I look at my brother. He’s got one hand on the stall door, and the other at his side, and the question he’s asking is the question he already knows the answer to. He’s not looking for information. He’s looking for confirmation.
“What did Willow’s thread-sense tell you?” I say.
“That Mia’s parental threads are severed. Not stretched. Not blocked. Cut. Like the person on the other end is gone.”
“Then you know.”
“I need to hear you say it.” His jaw is tight. “I need to hear you confirm what happened to her parents so that Willow and I can stop searching and start… start being what Mia needs us to be. Permanently.”
I step out of the stall. Stand in front of my brother in the dim barn with the horses shifting in their stalls and the morning light coming through the high windows.
“From what we’ve learned, the Syndicate’s intake protocol separated children from parents within the first twenty-four hours. Parents went to the adult processing wing. Children went to… somewhere else. The survival rate for adults in the research program was roughly forty percent over five years. For adults with magic-blood signatures strong enough to be research-viable, the rate was lower.”
“How much lower?”
“The intelligence I gathered from Creed suggests that high-value adult subjects were maintained until their biological material was fully extracted. After that—” I stop. Start again. “After that, they were classified as depleted assets. Depleted assets were terminated.”
Conner doesn’t move. His hand on the stall door doesn’t move.
“Mia’s parents had strong enough magic to produce a telepathic child,” I say. “They would have been classified ashigh-value. They would have been processed to completion. The facility we destroyed was operational for six years. Mia was taken approximately two years ago. The timeline—”
“Say it, Garrett.”
“They’re gone. Mia’s parents are dead. They’ve been dead for at least eighteen months, probably longer.”
The barn is quiet. A horse stamps in the far stall. Dust moves in the window light.
“Thank you,” he says. His voice is rough.
“Don’t thank me.”
“I’m thanking you for the truth. Not for what caused it.” He pushes off the stall door and stands straight. “I need to tell Willow.”
“I know.”
“And then we need to… There’s a process. For adoption. In wolf packs. A formal claim.”
“I know the process.”
“Will you stand witness?”
The question hits me somewhere I’m not braced for. “You want me to witness the claiming?”
“You’re her uncle. Whether either of us likes it, you’re her family. And Mia—” He stops. Swallows. “Mia gave you the ball, Garrett. She decided about you before any of us did.”
“Conner—”
“Will you stand witness? Yes or no.”
“Yes.”
He nods and turns to go. Gets to the barn door and stops.
“Your compound,” he says. “Jessie called this morning. The Syndicate pulled back from the region after the Laredo facility burned. She thinks it’s temporary, regrouping, not retreating. But the compound is stable. The wolves who stayed are holding.”
“Good.”
“She wants you back.”