Keifer's POV
The warmth beside me vanished before I was even fully awake. My hand brushed the sheets — still warm, still holding her scent — but she was gone.
A muscle in my jaw twitched.
Then I saw it — a note on the bedside table, written in her quick, slanted handwriting:
Kwanan, I'm heading to work. See you later. Bye.
I stared at it for a long moment. Work? At this hour? Something was off. She might have thought she was being discreet, but I'd learned to read her too well.
I scanned the room.My chest tightened. Something fell off
I grabbed my phone and hit a number I never saved under a name. " drix."
Static, then a lazy voice. "Mornin', keif. You sound grumpy for dawn."
"Jay , She's gone," I said flatly. "And her signal's not on the grid."
Rapid clicks echoed through the line as Edrix's fingers began flying over his keyboard. "Hold on. I'm tracking her. But if she's gone dark, it's gonna take a minute."
"You've got thirty seconds," I snapped, pacing toward the window. The early light spilled across the city skyline.
"Rory," I said through the comm, "track her workplace She might've gone there."
"Copy that,," Rory replied, his voice sharp, focused. "Pulling drone visuals now."
Edrix whistled low. "Uh, Keifer... her tracker's jammed. Encrypted with some subsystem code I've never seen. It's bouncing between coordinates, like she's does want people to know ."
I clenched my teeth.
"Yeah," Edrix muttered, frustration lacing his tone. "NSB's perimeter tech. The place eats signals for breakfast. Gonna take brute force."
I heard keystrokes intensify, along with swearing under Edrix's breath. "Who the hell upgraded their firewall? This isn't standard NSB encryption—it's hand‑coded. Feels like army tech mixed with mafia code. Definitely hers."
I exhaled slowly, letting the silence stretch. She'd built something off‑grid even from me. Clever girl. Infuriating girl.
"Break it," I ordered quietly. "I don't care what you burn through, just find her."
Time bled by in static and keystrokes. Then Edrix let out a curse that turned into a laugh. "Got it! She masked her trail under three fake signals, but I cracked her subnode. I've got a lock — southeast quadrant of NSB. The base is half‑blacked out."
My pulse steadied, though the cold weight in my chest didn't lift.
"Rory," I said, voice low, controlled again, "assemble the Wolves. We move now."
I tossed the note onto the bed and slipped on my black leather