39. Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Halley
Knox is too busy to answer me.
His radio crackles, and he snatches it up at once, already issuing orders to someone on the eastern wall. Another officer barrels toward us through the chaos, speaking fast, and Knox turns to meet him with the full force of his attention.
He is being the Prime Alpha this fortress needs, and I cannot hate him for that. He has enough on his plate without needing to soothe his Omega too, and I am determined to be an asset, not a liability.
So I turn back to the battlefield and try to make sense of it without him.
Below us, the surviving enemy pours out of the forest in broken, staggered waves.
Blaze’s traps have done a stunning amount of damage, and the missile strikes have ripped gaps through their formation.
Bodies litter the lower slope and dark smoke drifts through the trees, but none of it is enough to stop the advance entirely.
They keep coming.
More and more of them.
The mountainside is crawling with movement as the scattered enemy presses toward the narrowing approach. From up here, it looks like a river finding its course. Every distant dot is drawn to the same point.
The Pass.
My pulse starts to pound harder as I track the placement of our soldiers again.
Our soldiers still aren't defending the entrance to the Pass. They're to the side, clustered at the mouth of the mountain road that leads up to Blackgate Fortress.
A cold, sick feeling opens in my stomach.
Another missile fires, and the blast tears through the rear of the advancing line, forcing men forward in uneven chunks. They stumble, regroup, and shove onward anyway, funneled tighter and tighter by the terrain and the constant pressure behind them.
The first wave reaches the Pass.
I brace for the clash. I expect the rebel line to surge forward and meet them there, to choke the entrance with bodies before the enemy can force their way through.
But they don't move.
The enemy floods into the narrow cut almost unchecked, cramming into the stone corridor while our soldiers hold farther back. Only when some of them break toward the mountain road do the rebels open fire. Gunfire tears across the slope, echoing off the mountains.
My grip locks on the frozen battlement until it hurts.
Knox stands right beside me, blazing with command, barking orders into the radio.
I don't understand. It looks like we're letting the enemy invade the last safe place left for Alphas, Betas, and Omegas. That can't be right.
Then Knox goes still beside me, his radio lifted near his mouth, his whole body fixed on the mountain below as if he's waiting for a sign.
I follow his stare back down the slope, and this time I see what I missed before. The open entrance to the Pass, the rebel line holding back, the enemy pressing deeper into the narrow stone corridor. It's not a failure.
My pulse stutters.
Knox was never trying to keep them out.
He was letting them in.
The Pass is a trap.
"Knox," I breathe, but the word comes too late.
Viper’s voice crackles over the radio. "They’ve passed the marker. On your word, Prime Alpha."
Knox lifts the radio to his mouth.
"Detonate."
The mountain bucks.
A deafening blast rips through the Pass, then another, then another, each one deeper and more violent than the last. Rock erupts upward in a towering spray as debris bursts into the sky.
The battlement heaves under my boots, and I lose my balance. I slam hard into Knox’s side, and I scramble to stay upright before his hand catches a fistful of my jacket and hauls me against him.
A larger blast rips through the mountain, and the shockwave hits a beat later, punching into my chest and throwing grit against my face. My ears ring and the air fills with dust.
Knox holds me tighter against him with one arm, his other snapping his radio back to his mouth to bark orders. Around us, soldiers shout and duck and scramble for updates, but their voices come to me muffled and far away.
I can only stare at the place where the Pass used to be, which is now just dust and chaos and ruin.
The Pass is gone.
The words tear out of me before I can stop them.
"What did you do?" I scream. "Knox! What did you do?"
My voice comes out ragged and choked, and it's instantly drowned out by the cacophony.
Around us, soldiers are shouting for reports. Radios spit static and clipped updates. One of the officers farther down the battlement throws a fist in the air and shouts in victory. Another starts laughing, half-hysterical with relief.
None of it feels real.
