The Beacon's Answer (1)
The call came at 3:11 AM, and Maddox Thorne answered before the second ring, because kings who built empires from blood and ambition did not sleep deeply.
"Sir." Griffin's voice was controlled, but Maddox heard the tension underneath. "We have a signature."
Maddox was already moving, crossing the penthouse in bare feet, the city lights of his territory spreading below like a kingdom of glass and steel. "Show me."
The video call connected. Griffin's face filled the screen, backlit by the glow of multiple monitors in Thorne Industries' supernatural monitoring facility. Behind him, three analysts worked frantically at terminals displaying energy wavelengths that looked like violent auroras frozen in data.
"Source point: Veridia City, two hundred and seven miles southeast." Griffin swiped, and the image shifted to a heat map. A brilliant point of gold-and-silver light pulsed at the center like a star going supernova. "Energy signature reads as dual-phase: King's Blood combined with—"
"Lunar Magic." Maddox's hand pressed against the glass of his window. The words tasted like memory. Like five years ago in the woods between territories, when he'd found a woman with silver eyes who smelled of moonlight and desperation.
Griffin's pause was weighted. "Yes, sir. The lunar component matches the ancient pattern. Pre-shift era. We haven't seen this signature active in over three centuries."
"But we've seen it once." Maddox's reflection in the glass looked like a stranger—a king who'd just found the missing piece of a puzzle he'd been obsessively solving. "Five years ago. One night."
"The anomaly reading from Silver Moon's border zone." Griffin's tone shifted to something careful. "The one you ordered me to flag but never explained."
Maddox had been scouting his rival's territory that night, mapping weaknesses in Tristan Silverfang's traditional pack structure. He'd found something else instead. Someone else.
A woman fleeing through the woods.
Rejected. Broken. Alive in a way that had nothing to do with wolves.
And when she'd looked at him with those silver eyes, something in his chest—something he'd spent a lifetime hardening into steel—had responded.
"Get me everything," Maddox said. "Building records. Resident lists. Surveillance footage from a three-block radius. And Griffin—I want a team ready to move within the hour."
"Already assembled, sir. But there's a complication."
Maddox's eyes narrowed. "Explain."
"The signature didn't just register on our systems." Griffin's screen split, showing a secondary map. "Silver Moon Pack's territory sensors picked up the resonance too. Their monitoring is outdated, but something this powerful—"
"Tristan knows." The words came out flat. Cold.
Because of course his rival would feel it. The bastard's pack was dying from the inside, their obsession with purity and fated bonds leaving them weak and desperate. If Tristan sensed even a hint of the power Maddox had just confirmed—
"Send the advance team now," Maddox ordered. "I want eyes on that location before Silver Moon can mobilize. And Griffin? The woman and child are to be secured. Not harmed. Not touched. Is that clear?"
"Crystal, my King."
The call ended.
Maddox stood in the silence of his penthouse, staring at the city he'd conquered through ruthless strategy and absolute control.
He'd spent five years searching for a ghost.
And now the ghost had a name, a location, and—if the energy signature was accurate—his son.
Four hundred miles south, Tristan Silverfang woke gasping.
Pain lanced through his chest like silver through the heart, sharp and burning and wrong. His hand clawed at the skin over his sternum where the mate mark had once lived—where the scar of rejection still pulsed with phantom sensation.
For the first time in five years, it burned.
Beside him, Delilah stirred. "Tristan? What—"
"Nothing." He was already moving, sliding from their bed, pulling on clothes with shaking hands. "Council business. Go back to sleep."
He didn't wait to see if she obeyed.
The pack house library was empty at this hour, exactly as he needed. Tristan pulled books from shelves with frantic precision—ancient texts on mate bonds, on rejection protocols, on the metaphysical ties that bound wolves to their fated partners.
He found the passage on page forty-seven of The Laws of Selene.