The Battle of BioBridge, Part One

CONNOR

For all his tech wizardry, Josh had found our smoking gun and our dead end in the same breath.

While we’d been making our way to the BioBridge facility, he’d unearthed security footage and satellite imagery that would make the CIA blush.

“It was all there,” he said, breathless in my earpiece. “Laid out in grainy, haunting detail. A line of ambulances snaking their way to BioBridge delivering precious cargo.”

He’d found the proof that the eight pups had indeed been brought to this facility. But once they’d crossed those steel loading dock gates, the trail had vanished.

Satellite photos only helped on the exterior. The BioBridge lab itself remained a black hole. If there were cameras inside, they were on a closed network that couldn’t be hacked remotely.

There was no digital way to breach the front door.

Willow’s memories were all we had regarding the layout, and those were jagged, trauma-fractured—a dark maze. She’d beaten herself up for not knowing more. But her frustration had been even more palpable when I’d sidelined her.

It seemed to kill her not to lead the charge, but I wasn’t going to let her guilt drag her back into the fire.

We’d decided to split the assault. Three packs were converging on BioBridge: ours, Cascade Range, and Crystal Moon. Rosewood and White Peaks were headed for Iron Ridge. We’d hit both ends at once, crack the spine of this beast in one clean strike.

Back home, Josh had been tearing down digital walls, scraping together whatever intel he could get. What he found painted a picture straight out of a Cold War fever dream.

Since GhostBridge and FireBridge operated out of the same location, this was no simple biomedical research facility, no easy target.

It was a private military compound, wrapped in the kind of security that screamed, “We’re violating every law known to man—including at least half the Geneva Conventions on cloning.”

Cascade Ridge and Crystal Moon arrived as we readied ourselves. Their eyes glinted with the anticipation of violence. One hundred wolves bristled to bring the apocalypse to BioBridge’s doorstep in their mission to save those pups.

“Heads up.” Josh’s voice buzzed in my earpiece. “Satellites show movement at the south entrance.”

“Talk to me,” I said, half strapped into my Kevlar vest.

“They’re gearing up to leave. Packing up a full convoy. Looks like fifty men.”

I smirked, sharp and humorless. “Heading toward Moon Shield, I bet.”

“Most likely,” Josh said. “Good thing we got here first.”

This was the break we needed. Now we could take the fuckers down with no chance for them to escape.

“~Fifty, tops~,” I linked to Travis, Ben, and the others. “~Some of them look fresh out of training, Josh says.~”

Grins of grim satisfaction all around. Hope sparked in my chest that we might actually pull this off.

Willow was double-checking ammo near the SUV, her movements tense, contained.

Walking over, I asked, “You remember the plan?” I squatted beside her.

Her jaw clenched. “Stay out of range. Don’t engage unless absolutely necessary. Let you handle the rest.”

“Exactly.” I nodded, then sighed. “Willow, you can’t mind-link with our people, so if anything goes wrong—”

“I get it,” she cut in. “I’ll stay back.”

“You’ll stay alive,” I corrected. “That’s your mission.”

She checked the slide on a pistol. “This is personal.” Her voice was low, her tone threatening.

“I know. That’s why you won’t lead this charge.” I stood and turned her face to meet my eyes. “You’re too valuable, Willow, to me. And to the pack.”

She looked like she wanted to argue, but instead, she sighed. “Fine. But don’t expect me to sit this out if things go sideways.”

A grin tugged at my lips. “I would never.”

Ten minutes later, we were ready, and the silence hummed with anxious energy.

The BioBridge facility sat in the clearing ahead, a bastard child of a prison and a high-rise hospital. It was ten stories tall, clean and cold and surrounded by a twelve-foot fence pulsing with electricity and bathed in floodlight.

The fence stood a mere two yards from the forest edge, but between that and the front door were two hundred fifty yards of open kill zone. We could clear that in less than fifteen seconds at full speed, so the timing here would have to be exact.

“Josh,” I whispered into my mic, “you got eyes?”

