Nova
The breach hangs over the ridge past the treeline.
A vertical tear, as wide as the old barn is long and twice as tall.
The edges of it crack and curl back on themselves the way paper curls back off a flame.
Amber-red light bleeds out through the opening.
It pulses wider, then narrower, over and over, whatever is setting that rhythm is on the other side where none of us can see it.
I stand at the center of the valley floor with Dane at my back and my own ground under my boots. He has the bond. He’s been holding all fifty of them in it since the tear opened. He hasn’t said thirty words all night, hasn’t needed to. When somebody out there moves, it’s usually him moving them.
Whatever is happening on the other side of that tear, Nyxiana and Valen are standing in it. They’re the only two who can reach the man doing this. What the rest of us have is this valley and however long it takes them.
Cool air comes down off the high country.
There’s ozone on it and burnt pine. The hum coming off that tear sits in my teeth, and in the teeth of every wolf on this line.
The mark on my wrist burns steady. It’s burned steady for six hours.
I was born with it and tonight a man who spent centuries getting ready is trying to use it as a door.
Fifteen of ours on the near flank. A dozen on the far.
Callum has the eastern approach with eight of the younger ones.
Whatever comes out of that opening comes out over the ridge.
The east is the only ground where anything could get behind us.
When one of these marks fires the woman wearing it goes down or comes close to it.
She can’t lift a hand for herself while that lasts so each of the three of us has a ring of pack standing around her.
That’s all they’re there for, so nothing reaches us while we’re down.
Rafe stands closest to the breach with both hands up.
Light moves under the skin of his forearms while he works it.
He’s been in that position since the tear opened, hasn’t come down, nothing can reach him while he’s doing that.
He can’t support himself, can’t look away from it.
That’s what the wolves in front of him are for.
Lyanna stands twenty feet behind him her attention fixed on the opening. The color, the width, and a third thing in it that none of the rest of us can read at all. She called the first four waves before they landed. Her being right every time is the reason this line is still a line.
The breach doubles. It goes without warning, both edges tearing outward at once, and the amber-red along the cracks flares brighter. Rafe’s hands go brighter with it as he braces into the load. My mark spikes hot enough that I lose the middle of a word.
“Next one’s bigger.” Lyanna’s voice carries the length of the valley. “Brace. Now.”
Dane’s hand closes on my shoulder. He says nothing. There’s nothing he has time to say. His hand does the work instead.
A pressure comes out of the tear and rolls down the valley floor at us.
It hits like the blast from an explosion, except there’s no sound in front of it and nothing to see coming.
Fifty people take the same half step back at once.
The grass goes flat in a ring out from the ridge.
The noise of it arrives second. Harper’s mark flares white on the inside of her wrist and her knees go out from under her.
Ben has her before she’s dropped six inches.
Both arms around her, one hand between her shoulder blades.
He holds her up off the ground. My mark answers a moment behind hers.
The pull runs up my arm and my vision goes soft at the outside edges of everything.
I put my attention back on the breach and hold my position.
Kari’s mark goes next. Hers is a jolt rather than a pull, and it runs visibly the whole length of her right arm.
Her hand closes into a fist and stays closed.
Rafe’s head turns toward her. His hands stay exactly where they are on the breach.
His mate’s mark is coming apart forty feet from him and he keeps working the tear.
That’s the job tonight, and Kari would take his head off for doing anything else.
Evie takes a step toward the ridge. She’s been at the back of the line all night with Scarlett and Evren on either side of her.
Now she’s moving like a woman walking in her sleep.
Evren has her arm before she gets a second step.
He pulls her back against his chest and locks both arms around her.
She goes where he puts her and stays there but her eyes never come off that ridge.
“Not that way,” he tells her. “Not tonight.”
The breach widens again, lower this time. The light comes down far enough now to throw moving shadows across the grass in front of us. Two wolves on the near flank give ground a step before they catch themselves.
Then something comes through it, comes out of the opening the way a stone comes out of a sling, and doesn’t fall.
It holds itself in the air twenty feet off the grass, turns once, and I get a clear look at it.
It’s a piece of somewhere else. Man-sized, flat, with an edge on it, throwing a shadow that runs the wrong way against our light.
Lyanna’s voice goes up the length of the valley. “That’s not a wave. Somebody made that.”
It comes down the slope at Callum’s four on the eastern approach.
Callum shifts. Two of his wolves shift with him.
The fourth keeps his blade and stays wide of it.
The thing swings as the first wolf reaches it and opens a line across his shoulder.
Teeth are no good on it. I watch three sets try and slide off.
So they stop biting and start pushing. All three of them get under the low edge of it at once and drive up.
The thing tips over and comes down on the rock.
The man with the blade steps in and breaks it apart while it’s down.
It goes to pieces with a sound like a slate roof coming off a barn.
Then six more come through the tear. They come out one behind the other, start down the same slope, and the whole eastern flank goes to meet them.
This is the first thing all night this pack knows how to do.
Fifty wolves have stood in this valley for six hours holding still while something they can’t reach puts three of their women on the ground.
Now there’s something in front of them they can put on the ground.
The line moves before I give the order. The near flank swings east, Ansel taking four of them with him at a dead run.
That’s Dane, not me. He had them going before I’d finished seeing it needed doing.
Callum goes in under one of them the way he did the first, this one turns as he comes and lays his ribs open.
He stays on his feet, doesn’t stop moving.
Lyanna watches her mate get opened up from twenty feet behind Rafe, stays where she is.
If she runs to him, the line loses the only person who can tell us what that tear is about to do.
She works that out faster than I do. Kaspian moves in beside Rafe.
