The Wolf in the Glass Tower
The travel from Seedy motel hideout to Whitmore Tower parking garage consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The parking garage beneath Whitmore Tower smelled of exhaust fumes and damp concrete, a chemical tang that did nothing to mask the distinct sourness of fear. Caden catalogued the scent as he stepped out of the service elevator, his auditor badge clipped to his lapel, a tablet tucked under his arm. The badge was real—he’d had Reid manufacture it three days ago, along with the credentials that placed him as a consultant from an out-of-state security firm.
The underbelly of the building was a maze of identical concrete pillars and fluorescent lights that buzzed with a frequency most humans couldn’t hear. Caden could. It grated against his skull like a dentist’s drill, but he pushed the irritation down into the place where he kept everything else that might compromise a mission.
*Twelve minutes.* That was how long he had before the real auditor showed up for his nine-thirty appointment. Twelve minutes to find Owen Whitmore’s private server room, plant the virus, and get clear.
He moved through the garage with practiced efficiency, his footsteps echoing off the walls in a rhythm that suggested purpose, not suspicion. A security guard nodded at him from behind a kiosk. Caden returned the gesture without breaking stride.
The server room was in the sub-basement, three levels down, accessible only through a door that required both a keycard and a biometric scan. Owen Whitmore had designed the security himself, which meant he’d made exactly one mistake: he’d hired the same contractor who’d installed the system for his previous building. The contractor who now worked for Caden’s father’s old pack, and who had very helpfully provided the schematics.
Caden pressed his thumb against the scanner. The light blinked green. The lock clicked open.
*Ten minutes.*
The room was cold, sterile, filled with the hum of cooling fans and the blink of server lights. Racks of data storage lined the walls, each one a repository of Whitmore’s empire. But Caden wasn’t interested in the surface. He moved to the third rack from the left, counted down to the sixth unit, and pried open the access panel.
Inside, nestled between two hard drives, was the encrypted server that held Whitmore’s most sensitive files. Land deeds. Shell companies. The accounts that funneled money to politicians, judges, and the occasional investigative journalist who needed to be bought off or buried.
Caden slid a USB drive from his pocket—dummy plug, no data, but it would scan as a standard device if anyone checked the logs—and connected his tablet to the server’s diagnostic port. The virus was already loaded. All he had to do was initiate the upload.
“Eight minutes,” he murmured to himself. Enough time.
The progress bar inched across the screen. Sixty percent. Eighty. The virus was designed to look like a routine firmware update, one that would propagate through the system over the next twenty-four hours and then unlock every encrypted file for the journalist Caden had briefed last week. By the time Owen Whitmore realized what had happened, the evidence would already be in the hands of every major news outlet on the East Coast.
*One hundred percent.*
Caden disconnected the tablet, pocketed the dummy plug, and closed the access panel. The room looked exactly as he’d found it. He was already stepping back into the hallway when he heard the footsteps.
Not security guards. These were heavier, more deliberate. Military training. And there were six of them.
Caden’s wolf stirred beneath his skin, a familiar restlessness that sharpened his senses and quickened his pulse. He kept walking, his pace unhurried, his expression neutral. The footsteps grew closer. And then a voice cut through the garage’s artificial quiet.
“Mr. Blackwood.”
Owen Whitmore stepped out from behind a concrete pillar, flanked by two men in tactical gear. He was older than Caden remembered from the photographs—sixty-three, with silver hair and the kind of tailored suit that cost more than most people’s cars. His eyes were pale blue, cold, and utterly without mercy.
“I’ve been expecting you,” Owen said. “Or someone like you.”
Caden stopped. He let the tablet hang at his side, feigning casual relaxation. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m here for a security audit.”
“The real auditor is currently enjoying a complimentary breakfast at a diner six blocks away.” Owen smiled, and it was the kind of smile that belonged on a shark. “I had him delayed. Gave you just enough time to do whatever you came here to do. Tell me—did you find what you were looking for?”
The hairs on the back of Caden’s neck stood on end. *Trapped.* He’d been so focused on the clock, on the mission, that he’d missed the obvious: Owen Whitmore hadn’t gotten where he was by being sloppy. He’d known someone would come. He’d simply waited.
“I found nothing,” Caden said. “The system is clean.”
