Chapter 64: Mission

Chapter 64: Chapter 64: Mission

The rest of the day stretched out before Azura like an endless, boring desert made of fancy pillows and expensive curtains.

She had been pacing back and forth like a caged tiger—or more accurately, like a caged raccoon who had been denied access to trash cans. The bed was huge, the curtains were silk, the bathroom had a bathtub the size of a small swimming pool, and there was a cupboard that was just added to the room stocked with snacks that probably cost more than her monthly salary in her past life.

But none of that mattered.

No phone. No laptop. No books. No anything.

She was trapped in a five-star prison of boredom.

And to add insult to injury, after being unceremoniously dumped into her "luxurious prison room" by the two betas—who had the audacity to order two guards to stand watch at her door like she was some kind of international spy—Azura spent a solid three hours doing absolutely nothing.

She counted the ceiling tiles. (Seventeen. There were seventeen.)

She tried to communicate with a houseplant telepathically. (It did not respond. Rude.)

She considered using her own hair as a jump rope. (Her arms were too short. Tragic.)

In the end, she came to a single, earth-shattering conclusion:

I’m going to die of boredom before anyone even gets a chance to kill me.

So she did what any self-respecting hostage would do.

She went to sleep.

"I’ll take a power nap until dinner," she muttered, flopping onto the bed like a starfish. "Recharge my batteries. And then... at midnight..."

She grinned into the pillow, her voice dropping to a dramatic whisper.

"I will become a ninja. A phantom thief. The ghost of midnight. The beautiful, legendary, utterly stunning phone-napper."

And with that profound thought, she burrowed under the ridiculously expensive silk sheets and passed out like a log.

Meanwhile, far, far away from the Midnight Hollow Pack—in the bustling heart of the Human City, near the territory of Azura’s own pack—two men were having a very different kind of day.

Jonathan’s instincts had been screaming at him since hours ago.

Not the helpful kind of instincts, like "Hey, maybe eat lunch" or "Don’t forget to breathe."

No. It was the kind of instinct that said:

"Your sister is definitely dragging your name into something unspeakably stupid."

But still, he and Adrian had traveled to the human city with one goal in mind: confirm that Azura had disappeared of her own free will, and not because she’d accidentally joined a cult that planned to go to the Amazon, or—worse—pretended to go to the Amazon while actually doing something even more unhinged in the human city.

Meanwhile, other pack members were also searching. Vincent and Caroline were running around the city like headless chickens, panic levels at an all-time high.

Adrian and Jonathan, being the sensible ones, headed straight to the Grand Meridian Hotel—the last place Adrian had seen Azura.

After pulling some strings, flashing some money, and making the hotel manager sigh like a man who had seen too much, they finally got their hands on yesterday’s CCTV footage. Not just the lobby. The outside area too.

The hotel manager watched them with the thousand-yard stare of a man who had been asked for CCTV footage by wealthy businesspeople two days in a row now.

"Are there terrorists in my hotel?" he muttered to himself. "Why do people keep asking for my security footage? Is this a crime drama? Am I a side character?"

Nobody answered him. Life is cruel.

---

Jonathan’s eyes were glued to the screen. He scrolled through footage like a man possessed, until—

"There."

He froze the frame. A blurry but unmistakable figure of Azura, running through the courtyard. And beside her, a tiny girl.

Jonathan didn’t look away from the screen as he spoke.

"Alpha. I found something. After my sister emerged from the lobby, she was running with this little girl. Is that... the friend she mentioned to you? The one who brought the gift she prepared?"

Adrian leaned in, squinting at the screen. His brow furrowed.

"Maybe. I’m not sure. I didn’t see Azura again after she left the lobby." He studied the tiny figure beside her. "But if she wasn’t lying, it’s likely she walked out to meet her friend. This... tiny girl."

On the screen, the two figures ran past the camera’s range and disappeared into a blind spot.

Adrian’s eyes sharpened.

"Jonathan. Check the front gate footage. I think they ran that way."

Jonathan’s fingers flew across the keyboard, switching to the front gate CCTV footage like a man possessed. And then—both he and Adrian froze.

There, on the screen, was Azura and the tiny girl. Approaching a delivery scooter that looked like it had survived two world wars, a famine, and possibly a direct hit from a meteor. The thing was leaning at a forty-five-degree angle next to the main gate guardhouse, as if held together by prayers and rust.

Then things got worse.

The tiny girl didn’t sit on the scooter. She crouched on it. Like a gargoyle. Like a gremlin. Like a creature that had never read a single page of the Highway Code.

And then she shouted at Azura to sit behind her.

Jonathan’s eye twitched as he watched the tiny figure crouch between Azura’s legs like a toddler who had decided that vehicles were for savages and she was above such things.

He frowned deeply.

Is this girl... the reason my sister has been acting insane lately? Has she been infected by this tiny menace?

Soon, the screen showed Azura starting the scooter with the expression of a woman about to face her own execution. The scooter launched forward—zigzagging violently, wobbling like a drunk duck, and then disappeared into traffic, leaving a trail of chaos behind it.

"..."

Jonathan stared at the empty screen.

"Jonathan." Adrian’s voice was flat. "Can your sister even ride a scooter?"