He’s been at the perimeter all night, moving too fast for anyone to track properly, closing gaps before the wolves holding them knew they’d opened.
Now he comes in at the front, both hands out.
The cold comes off him in a wave I can feel from forty feet away.
Frost runs up the cracked edges of the tear where his work catches.
The curling slows behind it, and the next thing trying to come through arrives slower.
He does it for his sister. She’s on the other side of that opening and he can’t follow her through.
Scarlett comes across the line. She puts herself between the breach and the place where Evren is holding Evie.
Heat rolls off her in a controlled sheet.
It’s not wild, she keeps it down, steady, facing the opening, with her back to her sister.
Two of the things come off the eastern slope and cut across the valley floor at the three of them.
Scarlett stops holding it down and breathes instead.
Dragon fire comes out of her in a column and takes the first one while it’s still in the air.
It never reaches the ground, just turns to ash which blows past her along the grass.
The second one keeps coming, and Evren has both arms around Evie.
He doesn’t let go. He puts his head to the side and burns it over the top of hers, one short hard burst instead of a column, redder than Scarlett’s.
The second one turns to ash the same as the first. Evie doesn’t blink through either of them.
Her eyes stay on that ridge the whole time. Evren keeps his arms where they are.
“It’s still pulling at her,” Scarlett says, her eyes on Evie.
Harper sags again in Ben’s hold. She comes back slower this time. Her head stays down longer. Ben adjusts his grip and takes more of her under his arm. He says her name twice before her eyes find him.
I’ve been running this line by formation since the tear opened.
Three marked women with a ring of the pack.
My ring is standing behind me right now and I’ve been giving it orders all night with my arm burning.
Harper goes down before the next surge finishes.
That’s not a guess and t here’s nothing on this field I can send her.
Wolves can keep a construct off a woman.
They can’t take one ounce of what’s coming down that line into her wrist.
“Wyatt.” I put it out at full voice across the valley floor. “Off the breach line, take two, into Harper’s ring. Nothing gets near her.”
Three of them peel off the front and fold in around Harper and Ben.
That’s three fewer wolves standing in front of Rafe.
His arms start shaking inside a minute. I watch it happen and leave them where they are.
If the three of us fire, it isn’t a leak and it isn’t damage, it’s the founders’ crime detonating across every realm at once.
Every court, throne, institution standing on that lie loses the floor under it in the same hour.
What that does to the three of us on the way through, nobody can tell me.
I’ve asked Lyanna twice. She only ever says what she knows, and she doesn’t know this.
I only need this to hold until Nyxiana and Valen finish him.
Not forever. Not indefinitely. Until then.
It’s the only thing I’ve got left, and has nothing to do with the line.
The three of us are on one wire. Whatever the network sends comes at all three of us at once.
How much of it lands on each of us depends on how hard each of us pushes back against it.
I’ve been pushing back all night. Every bit of it I don’t take goes on down the wire to Harper and Kari.
Harper can’t take any more, so I stop pushing back.
I plant my feet and let the next surge come into me the way it wants to come.
All of it. Everything the network sends down that wire, and none of it goes past me.
It hits the way the forced crossing hit me.
White crosses my vision from edge to edge.
The valley disappears. My knees give out from under me.
Dane catches me. Both arms around me from behind, one hand over my sternum, and he holds me up the same way Ben is holding Harper thirty feet away.
He keeps me on my feet where the line can see me standing, and he holds fifty wolves in the bond while he does it.
Somebody starts toward us. Dane’s voice comes down the bond ahead of them, one word, hard enough that I feel it in my own skull. Hold.
They stop where they are. I’m not holding myself up at all.
He is. Sound comes back before sight does.
This is worse than anything I have ever taken.
Harper’s breathing evens out inside Ben’s hold.
I can hear it. That’s the first thing all night that has gone the right direction.
The breach stops widening. It holds at the width it reached.
Both edges go on cracking and curling. They travel no further.
The amber-red holds where it is. Rafe’s hands stay on it.
The shaking in his arms stops. Kari’s on her feet.
She wasn’t ten minutes ago. That’s what I bought.
She comes in behind Rafe, puts one hand against his back, between his shoulder blades, keeps it there. He doesn’t turn around. His head comes down an inch and stays there.
Kaspian steps back from the edge and measures the tear against the ridgeline behind it. “Holding,” he says. “Not closing. Holding.”
We haven’t shut anything tonight. We’ve stopped it getting worse, which is all we’ve been trying to do since the first hour.
I get my eyes working again. The eastern slope is covered in broken pieces of somewhere else.
Callum’s still on his feet out there with one arm held against his ribs and blood down that side of him.
Every wolf on this line is still standing.
The near flank hasn’t given a foot since Kaspian went in.
Wyatt has one hand on Harper’s shoulder, the other on Ben’s, holding the pair of them steady inside her ring.
Nobody has broken formation. Nobody has run.
Six hours of that, and the man doing it has one arm across my chest.
Last night this family came apart in that lodge over what Nyxiana brought home. Tonight every one of them is holding this valley shoulder to shoulder.
Dane’s arms stay where they are. I turn my head far enough to see his face. There’s blood dried at his hairline. He’s watching the breach instead of me, which is how I know how bad it still is.
“I’ve got you.”
“I know.”
My mark is still burning. It’s hotter now than it was when the tear opened.
I have taken more of that network into me tonight than I can hold.
One more surge like the last one and it fires through me, taking Harper and Kari with it.
Past the ridge, on the other side of that tear, two people are standing in front of the man doing this to us.
They finish it, or the next wave comes.