samples and a spoken family name. Naomi Reed expected the door to reject her. It opened before Alpha Dax Mercer finished the warning.
Inside were recordings, legal files, and a wall of photographs tracking her life from childhood to the previous night. Someone had planned every betrayal with patient precision. At the center of the wall, a red thread connected Naomi Reed to Alpha Dax Mercer, then continued toward a sealed photograph neither of them had seen.
He reached it first. The image showed their parents standing together years before either family claimed to have met. On the back, one sentence changed the meaning of every promise between them: Naomi's son carries the extinct silver-wolf gene that can unite or destroy the packs.
Footsteps filled the corridor. Alpha Dax Mercer reached for his weapon, but Naomi Reed stopped him. Running had brought her here. This time she would make the person hunting them speak.
The archive door opened. The intruder removed a hood, and Naomi Reed's breath caught. The face belonged to someone whose funeral she had attended.
“You finally found the truth,” the stranger said. “Now choose which one of you gets to survive it.”