The drive was three hours of silence.
Damien sat in the back of the black SUV, his eyes fixed on the darkness beyond the window. Marcus drove without speaking, without asking questions. He knew better. When the Alpha looked like this — still as stone, something predatory coiled behind his eyes — words were unnecessary. Dangerous, even.
The bond hummed in Damien's chest. Distant but present. He could feel Cora back at the estate — confused, anxious, wondering where he'd gone. He hadn't told her. Hadn't explained.
She'd given him a name. That was enough.
Abernathy.
The name scraped through his mind like claws on bone. Such an ordinary name, to men who faded into the background of everyday life.
But this man hadn't faded. He'd carved himself into Cora's memory with hands and words and acts that made Damien's wolf howl for blood.
"We're thirty minutes out," Marcus said.
Damien didn't respond. His fingers flexed against his thigh, the only movement he allowed himself. Inside, the wolf paced. Hungry. Patient.
Soon.
The town was dying.
Damien could smell it before they reached the main street — the decay beneath the surface, the slow rot of a place the world had forgotten. Shuttered shops. Cracked sidewalks. Street lights that flickered and buzzed like dying insects.
St. Jude's sat at the end of the road. Even in the darkness, Damien could see it — three stories of crumbling brick, windows like empty eye sockets, a rusted iron fence surrounding it like a warning.
This was where she'd grown up. Where she'd learned that the world was cruel and no one was coming to save her.
His jaw tightened.
"The orphanage first?" Marcus asked.
"No. There's someone I need to see before Abernathy."
He gave Marcus an address. A small house on the edge of town. The records he'd obtained through methods he wouldn't bore Cora with , had been thorough. Names. Addresses. Employment histories. Everything he needed to know about the people who had worked at St. Jude's during Cora's years there.
Mrs. Hendricks. Head cook. Then head of staff. The woman who had dragged a child by her hair to a monster's office and walked away without looking back.
She was first.
The house was dark when they arrived.
Small. Weathered. A garden out front that someone had tried to maintain, flowers wilting in the cold. A normal house for a normal woman living a normal life.
Damien hated her already.
"Wait here," he told Marcus.
He walked up the path alone. His footsteps made no sound on the cracked concrete. The wolf was close to the surface now, lending him its senses — the smell of woodsmoke from the chimney, the sound of a television murmuring inside, the rhythmic breathing of someone asleep on a couch.
The door was locked. It didn't matter.
Damien placed his palm flat against the wood and pushed. The lock splintered. The door swung inward with a groan.
The living room was cluttered. Magazines stacked on a coffee table. A half-empty cup of tea gone cold. And on the couch, wrapped in a knitted blanket, a woman in her sixties with grey hair and a face like a closed fist.
She woke when the cold air hit her.
Her eyes found him in the doorway. Confusion first. Then fear that came immediately.
"Who— who are you? What do you want?"
Damien stepped inside. Closed the door behind him.
"Mrs. Hendricks."
She scrambled off the couch. The blanket tangled around her legs, nearly sending her to the floor. She caught herself on the arm of a chair, eyes wild, chest heaving.
"How do you know my name? I'm calling the police—"
"The phone is in the kitchen. You won't make it."
She froze. Something in his voice — the absolute certainty, the calm that promised violence — stopped her cold.
Damien moved further into the room. Slowly. Letting her feel the distance closing.
"You worked at St. Jude's for thirty-one years. Started in the kitchen. Ended as head of staff." He tilted his head, watching her face. "You knew everything that happened in that building. Every child who cried themselves to sleep. Every bruise that appeared overnight. Every locked door."
"I don't— I don't know what you're talking about—"
"You dragged a girl by her hair once. Dark hair. Grey eyes. Called her a thief for stealing bread because you weren't feeding her enough to survive."
Recognition flickered in her eyes. And something else — guilt, buried deep but surfacing now.
