Claimed By Three Rival Alphas

Chapter 19: The Chase

~CADE’S POV~

"Give me four minutes," I said.

I had the vial back in four and a half. Close enough.

Mira took it from my hand without a word, turned to the bowl of water I’d set on the table while she was preparing, and lowered the vial into it. She held it beneath the surface with both hands, closed her eyes, and went still in the particular way that meant she was working and didn’t need commentary from anyone in the room.

"So what exactly are we doing here?" I said, keeping my voice low.

"Finding the person you requested," Mira said, without opening her eyes. "Divination spell."

Ryland put his hand up in my direction without looking at me. Message received. I folded my arms and watched.

The water in the bowl shifted. Not from any draft in the room, the air was perfectly still.

The water just moved, slow at first and then faster, circling the vial like it was being pulled by something we couldn’t see. Mira’s lips moved in near-silence, the words too quiet to catch. The room felt different. Charged, somehow.

Then the water went completely still.

A full minute passed. Nothing moved.

Then the bowl splashed, one sharp, decisive movement, Mira opened her eyes.

I raised a brow. "Did it work?"

"The person you’re looking for, "is dark-haired. Sharp chin. Small eyes."

"That describes half the men in this pack," Ryland said.

Mira reached into her bag, pulled out a piece of paper and a thin stick of charcoal, and began drawing. Her hand moved with a speed that didn’t look like conscious effort, like the image was already there and she was just tracing what she could see.

"What is she..."

Ryland raised his hand again. I stopped.

Mira dipped her fingers into the water one more time, pressed them to the paper, and lifted it out. The image was there, dark and clear, a young man’s face, rendered with more precision than charcoal on damp paper had any right to produce.

Ryland picked it up. Squinted at it.

"Is that not..."

"Elder Saltzman’s son," I said.

We looked at each other for a moment.

"Thank you, Mira," Ryland said. "We’ll take it from here."

She nodded, packed her bag, and left without asking any questions, which was one of the things I appreciated most about her.

"Should I order a lockdown?"

"No." Ryland set the paper down. "That tips him off immediately. He doesn’t live in the packhouse, which means we can’t predict his movements if he panics and runs." He looked at me.

"Go to Saltzman’s house. Take two guards.

Don’t tell him why until you’re inside."

"And if Matthew’s not there?"

"Then we find out where he is." Ryland’s voice was very flat. "Bring him in, Cade. By whatever means."

"Understood," I said. "I’ll be back within the hour."

—

Elder Saltzman answered on the third knock.

He was a thin man in his late fifties, careful eyes, the kind of person who read situations quickly and said less than he knew. When he saw me standing at the door with two guards flanking me, something shifted in his face, not alarm, not yet, but the careful recalibration of a man who understood that this wasn’t a social call.

"Cade," he said. "This is unexpected."

"My apologies for the hour," I said. "I’ll need a word with your children."

"Any problem?"

"Not at all. Just a word or two." I gave him the look that meant please don’t make this complicated, and he stepped back and let us in.

He called his two daughters out first. They appeared together from the back hallway, looking between us with the wide eyes of people who hadn’t done anything wrong and knew it.

"Your son," I said. "Matthew. The eldest."

Elder Saltzman went to the hallway and called his name.

Matthew appeared at the top of the stairs.

The moment he saw me, his expression changed. I felt it before I could even fully read it, the way the air around him went tight, the way his heartbeat spiked, audible even across the room. He knew. He knew exactly why I was here and his body had already started calculating an exit.

"Exactly who I came for," I said calmly.

Elder Saltzman turned, genuinely confused. "What’s this about?"

"Matthew." I kept my eyes on him, not his father.

"You’re charged with murder and false accusation. Alpha’s orders are to bring you in immediately, by any means necessary."

"What... I think there must be a mistake, surely..."

Before Elder Saltzman could finish the sentence, Matthew hit the window at a dead sprint and went straight through it.

I exhaled slowly.

"I thought as much,"

I was already moving toward the door. I looked at my two guards as I came out into the night air, scanning the direction he’d gone. "He’s heading north."

—

Matthew was fast. Faster than he should have been for a young man who’d never shown any particular ability in pack training. I tracked him by sound initially, footsteps, the crash of him going through undergrowth, while the guards fanned out to cut off the outer paths.

One of them threw a blade. It caught Matthew in the shoulder and he lurched, stumbled, kept going. The second throw went wide.

How is he this fast, I thought, pushing harder.

He was pulling away. Actually pulling away from me, which almost never happened.

He hit the edge of town at a full run, and I understood immediately what he was doing, the crowd, the market stalls still open at this hour, the narrow passages between buildings. He wanted bodies between us. Witnesses.

Confusion.

I took the high ground.

I went up the side of a market stall, then onto the walkway above the eastern corridor, running the elevated path while Matthew moved through the crowd below me, weaving between people who scattered and shouted as he barrelled through. I kept him in my sightline. Tracked his trajectory. Calculated where he’d be when we reached the town centre.

He broke into the open square.

I jumped.

I let the partial shift happen midair, not full, just enough. Fangs. Claws. The eyes that meant my vision sharpened and the impact would land right. I came down on him like something falling from height, catching him across the shoulder with a punch that had the shift’s force behind it and threw him six feet across the square floor.

He hit the ground hard.

"Stay down," I said, landing clean and straightening up. "I don’t want this to go the hard way."

Matthew pushed himself up. Got to his feet. Face toward the ground.

"Hey, Matt." I took a step toward him. "This doesn’t have to..."

He turned.

Blue glowing eyes, fangs that hadn’t been there when he went through the window.

Claws. A fully shifted werewolf standing in the middle of Silverclaw’s town square, which was not what any of us had been expecting.

"Holy..." I stopped myself. "He’s a werewolf."

The two guards moved toward him.

"Stay back," I said. "I’ve got this."

Matthew launched at me.

I moved left and he missed. His follow-up was a right hook that I ducked under, letting it pass over my shoulder. He was strong, stronger than the size suggested, and every impact carried wolf force.

I stayed mobile, kept him moving, used his momentum against him rather than meeting it head on. He threw three punches and I made him miss all three, redirecting him each time, looking for an opening.

He kicked out at my knee. I stepped around it, caught his arm on the rotation, and twisted it back and up into a lock. He went still for a half second.

Then he wrenched sideways and his elbow connected with my chest with enough force to stagger me back several steps.

I reset. He was already moving again.

He grabbed the nearer of the two guards before I could cut him off, one motion, brutal and fast and his claws went across the man’s throat. The guard went down. The second guard scrambled back.

That was enough.

"Now you’re coming with me."

I came forward fast, drove my elbow hard into the side of Matthew’s neck, and felt him buckle. He swung back. I blocked. He swung again and caught my ribs. We went back and forth, short, brutal, close-quarters, neither of us landing anything clean enough to finish it.

Then Matthew’s hand went to his own chest.

I saw the silver dagger half a second before he drove it in.

He dropped.

The square went completely silent.

The second guard stared down at him. Then at me.

"Did he just kill himself?"

I stood over Matthew’s body saying nothing.

Someone had taught this boy that getting caught was worse than dying. That was the kind of lesson that didn’t come from nowhere.

That came from someone who needed him silent.