Chapter 3: The Intel and the Plan
The drive back to Barca territory was a silent, tense thing. Antoniu stared out the window of the SUV, watching the dark pines bleed together into a black smear. The glittering prison of the Dragomir lodge was behind them, but its hooks were still in him. He could still feel the exact pressure of her hand in his, the subtle shift of her spine under the silk.
Marcus drove, his knuckles white on the wheel. He waited until the stone gateposts of their own lands rose up in the headlights before he spoke. “Vanea looked like he swallowed a bee.”
“He’ll live,” Antoniu said, his voice rough. The civilized veneer was peeling away with each mile, his wolf scratching to get out and run the scent from his lungs.
“The coastal Alpha left early. Didn’t like the odds after you cut the line.” A note of grim approval colored Marcus’s tone. “Smart. He’s not used to fighting for anything. Just expects it to wash up on his shore.”
Antoniu grunted. The SUV crunched up the gravel drive to the main lodge, a sprawling, timber-and-stone structure that spoke of rugged utility, not gilded opulence. His sanctuary. Yet it felt empty. The silence as they entered the grand hall was a physical weight. No string quartets. Just the sigh of the wind in the eaves and the crackle of the great fire in the hearth.
He didn’t head for the whiskey. He went straight to his study, Marcus a shadow at his heels.
The room was as he’d left it, a monument to pragmatism. Maps were pinned to one wall, territories marked in different colors. Ledgers stacked neatly beside a polished stone paperweight. The only incongruity was the single, heavy envelope on the desk’s clear center. The Dragomir seal—a stylized wolf’s head crowned with oak leaves—glared up at him in blood-red wax. Unopened.