“The south approach is our best entry point,” Briar says. “Creek bed provides cover to three hundred yards. After that, open ground to the fence.”
“Guard rotation?” Nadia asks, pulling up a timestamp analysis on her laptop.
“Every ninety minutes, the east and south patrols overlap their route. Leaves the southeast corner unmonitored for approximately four minutes.”
Jericho studies the satellite image. “The facility has internal dampening. I can see the infrastructure on the thermal scan. Suppression fields designed to neutralize captive wolves’ abilities. Anyone with magic going inside should expect reduced capability.”
He says it neutrally, but his eyes move to me. He knows what I can do. Brenna told him.
“My thread-sense will still work at reduced strength,” I say. “It’s how I’ll navigate the interior. The suppression will slow me down, but it won’t blind me.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’ve been feeling those wolves from forty miles away. At close range, even with dampening, I’ll still read them. Not as clearly. But enough.”
Jericho nods. Notes it.
“Four minutes to cross three hundred yards of open ground,” he says. “Tight. But doable if the advance team clears the outer fence first.”
“That’s Briar’s job,” I say.
Briar doesn’t respond. She doesn’t need to. Everyone in the room has already got the measure of her, and she’s clearly the one who goes in first.
We plan. We prepare. I send Brenna an update: facility confirmed, ground reconnaissance underway, approach routes identified, Jericho cracking the communication network. The team converges tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
The word sits in my chest beside the hum of the families and the hollow hurt I’ve felt since I drove away from a house on Sycamore Road.
My wolf stirs in my chest. Not the violent straining of the past weeks. Something quieter. A low, sustained ache. She’s been subdued since I crushed her in the motel room after Briar showed me the photo. But she’s not defeated. She’s waiting. Oriented toward something behind us, to the north, with a patience that frightens me more than her fury ever did.
I ignore her. There’s work to do.
Chapter 21
Conner
I reach for her before I’m fully awake. My arm sweeps the other side of the bed and finds cold sheets. Not recently-warm-from-sleep cold. Cold-for-hours cold. The kind of temperature that means a body left a long time ago.
I open my eyes. The bedroom is gray with early light. The pillow beside mine still holds the impression of her head, and the sheets smell like her—that fresh sweetness I could track across a county—but the scent is fading. She’s been gone for hours.
I get up. Check the house. Kitchen: empty. Bathroom: empty. Her boots, her jacket, her truck… all gone. The front door is closed. Locked, even, from the outside. She pulled it shut behind her.
No note. No message on my phone. Nothing.
The hallway is dim. I walk through it barefoot and register the things she walked past: the jacket hook, the boot tray, Maren’sphotograph on the hallway table. She passed all of this in the dark while I slept. Navigated my home without a sound, the way she navigates everything: precisely, silently, leaving no trace except the shape of her head on a pillow and her scent on my sheets.
My wolf sinks in my chest with a profound sense of loss. The contentment from last night—the deep, stillness of an animal that had exactly what it wanted—is gone. In its place: a howling absence that makes my hands shake and my vision blur.
I get dressed and drive to the motel on Route 7. The parking lot is empty. Her truck’s not there. I walk to the front desk. The woman behind the counter—tired, disinterested—checks the register.
“Room twelve? They checked out early this morning. Before five.”
Before five. Which means she left my bed, drove here, packed, and was on the road while I was still sleeping. While the impression of her body was still warm beside me.
I stand beside my truck in the motel parking lot and let the pieces come together.
She came to me last night. Texted at 2 a.m. Drove to my house. Kissed me in the hallway. Stayed. Let me hold her while I slept. And then, sometime before dawn, she got up, got dressed, and left without a word. Again. The same way she left after the Railhead. Except this time it wasn’t a one-night stand with a stranger. This time, she knew me. Knew my name, my family, my territory. Knew where I live. Knew the sound I make when I’m inside her.