Chapter 4 Ten Days

The data packet from Ghost arrived like a digital poison pill. I scrolled through it on the tiny, cracked screen of my burner phone, the glow illuminating the grim set of my face. Each line was a new layer of filth.

Marcus wasn''t just an ambitious social climber. He was desperate. Ghost had uncovered a trail of embezzlement from his own company, funds funneled into a series of failed tech startups and high-stakes poker games. He was a sinking ship, and the Hawthornes weren''t just a ladder up; they were his only lifeboat.

The "Blood Price" ritual was his ticket. In exchange for offering a "compatible vessel"—my Lily—to stabilize Julian Hawthorne, who suffered from a mysterious, degenerative ailment, Marcus would be bailed out. His debts would vanish. He''d be given a coveted seat on the Hawthorne Consolidated board. He was trading our daughter''s life for his financial and social survival.

The final line of Ghost''s message was a stark, unadorned sentence that made the room tilt:

Full moon is in ten days. The ritual is tied to the lunar peak. You have until then.

Ten days.

The number hung in the motel room''s stale air, a ticking clock made of ice. Ten days until they tried to siphon my daughter''s soul into some dying aristocrat.

A cold, clear fury, sharper than any I''d felt before, washed over me. The warm pulse of the wolf-tooth amulet against my chest was the only thing that kept me from screaming, from shifting right there and tearing the room apart.

I stood up, my movements precise, deliberate. I found a discarded pizza flyer and a pen. On the clean back, I drew a crude calendar. I circled the date of the full moon. Ten boxes until zero hour.

I tacked it to the wall above the rickety desk. A visual countdown. A promise.

My mind, once clouded with the shock of betrayal, was now a crystal-clear weapon. I assessed my resources, my enemies, my objectives with a dispassionate clarity that was more wolf than human.

Objective One: Gather irrefutable evidence of Marcus''s crimes and his deal with the Hawthornes. This was my legal leverage, my way to dismantle his life publicly and, more importantly, establish myself as the stable parent in any custody battle.

Objective Two: Find a way to disrupt the ritual, to prove it was dangerous fraud, or to make it impossible to perform. This was the physical threat.

Objective Three: Get Lily to safety. This was everything.

Ten days. It felt like both an eternity and the blink of an eye.

I looked at the first empty box on the calendar. Today.

My first move had to be surgical. I needed to get closer to the source. I needed to hear their plans from the inside.

Marcus''s corporate office. That was where he felt safest, most in control. That was where he would be most careless.

It was a fortress, but every fortress had a weak point. For a wolf, that weak point was often a door left open for the night cleaners, a ventilation shaft, a blind spot in the security camera''s sweep. Ghost would get me the blueprints, the shift schedules.

But the real key was my own nature. I wouldn''t need to pick a lock or hack a system. I just needed to get close enough to listen.

I packed a small bag: dark, comfortable clothing, the burner phone, a bottle of water. The wolf-tooth amulet was a constant presence under my shirt. I looked once more at the calendar on the wall.

Ten days.

It wasn''t a deadline. It was a battle cry.

I slipped out of the motel room, merging with the night. The city was a tapestry of sounds and smells, but I filtered it all out, focusing on a single point on the map: the gleaming tower that housed my husband''s crumbling empire.

The hunt was no longer a vague concept. It had a timetable.

And the wolf was done waiting.