20. Ravik
Ravik
The runner came back hours—twenty hours—later than we expected.
He’d left the note thirty feet outside the compound gates, exactly as ordered, then held position at a distance to watch for someone from Cold Moon Pack to pick it up and reply.
Near dawn, someone had finally left a response, a soldier slipping out just long enough to leave a folded reply in its place before vanishing back through the gates.
One of Waylon’s commanders met him at the perimeter and brought him straight to me.
He looked half-frozen and exhausted, so I didn’t waste time on pleasantries before pulling the folded paper from his shaking hands.
Ivan’s response was three words, written in a hand too steady for a man who should have been afraid.
Come and see.
No demands. No counteroffer. Just a threat dressed up as an invitation.
“There’s more,” the runner said, his voice hoarse.
“Whoever dropped the reply didn’t say a word.
But before I could turn back, one of the soldiers on the wall shouted down to me.
Said to tell you Alpha Rivers won’t be seen again until the ritual.
Said if we move on the compound before then… everyone inside dies with him.”
The words landed like a fist to the sternum. I should have expected it. I should have seen this coming from the moment we sent that letter.
In minutes, I gathered the others in our private tent. Gracie tucked herself against me, her frame tense as if bracing for bad news, and I could tell Basir and Thornar already had an idea of what was coming.
“We received a response,” I said. “Ivan said ‘come and see.’”
Gracie let out a sound of frustration, her hand tightening against my chest, before I continued. “One of his soldiers also said that if we move on the compound before the ritual, everyone inside dies with him.”
I saw my words hit everyone at once.
“He rigged the compound,” I said. “Explosives, most likely, or something worse given what we’re dealing with. If we push a full assault, he detonates it. Thousands of civilians die before we ever reach him.”
“So he’s not hiding because he’s scared,” Basir said quietly. “He’s hiding because he doesn’t need to fight us at all. He just needs us to hesitate.”
Ivan was the worst kind of bastard. There were rules in war—civilians were off-limits, for one—but Ivan didn’t care about that. If anything, he saw their suffering as leverage, a weapon he could point instead of a line he had to respect.
“Then we don’t give him the chance to make us hesitate,” Gracie said. Her voice was steady in a way that still, after everything, managed to surprise me. “We stop thinking about this as a war. We think about it as a rescue.”
She was right. It was the only way forward that wouldn’t end with a compound full of bodies before the ritual even began.
It took the rest of the morning to pull everyone together, but by midday, the war council— including all of the allied alphas—had reassembled.
This time, the maps spread across the table were more precise: building schematics, drainage routes, the internal layout of Northgrove. All of it had been pieced together from information our own scouts had provided along with our experience from our last mission here.
“Like you said, we can’t storm it,” Waylon said, arms crossed as he studied the layout. “Not with that kind of threat on the civilians.”
“Then we go small,” I said. “Teams. We find him before he knows we’re looking. Northgrove is secure, but not impenetrable.” The room was quiet, everyone recalculating their plans.
“Search teams,” Kaliyah said slowly, working through it. “Split the compound into sections. Cover ground fast, cover it quiet, report back the second anyone finds a lead.”
“It’s not enough just to find him,” Bishu pointed out. “We need to know how to disable whatever he’s rigged, or planned, before anyone moves on his location.”
Haiden offered a scoff. “One wrong move and he kills all of his ‘sacrifices’—it’s absolutely idiotic and reckless on his end. He’s an idiot—an idiot who’d cut off his nose to spite his face. He’d rather everyone die, himself included, than for someone else to win.”
I was already turning the compound’s layout over in my mind.
“Then that’s the mission,” I said. “Find him. Find what he’s threatening us with. And do neither of those things loudly. If we can manage it before the ritual, it’ll be over before any of this shit begins.”
Beside me, I felt Gracie go very still.
“I think we need to send a team to the children’s barracks.”
Every head in the room turned toward her, but she didn’t shrink under the weight of it, didn’t wait for permission the way she might have a month ago. The change in our mate had been steady and hard-won, but this war had pulled something out of her I don’t think even she’d expected.
“There’s a barracks specifically for the children in there,” she explained.
“I know exactly where it is. I know how it’s guarded, or at least how it used to be guarded.
