It was nearly midnight when Mark knocked on the hotel room door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gabriel was dozing on the couch, stretched out with his clawed feet resting in Thane\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u2014 the look that meant he knew something.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCome with me,\u201d Mark said. His voice was quiet, but hard as stone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They took the elevator down, past the guarded lobby, and into the tour van parked just outside \u2014 the only place these days where privacy could still be trusted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mark dropped his down beside it. \u201cI\u2019ve been tracking IP trails tied to the threats. Most were junk. VPN chains, spoofed logins. But this\u2014\u201d He pointed to the screen. \u201cThis one screwed up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 \u2014 the kind of place you\u2019d drive past without ever noticing. The caption below read:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSolace Ministries \u2013 Human Purity Fellowship. Est. 1989.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Mark zoomed in on the building\u2019s placard. \u201cThis guy\u2019s name is Carson Dunn. Real old-school \u2018clean blood\u2019 type. Former militia, blacklisted preacher, banned from several platforms for hate speech. But he runs a private server and a secure network. It\u2019s been quietly building a following again\u2026 and it\u2019s targeting you<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thane\u2019s claws flexed unconsciously at his sides. \u201cHow close did he get?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mark clicked to the next screen. A scanned floorplan. Security schematics. \u201cToo close. He\u2019s got internal lists. Venues. Crew rosters. Timelines. Even rough predictions of your travel dates.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSomeone inside\u2019s feeding him intel?\u201d Maya asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mark shrugged. \u201cOr he\u2019s just that good. But I found where he\u2019s broadcasting from. A safehouse. One of five properties tied to his name. This one\u2019s in the desert just outside Carson City.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thane was already shaking his head. \u201cNo police. No teams. No headlines.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rico\u2019s eyebrow lifted. \u201cYou wanna handle this like wolves?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNo,\u201d Thane growled. \u201cI want to handle this like family.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The drive through the Nevada desert felt like moving through another world \u2014 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They stopped just short of the safehouse \u2014 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thane sniffed again. One scent was sharp, bitter, familiar. The kind of stench that lingered on the envelopes they\u2019d received. The same one that clung to the busted vial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They moved fast. Silent. A unit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gabriel flanked the rear while Thane and Mark approached the front. The door didn\u2019t last long \u2014 Mark kicked it clean off the hinges while Thane stormed in behind him, fangs bared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first man screamed and bolted \u2014 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second man?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Carson Dunn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He stood at the back of the room, frozen, hands half-raised \u2014 not in surrender, but in defiance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou\u2019re the alpha,\u201d he spat at Thane, voice full of venom. \u201cThe one who took the bullet. The one corrupting your own kind. Turning wolves into idols.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thane stalked forward, slow and deliberate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gabriel growled from the hallway. \u201cYou think this is about wolves?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is about truth,\u201d Dunn hissed. \u201cThis world was built by men. Not animals.<\/em> Not beasts who seduce the weak into worship!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thane didn\u2019t break stride. He reached out, grabbed Dunn by the collar, and lifted him like a ragdoll off the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou aimed at my bandmate,\u201d Thane growled, low and dangerous. \u201cYou threatened my family. You threw blood and poison and bile at what we built.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBecause what you built is wrong!<\/em>\u201d Dunn screeched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNo,\u201d Thane said, his voice a calm storm. \u201cWhat we built is loved.<\/em> Chosen.<\/em> Ours.<\/em> And you\u2019re done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He turned to Mark. \u201cDelete everything. Burn every backup. This ends tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n They left the tech whimpering in the dirt, the servers fried, the safehouse stripped clean. No press. No headlines. Just silence \u2014 the kind that follows a storm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Carson Dunn would never speak again. Not from a prison. Not from a pulpit. Not from a server in the shadows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The threats stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The mail stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And for the first time in weeks, Thane saw the old light in Gabriel\u2019s eyes again \u2014 that spark, that peace, that tail-flick joy that couldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Backstage, Thane leaned on a crate, arms crossed, watching his wolf from the wings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They hadn\u2019t just ended a threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They\u2019d protected the pack.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n And now? It was nearly midnight when Mark knocked on the hotel room door. Gabriel was dozing on the couch, stretched out with his clawed feet resting in Thane\u2019s 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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tour-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/threewerewolves.com\/tourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/threewerewolves.com\/tourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/threewerewolves.com\/tourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threewerewolves.com\/tourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threewerewolves.com\/tourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/threewerewolves.com\/tourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3333,"href":"https:\/\/threewerewolves.com\/tourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions\/3333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/threewerewolves.com\/tourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threewerewolves.com\/tourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threewerewolves.com\/tourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n\n\n\n\ud83c\udf0c Desert Blood Moon<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n\ud83d\udd25 And So It Did<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The tour goes on.
The wolves howl louder.
And no one hides anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"