I’m going into a Syndicate facility tomorrow carrying his child. Nobody on this team knows except Brenna, who’s saying nothing, and Greta, who’s hundreds of miles away. Nobody hereis going to wrap me in cotton or suggest I stay in the car with Mara. Nobody here even considers it, because I’m Briar, and Briar goes first.
Not first tomorrow. Merric will go through the door before me. Brenna’s orders.
But I’ll be right behind him.
Inside, Mara catches me on the way back through.
“Hey. Protein bar. Eat it, or I’ll follow you around making annoying comments about blood sugar until you do. Everyone else in this place is protein-bingeing, and you haven’t put a thing in your mouth.”
I take it. Unwrap it. Chew without tasting.
“You know what I love about wolf operations?” Mara says, leaning against the doorframe. “The brooding. So much brooding. Jericho broods. Nadia broods. Now you’re brooding. Caleb used to brood, but I broke him of it. Kael still broods, but he’s four hundred years old, so he’s earned it.”
“I’m not brooding.”
“You’re standing in a dark yard eating a protein bar like it personally offended you. That’s textbook brooding.” She grins. “Get some sleep. You’re going to need it.”
She disappears back into the glow of her screens. I finish the protein bar. Then I go inside, find a bunk in the back room, and lie down.
Sleep comes in fragments. Every time I drift under, the cramping pulls me back — not painful, just present. A reminder. Twice, I surface from something that might be sleep, and my hand is on my belly. Twice I move it.
Sometime in the darkest part of the night, something reaches me. Not a thought. Not a sensation I can name. Just… presence. A flare of it. Brief, like someone reaching out and then pulling back again.
He’s alive. Whatever they’re doing to him, he’s alive, and he’s conscious, and for one second, something got through.
I hold onto it.
“Oh-four-hundred, people.” It’s Caleb’s voice in the hallway. I’m up before he finishes the sentence. Dressed, boots laced, knife on my belt, because that’s how I lay down. The team assembles in the main room, faces sharp in the overhead light. Nobody speaks beyond what’s necessary.
The drive to the airstrip takes twenty minutes. The jet is fueled. We board in the quiet of people who’ve said what needs saying.
I sit by the window with Conner beside me. He hasn’t spoken since the briefing, but his hands are steady, and his eyes are clear. Whatever he’s feeling about walking into a Syndicate facility to pull his brother out — the brother he testified against, the brother he walked away from, the brother he still loves despite it all — he’s put it somewhere he can reach it later. Right now, he’s an operative. Same as me.
The jet climbs through cloud cover and banks south.
Somewhere below, a converted meatpacking plant sits on a private road with a wolf in its basement who’s given himself up for his pack.
They think they’re breaking him. They don’t know him. I’ve spent more time in his head than anyone alive, and the man in that basement is not breaking. I know he’s not.
The jet descends toward Texas. My wolf is locked on. Focused the way she focuses when we’re scouting.
I close my eyes. Three hours to Laredo.
I don’t know what he is to me in my heart. I don’t know the word for it, and I’m not ready to look for one. But he’s in a basement somewhere with people who are hurting him, and my wolf won’t rest until I’ve pulled him out. The woman carrying hischild won’t rest either. Between the two of them, I don’t have a choice about what happens next.
I never did. Not since I saw him on that ridge.
Three hours.
Chapter 30
Briar
The staging area is a dry creek bed a mile south of the facility. We arrive in two vehicles and kill the engines. The silence that follows is the silence of a team that’s done talking.
Mara stays in the lead vehicle, a van big enough to house her laptops and her comms equipment. Kael is beside her, and it’s sweet that she’s so protective of a man who’s more powerful than all of us combined. She hands out earpieces. Small, flesh-colored, the kind that disappear against skin.
“Channel one is team comms,” she says. “Channel two is me to you individually. If I say pull, you pull. No debate. No heroics. You pull.”