If Ivan’s rigged the compound to hold everyone hostage, they’re the ones with the least chance of surviving, and the least ability to run if it goes wrong. ”
“Glow…” Basir started.
“I want to be part of the team that goes in,” she said, gently but without apology. “I know at least some of them will recognize me.”
Silence settled over the table as I watched Basir and Thornar grow tense.
The last fucking thing I wanted was for Gracie to step foot in that compound, but I’d already accepted there was no version of this where she stayed behind.
It wasn’t about her capability; it was about the raw, furious creature inside of me that demanded we protect our mate, that wanted to ensure she wasn’t touched by any of this bullshit.
I met Thornar and Basir’s gaze but chose not to say anything.
“You’ll need cover,” Kaliyah said, breaking the silence. “Two soldiers minimum, and someone who knows demolitions in case there’s anything rigged near that section specifically.”
“Agreed,” Haiden said. “And someone who can carry more than one child if it comes to that.”
Thornar was already nodding, halfway to volunteering, but I spoke before he could offer.
“Since it has to be a small team, I’ll help lead while Thornar and Basir stay here on comms and to coordinate."
Gracie’s gaze found mine, something soft passing between us that had nothing to do with strategy.
Thornar’s mouth twitched like he wanted to argue, and Basir’s jaw tightened in the particular way that meant he was fighting the urge to insist on going himself.
But neither of them said anything. They understood, the way I understood every time one of them made a similar choice.
“Then it’s settled,” Waylon said. “Search teams deploy within the hour. Gracie and Ravik’s team moves in at the same time, but with a separate objective.”
The room began to move, chairs scraping back, voices rising to a low hum of conversation as details were hammered out among teams. I caught Gracie’s hand before she could walk away from the table.
“Stay close to me in there, lux mea,” I said.
Gracie’s golden gaze softened with affection. “I know. I will.”
***
“I don’t like it,” Thornar admitted, watching Basir secure Gracie’s tactical vest.
The armory tent smelled like metal and oil, low light from battery lamps casting long shadows across the racks of gear lining the walls.
“I know.” I didn’t try to convince him otherwise. “But you’ll both be on the comms, and out of all the special team operations, this one is the safest.”
“And the most impactful,” Gracie agreed. “The children’s barracks are against one of the outer walls, so we won’t have to go far.”
“Demolitions specialist is a woman named Mica,” I said, checking the straps on my own vest. “Nightstar Flight. Kaliyah vouches for her personally. She’ll meet us at the east rally point.”
“And the soldiers for cover?”
“Two of Waylon’s, both fast on their feet, both good with children specifically. Bishu was very particular about that requirement.”
Gracie nodded, adjusting a strap at her thigh, and for a minute none of us said anything.
Thornar spoke first. “The first sign of an issue, outside of what you can handle—”
“We get out,” Gracie promised him, offering him a light kiss before moving to Basir, who pulled her against his chest. It was easy to forget how small Gracie was, but seeing her tucked against him, a wave of concern ran over me. Was I really about to take her in there?
I was. I was because it was what she wanted.
Basir spoke directly to me. “Ravik, make sure she gets out.”
I offered him a long look and a nod. I knew how hard it was to hand over her safety to someone else, even to someone you trusted with your own life.
“Let’s head out,” Gracie said. I led her from the tent, looking down at the brave tilt of her chin and the set of her shoulders.
“Tell me the layout again,” I said. “Everything you remember.”
“The barracks sit along the eastern wall, close to the old training yard. It’s one building that held maybe forty children when I was there, though that number could have grown.
Two guards on rotation, sometimes three if there was something else going on in the compound.
No windows on the ground floor. One door, reinforced, always locked from the outside. ”
“Locked from the outside,” I repeated, an icy cold settling in my chest.
“Yeah. They weren’t worried about anyone getting in.” Her voice stayed level, but I felt the old grief pulse through our bond before she pushed it down. “They were worried about them getting out.”
The rally point sat a quarter mile out from the eastern wall, tucked behind the burnt-out shell of what had once been a supply depot.
Mica arrived first, a shorter woman with sharp eyes and a pack that appeared heavier than she was.
She was already scanning the wall through a pair of field glasses when we reached her.