“Drones are up. I’ve got thermal, night vision, exterior layouts. Walls must have shielding in them, so I still can’t get a read of the interior. But as soon as I get access to their network, I’ll have control. Then I can hijack their cameras, open doors, shut down elevators.

“As I said before, I can cut their grid power from here. I’m sure they have backup generators, but we can temporarily blind them. I can’t do more until we get inside.” Josh took a breath before adding, “Should I do it?”

“Not yet,” I said.

The moment those lights went dark, all hell would break loose. I’d planted snipers in the woods with orders to aim at anything that moved—guards, soldiers, anything with a pulse.

These were my men, cold-eyed and steady, trained in the fine art of death from a distance. The other wolves, those from packs who clung to their traditions, would fight tooth and claw. We’d stick to our guns, literally, until the last possible moment.

I linked the entire attack group, “~Stand by. Wait for the power to drop. You’ll only have seconds before the backup gennys get running. Make them count~.”

Agreement flickered across the link. My men were calm. The others? Bristling.

The power kill came on my mark, and Josh whispered, “Lights out.” The fence sparked, died. The yard went black. What came next was chaos.

Alarms blared. Soldiers scrambled. Wolves surged and toppled the fence.

Gunfire erupted from the tree line in sharp cracks that felled soldiers left and right as they took aim at the wave of wolves rushing toward the building.

The air filled with the stench of cordite and the howls of the wounded, but the wolves kept charging, driven by something primal, something more feral than fear.

They pressed forward, tearing across the open ground, and I realized with a sick relief that the soldiers weren’t using silver.

For now, at least, we had the upper hand.

But then, as if the very earth had turned against us, the ground began exhaling a thick, rolling mist. It rose like the breath of some ancient, vengeful god. A hundred yards in, the first wave of wolves hit the wall of fog and faltered.

I watched, helpless and horrified, while they went down, one by one, convulsing in the grass. The realization turned my stomach: wolfsbane. “~Keep back! Use your guns!~” I linked my men, my voice strained with the raw edge of panic.

It was mayhem—screams, choking, coughing.

The entire front line crippled in seconds as wolves hit the ground in twitching heaps. They didn’t die, though; they shifted back to their human forms, thrashing in agony on the grass.

Relief washed over me that the mist didn’t seem to be killing them. But it was short-lived. Gunfire erupted from behind the convoy of trucks.

More soldiers stepped out, masked and armed with automatic weapons. They fired on our men without mercy.

“~Snipers! Take out those soldiers!~” I mind-linked before growling, “Josh, I need that mist shut down!”

“I told you, I can’t!” Josh said, his tone thick with panic. “I need access to their systems first! Someone’s gotta get inside, jack into their Ethernet, and bridge it to a hotspot so I can punch through the air gap!”

“Fuck!” My mind raced to find a solution as I kicked myself for not bringing gas masks. I should’ve known.

But now was not the time for regrets. A quarter of our force was down, made vulnerable by that poisonous cloud. And the air here, beyond the mist, was thick with fear and desperation. The battle was slipping away from us, fast.

Suddenly, through the chaos, Willow tore right up the middle with wild, unstoppable force.

There was no time to call her back—no time to think.

“~Protect Willow! Protect your luna!~” I ordered, and my men shifted their aim, laying down suppressive fire to keep her path clear.

The world narrowed to that single moment, every heartbeat an eternity. I fired at anything that moved, clearing a corridor of death around her.

My wolf howled inside me, clawing to get free. But I had to trust her, trust that she knew what she was doing. I needed to stay in place, to command, to cover her. All I could do was what I was doing as Willow reached the wall of toxic fog.

And she charged headlong into it.

Willow didn’t hesitate, didn’t flinch. She passed through it, a phantom immune to the poison that was taking down grown wolves.

~She’s going to make it~, I thought, pride swelling in my chest despite the terror still clawing at my throat.

But then, just yards from the door, a soldier tackled her to the ground.

“No!” I yelled, her name tearing from my throat. “Willow!”