Karen Stewart stared at her phone, thumb hovering over the screen, the contact name "Mom Sheryl" still glowing unanswered. She had lost count of how many times she had tried.

  No reply. No text. No callback.

  It was the morning they were supposed to leave.

  She exhaled, paced her living room twice, then finally hit Derek's name.

  The call connected on the second ring.

  "Hello," Derek said.

  "Hey, Derek, it's Karen," she replied. Her voice was calm on the surface, but the tightness bled through every syllable. "What is going on with your mom. I have been trying to reach her since yesterday."

  He felt a small pinch in his chest. "You have not heard from her at all."

  "No," Karen said. "We are supposed to head to the port today so we can start our cruise to Cabo. I checked her place yesterday, but I did not want to overreact. Now she will not answer the phone at all. It is not like her."

  Derek moved to the window of his apartment, staring out at the hazy Bayou Mounds skyline. A bad feeling was already there, sitting in his gut, waiting for a name.

  "I am headed over there now," he said. "I will call you back as soon as I see what is going on."

  "Okay," Karen said quietly. "Please, let me know. I am starting to get scared."

  "I will," Derek said, then ended the call.

  For a brief moment, he stayed still, jaw clenched, phone still in his hand. Then training took over. He grabbed his keys, holstered his pistol at his hip, and stepped out into the thick Louisiana heat.

  Sheryl's neighborhood was quiet when he pulled up, too quiet for the middle of the morning. No lawnmowers, no kids playing, just the distant hum of a truck somewhere blocks away. Derek parked at the curb and stepped out slowly, scanning.

  The front door looked normal. The porch light was off. Wind chimes moved faintly in the breeze.

  The moment he opened the door with his spare key, he knew.

  The air was wrong.

  His nose picked up the ghosts of sweat, gun oil, and fear. Beneath that, a faint metallic tang, like blood that had already been cleaned. He drew his pistol with instinct and stepped inside, every sense awake.

  Broken glass glittered across the living room floor. One of the side windows had been smashed inward, the curtain half torn from the rod. Wood splinters littered the carpet where someone had hit the frame hard.

  Derek moved slowly and deliberately, muzzled up, eyes sweeping corners.

  Kitchen. Clear.

  Dining room. Clear.

  Hallway. Clear.

  No movement. No bodies. No Mom.

  He checked her bedroom last.

  The bed was unmade, sheets twisted as if someone had left in a hurry. Her phone was not there. A lamp had been knocked over, and the base was cracked. He noticed a faint scuff streak along the floor, as if a heavy object, or a person, had been dragged.

  He lowered his pistol and stood in silence.

  They had taken her. Whoever "they" were, they knew exactly what they were doing.

  Derek holstered his weapon, stomach tight. There were no shell casings, no blood pools, no signs of a firefight. This had been fast and controlled—a snatch, not a brawl.

  He walked back to the living room and studied through the busted window. The impact pattern told him it had been blown inward, likely with a breaching tool. He pictured men in dark clothing, moving in formation, weapons ready.

  This was not random. This was a planned operation.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket. Karen again.

  He answered. "Yeah."

  "Did you find her?" Karen asked, breath shaking.

  Derek looked around the wrecked room. "No," he said. "She is gone. Someone took her."

  There was a beat of stunned silence. "What. Derek, are you serious?"

  "Yeah. I am dead serious," he said. "The house is torn up. Broken glass, forced entry, no sign of her. This was not a break-in gone wrong. They came here for her."

  Karen's voice wavered. "I am at home. Can you come over?"

  "I am on the way," Derek said. "Lock your doors and stay inside until I get there."

  Karen lived fifteen minutes away on the other side of town. Derek drove with his jaw set, the city passing in blurs of brick and concrete. The closer he got, the more the anger burned through the fear.

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  He parked in her driveway and saw her waiting at the front door, arms wrapped around herself. Her eyes were already wet.

  "What is going on?" she asked as he reached the porch. "Tell me straight."

  Derek took a slow breath. "Mom has been kidnapped."

  Karen staggered back a step as if someone had hit her. "No. No, that cannot be right."

  "I wish I were wrong," Derek said. "The house is trashed. The window is blown out. Whoever came for her was organized. They knew where to hit and how to leave without leaving a trail."

  They moved inside and closed the door behind them. Karen guided him to the living room, but she could not sit. She kept pacing, one hand pressed against her forehead.

  "Do you know what is going on?" Derek asked.

  "No," she said quickly. "I do not know anything. The last time I saw her was at the park when we were walking. That was two days ago."

  She stopped and looked at him, swallowing hard.

  "She did say something, though," Karen added. "She mentioned some guy driving around the neighborhood in a black Tahoe. She said he would park a few blocks down from her house, sit there for like ten minutes, then leave. It happened more than once, but she did not want to jump to conclusions."

  "When did she tell you that?" Derek asked.

  "At the park," Karen said. "The same day. She laughed it off, said it was probably nothing. But her eyes were not joking."

  Derek nodded slowly, filing it away. The Tahoe matched the vehicle he had not seen but could imagine from the house damage. A recon pattern. Ten minutes here, ten there, testing schedules, learning habits.

  "Alright," he said. "I am going to get to the bottom of this."

  He turned toward his truck, then stopped and faced her again.