“We both know that’s not true.” Owen gestured, and the tactical team fanned out, forming a semicircle that cut off every exit. “You’re wondering how I knew. The answer is simple. I have people in places you wouldn’t expect, Mr. Blackwood. Or should I say… Caden? May I call you Caden? After all, it seems we have a shared interest in a particular woman and her child.”
Caden’s blood went cold. His hand tightened on the tablet.
“Iris Reyes.” Owen savored the name like a fine wine. “And her son, Eli. A very interesting boy, isn’t he? Those gold eyes. I’ve only ever seen that in one place before.” He paused. “My family has been in this city for three generations. We’ve seen things. Strange things. We’ve never believed in werewolves, of course—that’s absurd. But we do believe in genetics. In anomalies. And that little boy is a very interesting anomaly indeed.”
“Leave them out of this.”
“Oh, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Owen’s voice hardened. “You broke into my building. You accessed my servers. You think I don’t know what you’ve done tonight? That virus you planted—it’s already broadcasting, isn’t it? Somewhere out there, a journalist is going to receive a very interesting package in twenty-four hours.”
Caden said nothing.
“I can’t stop that,” Owen admitted. “Not now. But I can make sure you never get the chance to do it again. And I can make sure that woman and her son are dealt with, permanently, so that no one ever has to worry about this particular genetic anomaly surfacing again.”
He raised his hand. The tactical team raised their weapons.
Caden saw the bullets before Owen could give the order. Silver-tipped. High-velocity. Designed to kill dangerous animals.
*They don’t know what I am,* Caden realized. *They just know I’m dangerous.*
Owen’s hand dropped.
The first shot rang out.
Caden moved before the sound reached his ears, his body responding on instinct honed over decades. He dove behind a concrete pillar as three bullets slammed into the spot where he’d been standing. The fourth ricocheted off the pillar, sending sparks flying through the dim light.
*Five men. One exit. Silver ammunition.*
The wolf in his chest howled for release. Caden fought it back, forcing himself to think, to calculate. If he shifted, he would be exposed. The cameras would capture everything. Owen Whitmore would have footage of a man turning into a wolf, and that footage would end up in the hands of every government agency that cared to look.
But if he didn’t shift, he would die. And Iris and Eli would be next.
The choice was no choice at all.
Caden closed his eyes. He let the wolf rise.
The shift was agony, as it always was—bones breaking and reforming, muscles tearing and knitting together, skin rippling and stretching. But beneath the pain was a freedom that no human could understand. The wolf was all instinct, all power, all fury.
It took him two minutes to kill them.
The first man went down with his throat torn out, the second with his spine severed. The third managed to get off another shot, the bullet grazing Caden’s shoulder before he was on him, jaws closing around his neck. The fourth and fifth tried to run, but the wolf was faster. It caught them at the stairwell, dragged them back, and finished them with brutal efficiency.
Owen Whitmore was the last one standing.
He hadn’t moved. He stood in the center of the garage, surrounded by the bodies of his men, his tailored suit spattered with blood that wasn’t his own. His face was pale, but his eyes were still cold.
“Impressive,” he said. “I always wondered if the stories were true.”
The wolf growled, low and dangerous. Caden forced himself back to the surface, forcing the shift in reverse. It was slower this time, the bones knitting back into place with agonizing precision. He stood before Owen Whitmore on two legs, naked, blood dripping from the graze on his shoulder.
“Call off your men,” Caden said. “Set Iris and Eli free. And I’ll let you walk away.”
“You’ll kill me either way.”
“Yes. But one way is quick. The other…” Caden glanced at the bodies. “I can show you what I did to them.”
Owen’s composure cracked. A flicker of fear crossed his face, there and gone. But when he spoke, his voice was steady.
“You think this ends here? You think I don’t have contingencies?” He reached into his pocket, slow and deliberate. Caden tensed, ready to strike. But Owen only pulled out a radio. “Activate Protocol Phoenix. Burn the safehouse.”
Caden’s blood turned to ice.
“What did you say?”
But Owen was already pressing the button, his voice crackling through the speaker. “I said burn it. Level the building. Make sure there’s nothing left.”
Caden lunged forward, but Owen was already dead—not by Caden’s hand, but by his own. A small capsule of cyanide between his teeth, a final act of defiance that left Caden standing alone in a garage full of corpses, holding a dead man’s radio, listening to the single word that echoed through the speaker like a death sentence.
*”Confirmed.”*
Owen, bleeding on the concrete, whispers into a radio: “Activate Protocol Phoenix. Burn the safehouse.”