I walk. The shield wobbles, thins at the edges, but holds. Ten steps. Twenty. By the time I reach her, my arms are shaking, and there’s a taste in my mouth like ozone, but the shield is intact.
“You’re stronger than I was at your age,” Brenna says. “Don’t be afraid of it. The power is yours. It does what you tell it to, not the other way around.”
“It doesn’t feel like mine. It feels like something that’s been added.”
She looks at me. Her expression is carefully neutral, which, on Brenna, means she’s choosing not to say something.
“Just direct it,” she says. “The source doesn’t matter right now. The application does.”
She knows something. Or suspects something. But she’s not going to tell me, and I don’t have time to push.
We go back inside. Dane is in the corridor, filling the space the way he fills every space; massive, calm, the kind of wolf who dwarfs everything. He looks at me as I pass, then at Brenna.
“She ready?” he asks. Not hostile. Professional. The question of a wolf who’s about to go into a fight and wants to know who he can rely on.
“She’s ready,” Brenna says.
Dane nods. Goes back to his work. It’s not trust. But it’s the acknowledgment that I’ll be carrying my weight tonight, and that’s enough for a wolf like Dane.
The plan is set. The timeline is tight. Jericho’s communication intercepts show the facility’s security is tightening. Another twenty-four hours, and they’ll start moving captives. We go now, or we lose them.
Night falls. The team gears up. The atmosphere in the motel shifts from planning to execution, the quiet, intense energy of wolves preparing for combat. Dane checks weapons. Sienna stretches with the fluid motions of an athlete warming up. Rook reviews the assault plan one final time, his tone clipped and certain.
Conner is watching it all silently. I sense he’s contemplating what this all means. He’s preparing for a mission that his own pack would consider treason. He looks up as I pass.
“Willow.”
I stop. Don’t turn fully.
“Be careful in there.”
“Don’t tell me to be careful. You don’t get to worry about me.”
“I know I don’t. I’m doing it anyway.”
I walk away before my wolf can respond to the sound of his voice. That rough, honest voice that my body remembers in ways my mind refuses to acknowledge. The connection flickers toward him, reading his worry, his fear for me. I smother it.
There’s a facility forty minutes south with children inside it. That’s where my attention belongs.
I check my gear. Check the plan. Check the thread-sense one final time; the families are there, the bonds are humming, the signals dim but present.
We load the vehicles. Three trucks. The convoy pulls out of the motel lot and turns south.
The night is clear. Stars thick enough to cast shadows. The brush country dark and flat and waiting.
We’re coming.
Chapter 26
Conner
The facility looks like a ranch. That’s the first thing that hits me as we approach in the dark. My wolf-heightened vision gives me a clear view of the place; it could be any brush country operation. Fenced compound. Main building, long and low, corrugated metal roof. Secondary structures clustered around it. A vehicle depot with three trucks parked in a row. Floodlights on the corners, cones of light pooling on dry ground.
A ranch. The kind of place I’ve driven past a hundred times without a second glance.
Except for the double fence line with razor wire between the layers. Except for the guard posts at the four compass points, manned and lit. Except for the fact that the livestock inside this operation are wolves. Held and managed like cattle on a feed lot.
And I helped put them there.