She stands. Her eyes linger on me for a second — the healer’s final check, making sure the patient is stable enough to leave unsupervised.
Then she’s gone.
Brenna sets a cup of water in front of me. I drink. It’s the best water I’ve ever tasted, which tells me more about how dehydrated I am than any medical assessment.
“Briar says you gathered intelligence,” Brenna says. “What did you get?”
“Three facility locations that Creed mentioned during interrogation. A converted industrial site near El Paso. A research compound in Sonora. And a high-security holding facility—” I pause. Think about the chained man, the one Jericho carried over his shoulder, who I saw them taking through to a back room. “The high-security facility is where they send the ones they can’t break. Creed called it the Vault.”
“Locations?”
“Approximate. Creed was careful. He never gave me coordinates. But he referenced transit times and regional landmarks. Mara can probably triangulate from what I’ve got.”
“What else?”
“Guard rotations for the Laredo facility, which is useless now that we’ve burned it. Communications protocols — how the facilities talk to each other, the encryption they use, the relay schedule. And names. Four names of Syndicate operatives working the southern region. One I already knew. Three I didn’t.”
Brenna absorbs this. She’s adding it to whatever calculation she’s been running since she picked up the phone two days ago and heard my voice asking her to take a family.
“Viktor will want all of this.”
“Viktor can have it. I’ll sit with whoever he sends to share the full picture, because there was more. What I’m giving you now is what’s actionable in the south.”
“Tomorrow. Tonight you rest.”
A bowl of broth appears in front of me, delivered by an older woman with hands that move around a kitchen like they own it. She sets the bowl down, looks at me like she knows something I don’t, and goes back to the stove without a word.
I drink the broth. It’s hot and salty, and my hands shake holding the spoon. I don’t care who sees it because the warmth running down my throat is the first good thing my body has felt in two days.
The kitchen door opens. Conner comes in. Behind him, Willow.
And on Conner’s hip — a child.
Dark hair. Dark eyes too large for her face. She’s got one arm around Conner’s neck, and the other hand is holding something small, red, and round. She’s looking at me.
Not the way the compound wolves looked at me. Not the way the survivors looked at me. This child is looking at me with the focus of a person who is seeing something the rest of the room can’t.
Conner stops walking. “Mia, this is—”
Mia leans away from Conner. Toward me. Her arm stretches out, the red rubber ball balanced on her palm.
“Cah,” she says. Not my name. Something else. A word she’s assigned to whatever she’s reading in me.
She holds the ball closer. Waiting.
Conner glances at Willow. Willow’s hand tightens on his arm.
“She doesn’t do this,” Conner says quietly. “Not with strangers. She barely does it with us.”
I look at the ball. I look at Mia.
My hand moves. I don’t tell it to. It reaches out, and Mia sets the ball in my palm. Her fingers close around my index finger; brief, fierce, the grip of a child who knows that contact is rare and you hold on when you get it.
Then she lets go and turns her face into Conner’s neck.
“Cah,” she says again, muffled against his collar.
I’m holding a rubber ball. My throat has closed. My ribs are screaming. My one good eye is blurring and I will not… I willnot—