Chapter 2: A Wolf's Welcome to Tahoe

Chapter 2: A Wolf's Welcome to Tahoe

Tahoe City was aggressively picturesque. The sun, a clean, sharp diamond in the high-altitude sky, glittered off the impossibly blue lake. Quaint storefronts lined the main street, selling artisanal coffee and overpriced ski gear to tourists who wore their contentment like a uniform. It was the perfect place to disappear. A postcard town where nothing bad could ever happen.

Finch knew better. He could feel it the moment he stepped out of his battered '72 Charger. Beneath the crisp scent of pine and fresh water, there was a thrum of something else. Something old and wild, a primal energy that clung to the shadows of the mountains and coiled in the deep, cold waters of the lake. It was the kind of energy that made the hair on his arms stand up and the cosmic egg, nestled in the heavily warded leather satchel at his side, pulse with a slow, wary rhythm.

He needed this to work. Every instinct screamed at him to keep moving, to run until he found a hole deep enough to pull the sky in over his head. But running was a fool’s game. Aeon wasn't hunting a man; he was hunting a temporal disturbance. The more Finch ran, the more likely he’d be forced to use his power, and the brighter his signature would flare for the cosmic god to see. No, the answer was to go to ground. To become a rock in the river of time, so mundane and still that the current would simply flow around him. A missing person case in a backwater town was the perfect camouflage.

He found Elara Vance’s coffee shop, “The Daily Grind,” tucked between a crystal shop and a real estate office. The inside smelled of roasted beans and cinnamon, a comforting aroma that did nothing to soothe the phantom ache in his ribs where the star-blade had struck him.

Elara Vance looked exactly like her voice had on the phone: frayed at the edges but held together by a steel wire of sheer will. She was in her early thirties, with tired, intelligent eyes and a jaw set with the kind of stubbornness that came from being a single mother in a town that ran on seasonal money. A faint, almost imperceptible shimmer of an aura clung to her, a pale silver-blue. Untrained, unrealized, but there. A latent sensitivity. It explained why she’d sought out a ‘specialist’ from the city instead of just calling the local sheriff.

“Mr. Finch?” she asked, wiping her hands on her apron. Her voice was steady, but her knuckles were white where she gripped the cloth.

“Just Finch.” He took the offered seat at a small table in the corner. “Tell me about your son. Leo.”

Her composure cracked just a little. “He’s a good kid. Fourteen. A bit of a loner, loves hiking in the woods behind our house. He… he just didn’t come home two nights ago.” She pushed a photo across the table. A smiling, freckle-faced kid with a shock of unruly brown hair.

“Police?” Finch asked, his eyes scanning the photo, then the room, then the street outside. Old habits.

“Sheriff Thompson thinks he’s a runaway. Said he’ll turn up when his money runs out.” Her voice dripped with scorn. “Leo wouldn’t run. He knows I… we only have each other. Something’s wrong. I can feel it.”

Finch could feel it too. It wasn't just a mother's intuition. It was her own latent magic sensing the same primal wrongness he’d felt. “Where was he last seen?”

“The trail behind our house. It leads up toward Granite Peak.” She pointed out the window, toward the looming, pine-choked mountains. “He goes up there all the time. But this feels different.”

Finch took the case, accepted half his fee in cash, and left the comforting smell of coffee behind for the cloying scent of pine and danger. The trail was easy enough to find, a well-worn path that quickly left the cheerful facade of Tahoe City behind. The deeper he walked into the forest, the stronger the energy became. This was old territory, marked by powers that predated the town, the roads, even the names on the map.

His warlock senses, honed over years of walking through the world’s dark corners, began to paint a picture for him. He could taste the faint tang of ozone in the air, the residue of a powerful territorial ward. He saw faint, shimmering glyphs carved into ancient pines, invisible to the mortal eye. This wasn't just a state park; it was a fortress.

About a mile up the trail, he found the first sign of trouble. A single, discarded sneaker, Leo’s from the photo. A few feet away, the ground was torn up, the dirt churned as if by a violent, frantic struggle. And in the soft earth, he saw them. Paw prints. Too large for a coyote, wrong shape for a bear. They were wolf prints, but impossibly, monstrously large.

He knelt, his fingers tracing the edge of one deep impression. The satchel at his side pulsed again, a warning this time. He was an intruder here. He’d just tripped the alarm.

“You’re a long way from the city, Warlock.”

The voice was a low growl that seemed to come from the trees themselves. Finch rose slowly, his hands held loosely at his sides. He didn’t reach for a weapon. He knew it wouldn’t matter.

A man stepped out from behind a thicket of manzanita. He was built like one of the ancient pines that surrounded them—tall, broad-shouldered, and radiating an aura of absolute authority. He wore jeans and a flannel shirt, but the disguise was paper-thin. His eyes were a startling, predatory gold, and his features held a feral sharpness that no human possessed. The raw, primal energy of the forest was concentrated in him. This was the alpha.

Three others emerged from the woods, flanking him. They didn't snarl or show their teeth. They didn't have to. Their stillness was more menacing than any overt threat.

“I can smell it on you,” the alpha said, taking a step closer. His gaze flickered to the satchel. “The city stink. Old magic. And… something else. Something bright and wrong.”

“I’m just a private investigator looking for a missing boy,” Finch said, his voice level. He kept his own gaze steady, meeting the alpha’s. Showing fear was suicide.

The alpha gave a short, humorless laugh. “There are no ‘justs’ in these woods, Finch. You’re either pack, or you’re prey. And you are not pack.” He took another step, close enough now that Finch could feel the heat radiating from him. “The boy trespassed. We… discouraged him. Sent him running back to your concrete world with a story he’ll be too scared to tell.”

“So he’s alive?” Finch pressed, his detective instincts overriding his survival instincts.

“For now,” the alpha growled, his patience clearly wearing thin. “Which is more than you will be if you don’t turn around and walk away. This mountain, this lake, this is our territory. We have our own laws. We don’t tolerate outsiders, especially not your kind. Whatever you’re carrying, whatever trouble is following you, we don’t want it here.”

Finch’s blood ran cold. The alpha didn’t just sense his magic; he sensed the cosmic weight of his situation. He had chosen this place to be a rock, but he’d landed in a wolf’s den.

“Your business in Tahoe is concluded,” the alpha declared, his voice dropping to a command that vibrated in Finch’s bones. “Leave. Now.”

Finch stood his ground, trapped. To leave now would be to admit defeat, to break his cover and start running again, lighting himself up for Aeon. To stay meant facing down a werewolf pack that clearly wanted his head on a spike.

The simple missing person case had just spiraled into a supernatural turf war. And he was standing right on the border.