We’re in position by midnight. The creek bed Briar found runs southeast, dipping below the sight line of the guards. The assaultteam is spread along it in a loose formation, wolves crouched in dry sand and scrub brush, breathing quietly.
Rook is beside me. The man hasn’t said more than thirty words to me since I arrived. Twenty of those were instructions. He handed me the radio and the frequency chart: “You monitor channels three through seven. Anything that sounds like a response force, you tell me. Don’t engage. Don’t improvise. Clear?”
“Clear.”
He looked at me a beat longer than necessary, assessing whether I’m trustworthy enough to be useful. Then he nodded and moved on.
From here, I can see the deployment. Merric’s group—Dane, Sienna, plus four Ravenclaw fighters—a hundred yards east, positioned for the first strike on the fence. Brenna’s team holds the west approach, shapes in the dark. Briar went in twenty minutes ago. Alone. Into the gap between the fence lines where the razor wire gleams.
She hasn’t tripped an alarm. Hasn’t made a sound. The guards on the south and east posts are still walking their routes, unaware that someone has already passed through their line like mist.
Above us, somewhere in the dark sky, Jericho is circling. I can’t see him. Can’t hear him. But I can feel the displacement of air: a pressure change, subtle, the kind you’d attribute to wind if you didn’t know what was up there. The dragon, holding altitude, waiting. Impossibly silent for something so large.
And ahead of me, at the front of the breach team, Willow.
She’s in dark clothes, hair tied back, a knife on her belt. No other weapons. She doesn’t need them. As I watch, she raises her hands, and I see something I’ve spent my adult life being told to fear.
Magic.
It starts as a shimmer between her palms. Heat distortion, like air rising off summer asphalt. Then it takes shape. A ward, forming between her hands, visible in the dark as a faint lattice of light. She moulds it, extends it outward until it covers the breach team in a dome of shimmering energy that I can feel on my skin, a hum that vibrates at a frequency that makes my teeth ache.
I stare. Not in fear. In awe.
God. She’s so fucking beautiful.
This is what my pack tried to eradicate. This woman, this power—precise, controlled, protective—and we called it contamination.
The radio crackles. Rook: “Briar confirms south and east sentries are down. We have the window.”
Everything moves fast.
Merric’s team hits the east fence. Dane goes through it; not over,through. The man tears chain-link apart with his bare hands, metal shrieking, and Sienna is past him before the sound fades, a blur of fur heading for the east guard post. The Ravenclaw fighters pour through behind them.
Sirens. Floodlights snapping to full power. The compound waking like a kicked anthill. Guards scrambling. Shouts. The crack of a weapon on the north side.
Brenna’s team hits the west simultaneously. The white flame is something I’ll never forget, a line of fire that isn’t fire, burning cold and bright, cutting through the west fence like a blowtorch through paper. Brenna’s walking through the gap she’s made with magic blazing from both hands, fighters fanning out behind her. Her face in that light is calm, intent, terrifying.
Then the sky opens.
Jericho drops from the dark. Not the gradual descent of a bird; the plummeting arrival of a predator that’s been waiting. Dragon form, massive, the wingspan blotting stars. Fire erupts from hisjaws, a single, concentrated blast aimed at the vehicle depot. The three trucks explode simultaneously, a wall of flame that lights the compound in shuddering orange.
In the noise, Willow moves.
She’s running. Low, fast, the breach team behind her. The shield ward holds around them, deflecting something I can’t see, and she’s heading for the main building’s south entrance. Her hands are up, magic streaming from her fingers, and every few seconds a new ward snaps into existence, a barrier here, a deflection there, creating a corridor of protection through the gunfire and the noise.
She reaches the door. Her magic flares, brighter than anything she’s done before, a pulse of energy that blows the reinforced door inward off its hinges. She goes in. Her team follows. They disappear into the building.
Every instinct I have saysfollow her. My body actually shifts forward before I catch myself. The pull between us—the thing I’ve been feeling since the Railhead—is screaming at me to be where she is. My wolf doesn’t care about positions or communication channels. He cares about one thing, and she just went into a Syndicate facility without him.
I hold position. The radio crackles with cross-channel chatter, security coordinating a response, confused, overwhelmed.
I relay what I hear to Rook: “Response force forming at the north building. Six, maybe eight guards. They’re trying to reach the main structure.”
“Copy.” Rook is already moving, directing the eastern force to intercept.
More chatter. I sort through channels, pulling signal from noise. Vehicle request: denied, the depot is burning. Reinforcement call to an external number, but Jericho’s intercept is jamming it. A panicked voice asking for instructions from someone who isn’t answering.
Then, on channel five, something that turns my blood to ice.