14 Tommy
A real fire eats. You feed it a pine and it takes the whole tree and roars for the next one. This fire touched a trunk and the trunk went gray and quiet and stood there smoking out of every needle while the green flames slid on past it like the wood had nothing it wanted.
“It’s not pulling fuel!” Beto, twenty feet down the line, swinging his Pulaski into dirt that gave him nothing back. “Tommy—it doesn’t want the wood—”
“Yeah, I caught that.” I hit the ground in front of the green anyway. Sparks, dirt, a fat lot of nothing. “I super caught that, Beto, thanks.”
Wrong fire. Wrong fire. No lane through it.
My wolf had been pacing the inside of my skull since the first green showed on the ridge, and it wasn’t handing me a vector.
That was the part that turned my stomach to water.
My wolf always had an angle. The gap in the smoke, the black to run for, the seam in a burn no human eye could find—I’d built a whole life on the fact that fire and I had an understanding.
The green crawled down the slope, looked at every trick I owned, and said no, not you, not this one.
You can’t joke a fire that won’t eat. You can’t cut a line in front of a thing that walks through soil like it’s owed rent.
The pack link came through, but scrambled this near the green flames, a wash of static and torn-off voices stacked wrong—
—Break’s doing nothing, the break does nothing—
—get them off the east tents, the tents, NOW—
—Brann, the smoke’s hexed, move the dormants—
—Reed, we need to—
—and then a clap of pure noise, the link folding in on itself the way water does over a drain, and the voices went out from under me all at once.
I turned around to ask Reed what the hell….
And the line was empty.
The whole hotshot crew peeled off the slope and poured back down toward the camp in a hard fast line, Reed’s silver head at the tail of it turning men by the shoulder, and nobody was looking at me, and nobody had told me—or they had and the green had eaten it before it reached my ears.
“Fuck.”
Something had come through the pack link and I’d missed it.
I took off after my packmates, but then the wind shifted—
Kaia.
My wolf jumped into my throat. Mate.
I frowned. Something was off—
Kaia came out of the green-lit smoke at a walking pace.
Gray coat, buttoned to the throat. Hair scraped back off a face washed clean of everything. Spine drawn up into that column I’d watched her hold on the cot, and her scent reached me a half-second before her hand did—
—and there wasn’t any.
I’d know her anywhere. Warm stone and that green thread underneath, the smell that had been a hook in my ribs for days.
It was gone. Smothered. She came at me smelling of flat gray nothing, bleach and starch and chilled iron, a Steward’s read, a stranger’s read, and the wrongness of it stopped my heart harder than the fire had.
Information was coming through the pack link now from Wren, but in a confusing scramble. Something about a plan, about Kaia’s Heat, about Nadia’s potion buying time and saving the dormants.
She approached within inches and there was still nothing. Still—
“Kaia—are you—”
The cuff closed around my wrist before I finished the words.
Cold metal, hex-woven, the bracelet biting tight with a click and a sick little draining sensation that pulled the strength out of my arm to the elbow.
It must have been stowed in the Steward tunic’s pocket.
Always be prepared. She had it on me clean, fast, the way a person does a thing they’ve done a thousand times.
Her thumb pressed the seam. The cuff bit harder.
My wolf came up the back of my neck snarling—threat, restraint, get it OFF—and I shoved it down so fast I bit my own tongue, because my eyes had gotten to her face by then, and her face was telling me everything her scent couldn’t.
The mask was perfect. Dead flat. But her eyes, when they cut up to mine for half a heartbeat, were screaming two words at me down a tether that had gone quiet as a smothered bell.
Play along.
Okay. Okay. Okay.
Funny man’s up.
“Oh, come on.” I let my voice crack up into the register that’s always sold panic as a bit. I yanked the cuffed wrist and let her hold it. “Lady, I was helping. I dug you a whole break. Free of charge. This is the thanks? You know what, this is so on-brand for this entire week—”
“Quiet.” Her voice came out like a blade laid flat. It carried much further than it needed to in order to reach my ears.
Like she thought she might be speaking for an audience.
Then, lower, under the smoke, this time just for me: “Down the slope. Limp. You’ve been running for an hour, scared, and I found you at the tree line.” A breath. “Trust me, Tommy. Don’t answer the bond, whatever I say. Don’t let it pull.”
