The Lost Pack (Paige) novel Chapter 174

** Callen’s POV **

The woods look different today, quieter, too still.

The air is heavy with the memory of last night’s chaos. We move in a staggered formation, Phoenix wolves upfront, Midnight marksmen on the ridgeline to our right, keeping pace from a distance. Ryder leads, Remy just behind him, and Ronnie flanking the left. I walk a step behind them, watching for any sign of threat.

No one speaks. The only sounds are our footsteps and the soft, metallic shifting of Midnight’s rifles being repositioned every few seconds. Their job is simple: cover every blind spot. It should make me feel safer. It doesn’t.

There are too many places for an ambush, too many places for the ghosts of last night.

Ryder raises a fist, and everyone freezes instantly. I inhale through my nose, slow and steady, letting my senses stretch outward. My wolf prowls just beneath my skin, restless and waiting.

No scent of hunters, no rotten bitterness of their poison, but the forest feels… wrong.

Ryder tilts his head slightly, listening to something can’t hear. After a beat, he gestures forward again, and we continue toward the heart of our territory.”This feels like a trap,” Remy mutters through the mind link, voice low, controlled.

Ryder answers immediately. “It’s not a trap if no one’s here to spring it.”

“Doesn’t mean they didn’t leave something behind,”

Ronnie adds, scanning the tree line.

I agree with him. My wolf does too. The air feels heavy today… a tension without a source. The kind that crawls across your skin and under your ribs. The kind that whispers run even when your logic says walk.

We follow the faint trail of our escape route from last night, each step a reminder of how close we came to losing everything. I can still hear the echo of gunfire in my skull. Still see the flash of Paige’s power. Still see the look on Parker’s face when Remy was hit.

Ryder slows. “We’re coming up on the creek,” he says for the benefit of the Midnight pack that don’t know our territory.

That creek was poisoned. We’d already briefed them on the potential of the water not being safe and not to let it touch their skin until we have had it tested, but my stomach still knots.

We approach cautiously, enforcers spreading wider, scanning every inch of the ground for tracks, wires, traps, anything.The Midnight marksmen go still, positioning themselves behind trees and rocks, their rifles aimed toward the centre of our territory.

Remy’s jaw twitches. “Water smells clean.”

Ryder crouches, scenting the water too, then nods. “No toxin.”

“Good,” Ronnie says. “That means they cleared out fast.”

Or someone cleared it for us with their light. I don’t say it out loud. We’re all thinking it, anyway.

We walk further, deeper into our territory, though “home” féels like a fragile word right now. A soft wind brushes

– past us. It’s barely there, but it carries a scent that doesn’t belong. Metal, gun oil. It’s faint, but real.

Ryder stiffens; it’s hardly noticeable, but I see it.

“Hunter?” Remy asks through the link.

“No,” I answer before Ryder can. “The scents older. Seeped into the dirt. They were here recently, but not now.”

Ryder glances at me, and I nod. He trusts my nose; he always has.

We keep moving. Every few metres, someone bends to check for tracks, broken twigs, unusual footprints. We find too much and not enough at the same time. As if anything left behind was intention, a taunt.Remy kicks a blackened patch of earth. “This campfire wasn’t here when we left.”

My wolf snarls quietly in the back of my mind. They were close, too close.

The Midnight marksmen shift again, repositioning to give us full coverage. Above us, a drone circles, remotely operated from someone safely back in the heart of the Midnight Pack.

“Still nothing,” the drone operator reports through the mind-link. “Forest is empty.”

Too empty. I exhale, tension running down my spine. Then … something hits me, not physically. It’s not a scent or a sound; it’s a pulse. copied from jo-bn-ib/.c-omIt’s soft at first. Like the faintest nudge behind my ribs. A warm bloom that spreads quickly through my chest before drifting through my limbs.

I stumble half a step.

Ryder glances back. “Callen?”

“I’m fine,” I say automatically, but I’m not.

There’s another putse, stronger this time, more defined.

Heat curls low in my stomach, working upward. My lungs stutter and my vision sharpens, the colours deepening.

The forest looks… brighter, alive.

“Callen,” Remy says sharply. “What’s wrong?”I don’t answer, because I recognise this. Not the sensation itself, l’ve never felt anything like it, but the source is unmistakable… Paige.

Her power rolls through me again, warm, and protective, settling under my skin like a shield. Not painful or overwhelming. Just… present, alive, mine.

I inhale, and it moves with me, matching my breath exactly.

Holy shit.

My head snaps toward Ryder and Remy. Ryder’s hand flexes at his side. Remy’s shoulders rise, then drop. They feel it too.

Ryder’s voice cuts into my mind, low and controlled. “Keep walking. Don’t react.”

Remy responds, voice taut. “This is her, isn’t it?”

“It’s her,” I confirm.

Ryder doesn’t reply for a moment. When he does, his tone is sharp with underlying emotion. “Stay calm. No one can find out what she is yet.”

Another pulse rolls through me, through all three of us, stronger than before.

Remy inhales suddenly. Ryder closes his eyes for half a second too long, like he’s trying not to show the way it affects him

I drop into the mind-link, speaking privately to them both.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify