Silence settles over the room gradually, replacing urgency with warmth.
His weight shifts to the side but doesn't leave entirely, one arm drawing me against his chest, and for a long moment neither of us says anything. The Blood Moon light through the curtain edges deepens to a darker red. Somewhere outside, very distantly, a wolf calls and another answers.
"He's going to invoke the duel," I say finally.
Alden's hand, which has been moving in slow, absent strokes along my spine, pauses once and then continues. "Yes."
"Can you take him?"
"Yes."
The confidence in it is so complete it's not even arrogant.
I tilt my head up to look at him. "You've fought him before?"
"Training bouts, years ago. He was formidable." He meets my eyes. "He's older now, and angry. Angry wolves make mistakes."
"And if he pulls something before the duel?" I ask. "The interference clause?—"
"Brynn recorded the shift against you in the clearing," he says. "That's one strike already documented under ritual law."
"But not disqualifying on its own."
"No." He exhales slowly. "Not on its own."
I sit up slightly, pulling the sheet with me. "So, we need the cabin evidence before the duel." I look at Alden. "Ciaran is already moving, but if we have physical evidence in front of Brynn before Gideon can reframe the narrative?—"
"Then the trial becomes a formality rather than a lifeline." He nods, storm-gray eyes focused now, the Alpha thinking behind them again. "Ciaran has people at the cabin tonight. If the evidence is intact?—"
"It will be," I say. "Kieran wasn't expecting anyone to know where it was."
Alden looks at me long and hard. "You mapped the terrain when you ran out."
"Force of habit." I settle back against his shoulder. "I always know where I am."
He makes a sound that is almost a laugh. His arm tightens once around my shoulders, brief and certain, and then the room goes quiet again—both of us thinking through the same problem from different angles, which is, I've come to understand, what strategic partners do.
Outside, the Blood Moon holds its position in the sky, red and patient and entirely indifferent to our timeline.
26
ALDEN
Ciaran finds me in the war room before dawn with the expression he wears when he has something significant and isn't sure yet how significant.
He sets a burner phone on the map table between us. Cracked screen, prepaid, the kind that doesn't exist on any network until someone activates it. He's already been through it—I can tell by the way he's holding back, waiting for me to ask rather than leading with it.
"Where?" I say.
"False floor under the ammunition crates in the cabin." He pulls out a folded printout, decoded message threads organized by date. "Encrypted. It took the tech team four hours to crack the protocol." He slides it across to me. "The contact is listed under a supplier alias, but the routing traces back to a hunting syndicate based out of Wyoming. Licensed outfitter on paper. Offshore accounts, private transport contracts, four documented incidents in two other states involving protected wildlife areas." He pauses. "Gideon wasn't running this from inside the pack, Alden. He was working with an organization that already existed."
I read through the messages slowly. They go back eight months—long before Cassidy arrived, before the first human death, before any of this became visible. Supply confirmations. Payment transfers. Operational notes about "target property" and "asset removal timeline" written in language just vague enough to survive casual scrutiny. "Does this give us the full picture?"
"Enough of it." Ciaran taps the final page. "The syndicate's interest isn't the rogue. The rogue is a tool. Their interest is the Blackmoore land itself. Fifteen thousand acres of protected mountain territory with no public access record and no state development restrictions." He meets my eyes. "Someone outside the pack has been trying to destabilize your Alpha claim so the land governance structure collapses."
"And Gideon gave them the opening."
"Gideon may have been promised something in return. A position, resources, protection for his bloodline once the land changed hands." Ciaran folds the printout. "Or he may have understood exactly what he was doing and not cared about the downstream."