Chapter 106
Chapter 106
Rieck’s POV
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Tobias knelt beside the bodies while I stood over them, rain still falling steady around us, soaking through what was left of my patience.
Two dead men. Two werewolves.
A single wound marked both of them, the kind of shot that came from years of practice rather than luck, the kind that told a story about the man who fired it without him ever needing to be present.
“One bullet,” Tobias said, turning the first body slightly to examine the entry wound. “It passed clean through him and into the second. One shot. Two kills. In this rain, at this distance, with two moving targets.”
I knelt down beside him and studied the wound myself.
Whoever had fired this hadn’t just been skilled. They had been prepared, as though they had known wolves. would be involved before they ever pulled the trigger.
I said nothing, my mind already working through the geometry of it, the angle required, the steadiness needed to line up two men in a single line during a downpour this heavy.
“Whoever fired this,” Tobias continued, straightening slowly, wiping his hands against his soaked trousers, “is a professional. This isn’t luck. This is training. Military, maybe. Or something worse.”
“Find the bullet.”
He dug carefully through the wreckage of the second man’s chest for a while before his gloved fingers finally closed around something small and misshapen.
Holding it up towards the weak streetlight, he turned it slowly between two fingers.
Silver. Custom cast, by the look of the shape, narrower than a standard round, built specifically to go through more than one target without losing its force.
The edges carried a strange pattern I had never seen on any bullet before, almost decorative, like whoever made it took pride in the craft.
“This was made for exactly this,” Tobias said quietly, studying the pattern closer, angling it under the streetlight for a better look. “Someone built this bullet to kill werewolves, and built it well. This isn’t something you order online or pick up from a back alley dealer. This took time. Skill. Someone who understood exactly what they were hunting, down to the exact resistance of our bone and the exact amount of silver needed to stop a heart before it could heal itself shut.”
“But who?”
Tobias shook his head slowly, tucking the bullet into a small evidence bag. “I have no idea, Rieck. I don’t recognize the craftsmanship. It isn’t Northern Faction work. And it isn’t Ridgeline either. I have never seen anything quite like it.” He glanced towards the two bodies, then back at me. “Whoever this is, they knew exactly what they were doing, and exactly what they were up against.”
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16:25 Mon, Aug 3
Chapter 106
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I returned to tise scene alone an hour later needing to see in agam with clearer eyes.
But nothing had changed
No footprints in the mud beyond our own. No shell casing left behind as the shooter was smart enough to collect his own brass even in the chaos of the moment. No stent ingering under the rain, no trace of sweater gunpowder or anything human enough to track
I walked the length of the alley twice, checking every rooftop, every fire escape, every window that might have offered a line of sight down to the exact spot where Aurea had fallen
I climbed the fire escape of the closest building myself my hands scraping against cold ram sicked mesal and stood at the top studying the angle down into the alley. And in in
A shot from here would have imed up cleanly with where the two hooded men had stood over her. But then the rooftop itself gave up nothing, no cigarete but no sou mark in the gravel, no sign that anyone had stood here at all beyond the feeling in my gut that someone had
A professional shooter had killed two werewolves with a single silver bulles, apparently just to save Aurelia and then vanhed so completely it felt less like a man had been here and more like a ghost
But why
Why save her? Why disappear the second the job was done without waiting to be thanked without leaving a single clue behind for me to follow?
Every enemy I had made in the last few months went through my mind. Dawson. Kaelen even my own father and none of them fit the shape of a man who saved a life and asked nothing in return.
Dawson wanted her weak not protected Kaelen wanted her close, not saved from a distance without so much as showing his face. And my father would never spend resources on a life he had already started calling a
mistake
Unless someone else entirely had a stake in her survival someone whose name I hadn’t yet considered.
I stood in the rain a long while, turning the question over without finding an answer. before finally heading
home
Aurelia was sitting up in bed when I returned, her ankle propped carefully on a pillow, looking better than she had a few hours ago, some colour finally returned to her face. her damp hair drying in loose waves against the pillow behind her
For a moment I just stood in the doorway, letting myself breathe now that she was safe under this roof again.
How did you know where to find me?” she asked the moment I walked in.
The stated crossing the room to sit on the edge of the bed, my hand finding hers without fully deciding to
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16:25 Mon, Aug 3
Chapter 106
reach for it.
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