Page 12 of The Hyena’s Guardian

Keene was quiet long enough that Matt stopped expecting an actual denial, and the realization settled somewhere uncomfortable beneath his ribs. “You’re still going,” Keene said eventually.

“Not really selling me on confidence here.”

“Confidence gets operatives killed faster than fear.”

“That sounds like it belongs on a motivational poster for emotionally damaged soldiers.”

Keene ignored him again while Matt took another sip of coffee and turned deeper into the file, but his attention abruptly locked onto a blurred thermal image near the bottom of the next page. A single heat signature appeared in the collapsed remains of a tunnel, large enough to register as dangerous and curled tightly into the corner like something injured or hiding.

Matt stared at the image longer than he meant to while his hyena went unnaturally still. Recognition, stronger now and far harder to ignore, held the hyena still. “What is that?” he asked.

Keene crossed the room and glanced down at the file. “We don’t know.”

The thermal image felt wrong somehow, not because the heat signature appeared dangerous, but because it looked alone in a way that triggered something deep and instinctive beneath his skin.

Injured maybe. Cornered definitely. Before Matt could stop himself, something tightened painfully beneath his ribs hard enough to make his breathing tighten.

Keene noticed instantly. At this point Matt was starting to think the man could detect emotional instability the way sharks detected blood in water.

“That reaction,” Keene said. “Did you feel it during the audio recording too?”

Matt looked up sharply. “Feel what?”

Keene regarded him for a long moment. “The way your attention lingered.”

Matt looked back at the thermal image. The blurred shape hidden beneath miles of earth no longer looked threatening. Instead, it seemed impossibly isolated, buried beneath a darkness so complete that the feeling it stirred should have been caution, yet the hyena shifted with a quiet, irrational urge to know what waited in the dark.

Curiosity settled in, instinctive enough that Matt distrusted it instantly. Every survival habit the military had carved into him warned that interest could get people killed faster than fear ever would, especially when something unknown waited surrounded by blood, missing operatives, and claw marks gouged through stone. But the pull remained anyway, quiet and persistent beneath his ribs, like some deeper part of him already recognized the shape hidden in the dark and could not stop leaning toward it.

***

The deployment team assembled six hours later inside a reinforced hangar buried somewhere beneath the eastern side of the facility.

Matt only knew they were heading east because the elevator hadn’t traveled straight down. At one point it had shifted onto horizontal rails, and he’d spent the ride counting every turn out of habit. Underground complexes irritated him on principle. Too many sealed corridors and identical walls made it easy to lose orientation, and losing orientation got people killed in places far less dangerous than supernatural black sites.

The hangar itself looked less like part of a hidden paranormal organization and more like the inside of a classified military airbase. Steel support beams disappeared overhead into shadow while maintenance crews moved between armored vehicles and equipment crates marked with symbols Matt did not recognize. The low mechanical growl of generators vibrated faintly beneath the concrete floor, blending with the smell of fuel, oil, gunmetal, and predators.

There were predators everywhere in the hangar, enough that the predator in him stayed alert without fully relaxing. He adjusted the strap of his duffel while scanning the room out of long military habit, automatically tracking exits, weapons, and the quiet tension beneath the controlled movement around him.

Two wolf shifters loaded equipment near a matte-black helicopter parked at the center of the hangar. A woman with hawk-like eyes stood beside an open weapons case checking ammunition magazines with methodical precision. Across the bay, somebody laughed too sharply for the sound to belong entirely to a human throat.

His hyena stayed alert the entire time because nobody in the hangar carried themselves like this was routine, and Matt found that strangely comforting in a deeply unhealthy way.

“You’re late.”

Matt glanced sideways as Baptiste approached carrying a tablet in one hand and a travel mug in the other.

“I’m literally early.”

“Barely.”

“That still counts.”

Baptiste considered that. “Technically.”

Matt eyed the coffee. “Please tell me that’s actually coffee and not some ancient predator ritual tea.”

“It’s coffee.”