Been watched

Rae looked up from her screen, her expression tight as she turned her eyes directly on Will, then Trey. Her gaze was sharp—cutting, even. “Who are they?” she asked, tone loaded with more weight than curiosity.

Remi hesitated. “Will… and Trey.”

Rae’s eyes narrowed instantly, her shoulders squaring as if she’d been slapped with a name she’d been waiting to hear. “You mean those idiots?” she hissed. “The ones who made your life a living hell growing up?”

Trey flinched, and Will looked down, jaw tightening. Neither of them spoke.

Rae stood abruptly, the movement jarring the monitor behind her as it beeped in protest. “You think I didn’t read between the lines, Remi? You never said much, but I’m not stupid. You’d leave a room whenever they came up. Change the subject when pack came calling. You were traumatized—and it was because of them.”

Remi stood too, calm but firm. “Rae—”

“No,” Rae snapped, her voice shaking. “You nearly died trying to earn respect from people who should’ve seen your worth from the beginning. And now they want to be part of the solution?”

Trey looked like he wanted to sink into the mattress. Will didn’t move, just met her stare head-on. “We know we messed up.”

“You think that covers it?” she shot back.

Just then, Rae’s laptop pinged. A shrill, unnatural chime.

Her expression flipped in an instant. “s**t,” she muttered, fingers flying across the keyboard. Her breath hitched—and then she turned the screen toward all of them.

Images flooded the monitor. Photos—some grainy, some disturbingly crisp—taken from angles that could only mean surveillance.

Will training in the woods.

Trey in a hospital after a mission.

Remi walking across a university campus eight years ago, her head down, earbuds in.

Rae’s own swamp cabin, viewed from an overhead drone.

Del running a marathon.

Rae’s voice dropped into a cold, furious whisper. “We’ve all been watched. For nine years. Someone’s been keeping tabs—studying us. Following your failures. My hacks. Her records. All of it.”

The room was deathly still.

Rae leaned over, tapping one of the older images—Remi in her early twenties, alone outside a city apartment.

“You think any of this is coincidence? You think they just found us by chance?” Her voice cracked now. “No. They were waiting—for a moment like this.”

She looked straight at Remi.

“They’re not just hunting us now. This was always the plan.”

And for the first time, Trey’s voice was quiet but deeply shaken. “So what the hell are we really dealing with?”

Remi swallowed hard. “Something bigger than a rogue wolf or a hacker network.”

Will nodded grimly. “Something organized.”

Rae looked back at the screen, her face stony.

She straightened, meeting each of their gazes without flinching.

“I’m human. I don’t owe any of you anything,” she said sharply. “The only reason I’m here, the only reason I’m helping, is because my life is now involved. Del’s life is involved. And Remi’s.”

Her voice was like ice now.

“But let’s get one thing real clear—I don’t give a damn about either of you,” she snapped, pointing a finger at Trey, then Will. “Not after the s**t you pulled back then. Not after what you did to her.”

Trey looked away. Will stood frozen, jaw tight, a muscle ticking in his cheek—but he didn’t argue.

Rae leaned in slightly, her voice a quiet, venom-laced threat.

“And if either of you even think about crossing me, or Del, or Remi ever again—I will knock your asses down so hard you’ll be coughing up dirt.”

Then she turned back to her screen like they no longer existed, eyes already scanning the next set of data as if daring them to test her.

And neither of them did.