"I don't remember every child—"
"You remember her." Damien's voice dropped. "You remember what you handed her over to."
The woman's face crumpled.
Not remorse. Fear. The terror of being caught after decades of believing she'd gotten away with it.
"I didn't— I never touched any of them, I swear, I just—"
"You just let it happen."
He was in front of her now. Close enough to see the broken capillaries in her cheeks, the yellow of her teeth, the way her hands shook as she raised them in useless defense.
"Please. Please, I was just following orders, I didn't have a choice—
"There's always a choice."
His hand shot out. Closed around her throat. Lifted her off the ground like she weighed nothing.
She clawed at his wrist. Her feet kicked uselessly. Her mouth opened and closed, gasping for air that wouldn't come.
Damien watched. Patient. Letting her feel what it was like to be helpless. To be at someone's mercy and know that mercy wasn't coming.
"Where is Abernathy?"
He loosened his grip just enough for her to speak. She wheezed, tears streaming down her face.
"R-retired. Cottage outside town. Maple Lane. Please, please, I'll tell you anything—"
"I know you will."
He didn't kill her quickly.
The wolf wanted to tear. To rend. To leave nothing but scraps. But Damien held it back — barely. This woman deserved to suffer, but she wasn't the main event. She was an appetizer. A warm-up.
He broke her fingers first. One by one. Slowly. Letting her scream into the empty house where no one would hear.
She told him everything. Names of other staff who had known. Who had participated. Who had looked away. She gave up secrets she'd buried for decades, spilling them like blood in her desperation to make the pain stop.
When she had nothing left to give, Damien released her.
She collapsed on the floor, Sobbing,Cradling her ruined hands against her chest.
"You have a head start," he said. "One hour. Run as far as you can. If you're lucky, I'll be too busy with the others to come back for you."
"And— and if you're not busy?"
He smiled. It wasn't a pleasant expression.
"Pray."
He walked out. Left her bleeding and broken on the floor of her normal little house with the wilting garden and the cold tea.
Marcus was waiting by the car. His expression was carefully blank, but Damien caught the slight tension in his shoulders. Even his beta, loyal to the bone, felt the darkness rolling off him.
"Maple Lane," Damien said. "We have one more stop."
Abernathy's cottage was exactly the kind of place a monster would hide.
Neat. Respectable. A white picket fence. A mailbox with his name painted in careful letters. Flower boxes in the windows, maintained with the kind of attention that spoke of someone with too much time and too little conscience.
Damien stood outside the gate for a long moment. Just looking.
This man had touched her, Hurt her. that no one would ever want her, that she belonged to him.
For that, there was no punishment severe enough.
But Damien would try.
"Stay with the car," he told Marcus. "This one is mine."
He walked up the path. The lights were on inside. A shadow moved past the window. Someone home.
The door wasn't locked. Small town. Trusting community. Everyone knew everyone.
Everyone thought they knew Abernathy.
Damien pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The interior was warm. Cozy. A fire crackling in the hearth. An armchair facing it. The back of a grey head visible above the cushion.
"Martha? That you?" The voice was thin. Reedy. "I told you to use the bell, my hearing isn't—"
"Martha huh?"
The head turned.
Damien got his first look at the man who had haunted Cora's nightmares for fifteen years.
Old,Frail,Thinning grey hair, watery blue eyes behind thick glasses. A cardigan with patches on the elbows. Liver spots on papery hands. He looked like someone's grandfather. He looked harmless and Forgettable.
But Damien saw the way those eyes sharpened. The awareness beneath the confusion. The predator assessing a threat.
"Who are you?"
Damien walked into the room. Each step ,each step closer.
"I'm going to ask you some questions. You're going to answer them honestly. And then—" He stopped in front of the armchair, looking down at the man who had stolen Cora's childhood. "—we're going to take a trip."
"A trip? I don't understand. I don't know you—"
Damien's hand closed around his throat.
"You will."