Knox lowers the radio and looks down at me. Fallout dusts his face, and his red eyes burn bright and hard, command still locked tight through every line of him. He's cold, efficient, and tactical.
"We stopped the breach," he says.
The words hit me like a slap.
I stare at him, then back at the mountain, at the place where the Pass used to cut through to the other side. There is no route anymore. Only broken stone and rubble where the narrow road once ran.
"It's gone," I breathe, the tingling tendrils of shock working their way through my body.
Below us, the dust keeps rolling outward in dirty white clouds, drifting over the lower slope and into the forest. The enemy is gone from sight, the mountain too, and everything beyond the collapse has disappeared.
I know Blackreach is still there and that an entire province does not vanish because its entrance does, but it doesn't matter.
The only way through is gone.
My mouth goes dry. "Why would you…?"
My fingers tighten on his arm so hard my knuckles ache.
"That was my road to them," I say. The words come out softer now, and I doubt he can hear them. "You took it away."
Behind Knox, another burst of cheering rises from the courtyard. Someone shouts that the enemy is buried and calls it a victory. The sound scrapes across my skin.
Victory should not feel this much like grief.
Knox looks past my shoulder at the ruined mountain, then back at me, and suddenly I'm not looking at General Knox, but my Alpha. The one who holds me close at night in our nest.
A tug on our bond lets me know he can feel my pain and anguish.
That he knows what Blackreach means to me.
Dazz, Ember, and Flicker are beyond this mountain range, and Knox knows I once gave up everything for the smallest chance of saving them.
He has felt them through me this whole time, my hope tucked into every decision alongside the ache I never fully put down.
"Halley," he says, his expression cinching into a grimace. "I'm sorry."
"You're sorry?" I breathe, echoing his words. "Then why did you do it?"
He adjusts himself until his bulk is blocking the shouting soldiers from my view and bends until his words are meant for me alone.
"Because leaving that passage open meant giving them a road straight to Dazz, Ember, and Flicker." His grip tightens around my hand. "It meant letting the Human army march through this mountain and hunt everyone hiding on the other side."
I stare at him, breathing through the dust, the shock, the awful truth pressing against my ribs. Tears prickle my eyes.
Knox’s hand lifts, and he plucks at my wobbling lower lip. "We saved them, princess. They're safe now."
I want to be angry with him.
Frack, I want it badly. I want to turn that anger on Knox, on Shade, on Viper, and on Blaze, because every one of them must have known what would happen to the Pass, and no one told me.
But the broken mountain sits below us, still coughing dust over the forest, and I cannot pretend I don't understand why they kept quiet.
If I had known, I would have fought them. I would have stood in the war room with memories of my Omegas in my mind and begged Knox to find another way. My rut-damned, unshakeable hope would have made me search for another solution until the Human army was at our door.
My Pack knew that I couldn't make the choice to let them go.
Knox knew that.
So they made the choice for me, and the worst part is that I cannot even call them wrong.
This was the best way to ensure our people would survive.
Even through my grief, there is a bright glow of relief, because now I know, even if my Omega Command fails to save us, my precious people will live.
"I'm so sorry for your loss," Knox repeats his apology, and this time it's rawer and I feel the power behind each word. He means it.
And it is a loss. Today my hope died, and I know I've lost my friends for good.
His fingers close over mine where I clutch his arm. He holds it tight, giving me strength when I feel like the wind has been knocked out of me.
And that's all the time I get with my Alpha, my Knox, because in the next heartbeat, his face shutters and I'm left staring at Prime Alpha Knox, General of the army. His side of the bond closes.
The officer beside him thrusts another handset into his free hand and starts talking fast about casualties on the lower road.
I let go first. I have to, because standing here clinging to him while he does his duty feels too much like begging for my pride to handle.
This fortress needs him more than I do right now, and despite the cheering around us, I know this war isn't over yet. The people of Blackreach might be safe now that the Pass is gone, but our fight has only just begun.