It was nearly midnight when Mark knocked on the hotel room door.
Gabriel was dozing on the couch, stretched out with his feet resting in Thane’s lap, finally unwinding after a long, tension-soaked day. His red-and-black bass leaned carefully against the nearby wall, close enough to touch. When the knock came at the door, Thane gently lifted Gabriel’s paws, settled him against a pillow, and crossed the room to answer. He eased the door open just enough to slip out without waking his bandmate.
Mark stood in the hallway, arms crossed, laptop under one arm and a look on his face that Thane hadn’t seen since the mountain days — the look that meant he knew something.
“Come with me,” Mark said. His voice was quiet, but hard as stone.
They took the elevator down, past the guarded lobby, and into the tour van parked just outside — the only place these days where privacy could still be trusted.
Inside, Maya was waiting, arms folded, eyes sharp. Jonah and Rico hovered nearby, both deadly serious for once. A second laptop glowed open on the table between them, casting cold blue light onto the cushions.
Mark dropped his down beside it. “I’ve been tracking IP trails tied to the threats. Most were junk. VPN chains, spoofed logins. But this—” He pointed to the screen. “This one screwed up.”
On the screen was a photo, blurry but clear enough. A man in his late fifties, pale, square-jawed, wearing a tan jacket. He stood in front of a faded office building in Reno, Nevada — the kind of place you’d drive past without ever noticing. The caption below read:
“Solace Ministries – Human Purity Fellowship. Est. 1989.”
Mark zoomed in on the building’s placard. “This guy’s name is Carson Dunn. Real old-school ‘clean blood’ type. Former militia, blacklisted preacher, banned from several platforms for hate speech. But he runs a private server and a secure network. It’s been quietly building a following again… and it’s targeting you.”
Thane’s claws flexed unconsciously at his sides. “How close did he get?”
Mark clicked to the next screen. A scanned floorplan. Security schematics. “Too close. He’s got internal lists. Venues. Crew rosters. Timelines. Even rough predictions of your travel dates.”
“Someone inside’s feeding him intel?” Maya asked.
Mark shrugged. “Or he’s just that good. But I found where he’s broadcasting from. A safehouse. One of five properties tied to his name. This one’s in the desert just outside Carson City.”
Thane was already shaking his head. “No police. No teams. No headlines.”
Rico’s eyebrow lifted. “You wanna handle this like wolves?”
“No,” Thane growled. “I want to handle this like family.”
🌌 Desert Blood Moon
The drive through the Nevada desert felt like moving through another world — vast and empty, the night air thick with dust and silence. Mark took the wheel, Gabriel beside him, silent but alert. Thane rode in the back, suited up in his darkest jeans and shirt, claws flexing, heart steady.
They stopped just short of the safehouse — an old ranch-style building half-swallowed by sand and brush. No neighbors. No light. Just a faint hum of electricity and the weak scent of two humans inside.
Thane sniffed again. One scent was sharp, bitter, familiar. The kind of stench that lingered on the envelopes they’d received. The same one that clung to the busted vial.
“This is it,” he said.
They moved fast. Silent. A unit.
Gabriel flanked the rear while Thane and Mark approached the front. The door didn’t last long — Mark kicked it clean off the hinges while Thane stormed in behind him, fangs bared.
The first man screamed and bolted — a gangly tech with a headset who dove behind a desk. Gabriel cut him off at the hall, claws pressed gently but firmly against his chest as the man whimpered and dropped to his knees.
The second man?
Carson Dunn.
He stood at the back of the room, frozen, hands half-raised — not in surrender, but in defiance.
“You’re the alpha,” he spat at Thane, voice full of venom. “The one who took the bullet. The one corrupting your own kind. Turning wolves into idols.”
Thane stalked forward, slow and deliberate.
Gabriel growled from the hallway. “You think this is about wolves?”
“This is about truth,” Dunn hissed. “This world was built by men. Not animals. Not beasts who seduce the weak into worship!”
Thane didn’t break stride. He reached out, grabbed Dunn by the collar, and lifted him like a ragdoll off the floor.
“You aimed at my bandmate,” Thane growled, low and dangerous. “You threatened my family. You threw blood and poison and bile at what we built.”
“Because what you built is wrong!” Dunn screeched.
“No,” Thane said, his voice a calm storm. “What we built is loved. Chosen. Ours. And you’re done.”
He turned to Mark. “Delete everything. Burn every backup. This ends tonight.”
🔥 And So It Did
They left the tech whimpering in the dirt, the servers fried, the safehouse stripped clean. No press. No headlines. Just silence — the kind that follows a storm.
Carson Dunn would never speak again. Not from a prison. Not from a pulpit. Not from a server in the shadows.
The threats stopped.
The mail stopped.
And for the first time in weeks, Thane saw the old light in Gabriel’s eyes again — that spark, that peace, that tail-flick joy that couldn’t be faked. At the next venue, Gabriel took the stage smiling. When the crowd screamed his name, he let them, tail high and bass low and proud.
Backstage, Thane leaned on a crate, arms crossed, watching his wolf from the wings.
They hadn’t just ended a threat.
They’d protected the pack.
And now?
The tour goes on.
The wolves howl louder.
And no one hides anymore.