And there it was—some sort of plan she’d built with her own two hands. Reed had been signaling something through the pack link, Wren too, something from Nadia, but the green flames and the hex cuff had closed the link down.
My wolf stopped snarling. It went still and watchful and fell in behind her like she was point.
I limped.
Soon, we found the Verdant Order. They’d set up camp where an access road dumped into a flat grassy area, two armored transports parked nose to nose, and the green purge line glowing on the slope like the world’s worst sunrise.
A man stood at the open door of the lead vehicle with a tablet in his gloved hands and the unbothered posture of someone who’d never once in his life been the one in the cuffs.
Kaia walked me to him like I was attached to her by a chain.
I tripped on a root, letting my knees buckle just enough to look pathetic, my boots dragging in the dirt.
I yanked at the cuff, my fingers trembling.
“Look, officer... I’m not... I’m just here for the wellness package.
The brochure said three days of silent meditation and a mud bath.
Nobody mentioned the green fire. Or the... the things in the trees.”
“Steward.” The man’s eyes went over her coat, the cuff, me, and back. Wary, not yet alarmed. “We are in a situation and this sector’s flagged for full purge. You’re not on my manifest.”
“Then your manifest is incomplete.” She stopped and folded her hands at her waist, right over left, thumbs crossed.
The sheer, flat boredom she projected was terrifyingly good.
“Steward Kaia Thorne. I need to file a report. This is possibly a shockingly rare male dormant who was removed by force from his treatment. He needs immediate care and attention in order to confirm his status.”
I let out a high, shaky whine, my throat tight.
“Yes, please take me back! I just want the quiet room. I kept seeing these... these huge, hairy monsters. In the brush. They had teeth. That was a hallucination? Please tell me it was a hallucination. I’ll take the shots.
I’ll do whatever you tell me to do, just make the noise stop. ”
She sighed, letting her gaze travel the empty tents, the muddy ground.
Mate, my wolf sat up in pride.
She deserves an award, I agreed. And I’m not doing too bad myself.
She tipped her chin toward me, though her eyes never met mine. “I want him logged under my recovery number, not folded into your purge count. He’s my patient. He’s under my care.”
I looked between them, my breathing shallow, my shoulders hunched. “I just need the medication. I paid the deposit. I have a confirmation number. The check-in lady said she’d help me clear the noise in my head. I’ll take whatever dose you want. Please.”
The man’s eyes narrowed a degree. “Subjects go in the transport. Stewards don’t claim assets off a field purge.”
I leaned away from the steel trucks, letting a genuine shiver run through my shoulders as the cuff sucked at my arm.
“No, wait, please, no transport! The metal is doing something to my teeth. It’s buzzing.
Like my skin is full of bees. Tell him, Steward!
The bees are getting louder! I can’t go in the box.
I’ll do whatever they tell me at the clinic, I swear. Just don’t put me in the box.”
“This Steward tracked this high-yield anomaly through an active burn zone while you were setting fires.” She didn’t offer a single inch of give.
She gave the man a brief, pointed look, her eyes scanning my shaking limbs.
“See what I mean? His nervous system is degrading. If we can confirm he’s a dormant do you know how much trouble you’ll be in if you mistreat him?
You will be the one explaining the loss to High Alchemist Joss.
The patient is in my care. The recovery credit is mine.
You can verify my clearance, and you can do it with me standing next to him. ”
A long beat. The green light pulsed across all our faces.
The man stared at me, his eyes traveling over my shaking knees, the pale sweat on my forehead, and the absolute panic in my eyes.
Wary caution slowly shifted to satisfaction.
I could see the greed—a male dormant was worth something to them, and even better that I supposedly still didn’t know what I was.
He nodded slowly, his posture relaxing.
“Tent four.” The commander jerked his chin at a canvas shape near the transports.
“Both of you. You stay put and you stay cuffed until command sends someone to verify. If you check out, the credit’s yours and we’ll log him under your number.
” A thin smile. “If you don’t, you go in the transport with him. ”
“Acceptable,” Kaia said, like she was granting him the favor, and walked me to the tent at the end of my invisible chain.
The flap dropped behind us.
A guard’s boots scuffed off to take a post a few feet outside the canvas.
The green glare came through the walls in a sick wash that turned everything the color of a bruise.
A cot. A folding stool. A lantern somebody had left dark.
Close quarters, supervised, isolated—exactly the box she’d talked us into.
And the second the flap stopped swinging, the Steward died.