  "As for you, cousin," he said, his tone shifting into something firmer, "I am not leaving you unprotected."

  He went back out, popped the lockbox from under his rear seat, and returned with a compact Glock nested inside foam. He cleared it, racked the slide to confirm it was empty, then pulled a magazine from the case's magazine well.

  Silver rounds. Hand-loaded. He had hoped he would never need to issue a set to a family like this.

  He placed the unloaded pistol gently into her hands, then held the magazine up in front of her.

  "Listen," he said, voice level. "This is one of my extra Glocks. These are silver rounds. We might be dealing with a human team, but given our history, I am not ruling anything out. Keep this near you. Learn the feel of it in your hand."

  Karen stared at the weapon, throat tight. "Derek, I have not fired a gun since all of that happened."

  "I know," he said. "I will take you to the range later if I have to. For now, you lock your doors, keep this close, and pay attention to everything around you: any strange car, any unfamiliar face. You call me. Second, it feels wrong, you call me."

  She nodded slowly, tears starting to slip down her cheeks. "You know what," she murmured, voice breaking, "this is where I wish I still had my powers. If someone took her, I should be helping you tear them apart."

  Derek's face softened. "I understand that more than you think," he said. "But it is better this way. You have gone through enough already. The compound took the wolf out of you for a reason. You survived all that. You are not going back into that world unless there is no other choice."

  She looked up at him through blurred eyes. "You better bring her back," she whispered. "Please."

  Derek swallowed hard, then pulled her into a hug. She shook against his chest, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt.

  "I will," he said in her ear. "I will bring her back. Whatever it takes."

  When they separated, he headed for the door, his mind already running ahead to the next phone call, the next lead, the next step.

  He was not a student today. He was not just Derek Brown.

  He was the only hunter left on the board.

  The Dairfax headquarters in New Era sat on the edge of town like a corporate fortress, all mirrored glass and clean lines, surrounded by manicured landscaping that pretended nothing ugly ever happened behind its doors.

  Inside, on the thirtieth floor, Dick Rose watched the world through a wall of tinted glass. The chief executive officer of Dairfax did not look like a man who needed monsters. He wore a tailored navy suit, silver watch, and the kind of expression that said he had seen more balance sheets than battlefields.

  Lucas Kain stood on the opposite side of his desk, hands clasped behind his back.

  "So," Rose said without turning away from the view, "how is everything going at the facility?"

  "We have secured two of our three primary targets," Lucas answered.

  Rose glanced over his shoulder. "Sheryl Brown and Carlos Marsh."

  "Yes, sir," Lucas said. "Both are in containment. Sheryl has been processed. Marsh is sedated and in holding."

  Rose turned fully, leaning a hip against his desk. "What about the third?"

  "We are working on that now," Lucas said. "I expect an update by the end of the day. He will not be easy to grab, but no one is untouchable."

  Rose picked up a folder from the desktop and flipped it open. Sheryl's profile stared up from the first page, a hospital headshot from years ago, long before the fur and the claws.

  "I heard things got messy during Dr. Brown's capture," Rose said.

  Lucas allowed himself a thin smirk. "She took our people apart," he admitted. "We sent highly trained operators, and she tossed them around like furniture before the tranquilizer took effect. She is as close to indestructible as we have ever seen."

  Rose closed the folder with a quiet snap. "But she is under our care now."

  "She is," Lucas said. "And soon she will be under our control permanently."

  "Explain the progress on that," Rose prompted.

  "We're on the verge of drawing blood samples," Lucas said. "Dr. Cunningham is analyzing her strain to determine compatibility with the serum we have been developing in-house. Once we confirm the markers, Marsh will assist our internal team in refining the formula into a stable product."

  Rose studied him for a long moment. "You said three primary targets. Brown, Marsh, and the boy. That still leaves the question of the other three candidates I authorized for the initial squad."

  "We are working on it," Lucas said. "Our database pull is almost complete. We are casting a wide net: law enforcement, former military, and private contractors. We are also looking at ex-cons, convicted killers, and serial offenders with useful traits. No morals, hard bodies, no attachments."

  Rose's expression did not change. "And their cousin. Karen Stewart."

  Lucas nodded slowly. "She is a possibility. Former Lycan, ties to Brown, psychologically malleable. The compound wiped her powers, but her DNA remains altered. If we decide to bring her in, she could be reactivated with the right trigger."

  Rose stepped closer, his gaze sharpening.

  "Listen to me, Lucas," he said. "You need to speed things up. You are being paid a lot of money to oversee these operations. I expect results, not excuses. Our investors will not wait forever. The world is getting uglier by the month, and we intend to sell it the perfect solution."

  Lucas straightened. "Yes, sir. We are on track."

  Rose shook his head slightly. "On track is not enough. Get this done, or I will find someone else who will."

  The room went quiet.

  Lucas met his eyes, the flare of pride hidden beneath professional obedience. "Understood."

  Rose turned back to the window, already done with the conversation.

  "You have two of the big three," he said. "Bring me the third. Then build me my six. I do not care how you do it. Just make sure they obey."

  Lucas left the office with his jaw tight and his mind already calculating the next move.

  He had Sheryl.

  He had Marsh.

  That only left Derek Brown.

  And somewhere out in Bayou Mounds, the first and only werelion was already on the hunt.