"Obviously not. Look at that start. That wasn’t a person starting a vehicle—that was a person surviving a vehicle. I feel like there were a lot of victims on the road yesterday."

"Should we be worried?"

"About deaths? No. About psychological trauma?" Jonathan paused. "Yes. Absolutely yes. We’re going to need to pay for so many therapists."

Adrian shot him a look that could curdle milk. Then, without another word, he mind-linked Vincent, instructing him to pull the street CCTV footage of the route Azura took after leaving the hotel. They needed to track her movements.

"Let’s go." Adrian stood up. "Vincent’s waiting."

---

They strode through the hotel lobby, deep in conversation—Adrian laying out possible routes, Jonathan nodding along while mentally calculating how much therapy cost per person in this economy.

Neither of them noticed the tiny blur that zipped past them.

But as they reached the glass doors, Jonathan’s instincts screamed at him. He stopped mid-step and whipped his head around.

There—at the reception desk—was a small figure, huffing and puffing, talking animatedly to the receptionist.

"Alpha," Jonathan said slowly, his eyes narrowing. "Do you think... that girl behind us... looks similar to Azura’s friend in that recording?"

Adrian glanced back. Looked at the tiny girl. Looked at Jonathan. Then shrugged.

"It’s similar. But there are so many tiny girls in this city. We can’t suspect every short person we see." He turned and walked faster, leaving Jonathan behind. "Let’s go."

Jonathan lingered for just a second longer, staring at the tiny girl who was now aggressively gesturing at the receptionist.

But with a reluctant sigh, he turned and jogged after Adrian.

He had a bad feeling about this.

---

Karina had just been released from the hospital—the very same hospital she’d been rushed to yesterday in an ambulance after her dramatic fainting spell. She was still furious about the whole ordeal. She’d only pretended to faint because of Azura! That was the plan! So why had she been detained?

Why had the doctors and nurses formed a human wall every time she tried to leave?

She didn’t know that Kyler Blackwood—the same Kyler who had watched her fake collapse with the cold, dead eyes of a man who had seen through every trick in the book—had ordered his men to tell the hospital staff to keep her there for the entire day. A punishment. For daring to fake a medical emergency in front of him.

If Karina knew that Azura’s punishment had only been a coffin for less than an hour, she would have already carved a voodoo doll out of a potato and named it Kyler.

She was now aggressively interrogating the poor receptionist, her eyes sharp as daggers.

"The Blackwood family. Are they still here? Did they check out? TELL ME."

"Miss, I’m sorry, but we cannot disclose information about our guests," the receptionist said, her smile held together by professional obligation and the faint hope of quitting her job.

"Confidential, miss. Sorry."

Karina’s eye twitched. She could feel it. From the receptionist’s rigid posture, the slight flinch in her smile—they’d already checked out. They were gone. Back to their pack.

She clutched her chest dramatically.

"This means... my Leek is there..." Her voice dropped to a tragic whisper. "With that chaotic new friend of mine..."

She paced around the lobby, muttering to herself like a conspiracy theorist. She had sent several messages in the Hot Alphas group chat yesterday, asking who the mysterious scooter girl was—but nobody had confessed to being the scooter menace. Instead, they were too busy drooling over Blackwood family candids, debating whether Kyler’s jawline could cut glass.

So now, Karina was convinced that Kyler had kidnapped Azura. Maybe for interrogation about their stalker group. Maybe for revenge about her scooter that hit his car.

Kyler Blackwood probably kidnapped my new friend for interrogation. Yes. That’s definitely what happened.

She stopped mid-pace, a lightbulb flickering to life above her head.

"I know!" She gasped, clasping her hands together like a heroine in a telenovela. "I’ll go to the Midnight Hollow Pack to pick up my leek. And while I’m at it, I’ll rescue my new friend from the clutches of that cold-hearted kidnapper!"

Never mind that Azura had left ’voluntarily.’

Never mind that Karina had zero invitation.

She was on a mission.

Hours later.

Azura was woken from a deep, drool-stained sleep by the gentle tap-tap-tap of a maid knocking on her door.

"Dinner is ready, Miss Azura."

She shuffled to the dining room follow the maid like a zombie in a silk robe.

And then she sat alone.

The dining room was massive. The table was long enough to host a small army. And she was the only one sitting there, poking at her food while eavesdropping on the servants’ whispers.

The triplets heading out with Beta Oliver and Gamma Noah. Something about pack business. Something about finally having a break from that strange girl.

And as for Kyler? He and Wilson were apparently eating in his study room, buried in paperwork like the workaholic tyrant he was.

So everyone was busy. Good. Perfect. Excellent.

Azura shoveled food into her mouth at record speed, then shot up from her chair like a rocket. She grabbed the nearest maid by the arm—the poor girl yelped—and dragged her through the hallways.

"Lead me to my room! Quickly! This is urgent!"

"But miss, you just—"

"NO TIME! MISSION! CLOCK! TICKING!"

The maid, thoroughly confused but too afraid to resist, guided her through the winding hallways. Azura burst into her room, slammed the door, and lunged toward the clock on the wall.

Her eyes gleamed with the light of a thousand manic ideas.

"Alright, Azura." She cracked her neck. "Get ready. Mission Chaos starts now."