24. Chapter 24
“Nolan.” Declan’s jaw locked. “Southern exit is compromised. Fall back to rally point beta.”
“Already moving.” Nolan’s voice came tight through the comm. “Change of plans.”
Declan drew Sage toward the door. “We run.”
“I’m good at running.” She flashed him a fierce smile. “Lead the way.”
They burst from the cabin into chaos. Guards poured from buildings. Shouts echoed through the compound. Wolves shifted mid-stride, fur rippling across skin as predators took over.
Declan kept Sage’s hand locked in his. Ran her through the compound with the single-minded focus of someone who would die before letting go. Wolf-speed lent strength to every stride, running just below the surface.
A guard appeared in their path. Declan drove his shoulder into the wolf’s chest and sent him sprawling. Kept moving.
The fence loomed ahead. Nolan appeared from the trees, covering their approach with professional precision. Brady materialized on their flank, keeping guards at bay with calculated aggression.
“Go!” Nolan shouted. “We’ve got you covered!”
Declan got Sage through the drainage culvert first, then followed, emerging into the forest as wolves closed in behind them.
The pack was waiting. Nolan’s team formed a defensive perimeter, holding Thornwood’s wolves back while Declan and Sage gained distance. The sound of fighting echoed through the trees.
But they were through. Past the compound. Past the guards.
Declan brought Sage deeper into the forest. Ran until the sounds of fighting faded. Until Thornwood’s compound was a mile behind them.
Then he noticed what was wrong.
The pursuit had stopped.
Not faded. Not fallen behind. Stopped. Like a switch had been flipped.
One moment wolves were crashing through underbrush, and the next, nothing. Just forest sounds and wind.
Declan slowed. An alarm ran through him. Something was off. Prey didn’t stop running when the predator fled. Predators didn’t stop chasing when the prey escaped.
Unless the prey was running exactly where you wanted it to go.
He held up a fist. The team froze. Nolan materialized from the shadows, the set of his jaw confirming what Declan already knew.
“Dec.” Nolan’s voice came through the comm, tight with the same realization. “The pursuit just pulled back. All of them. At once. Organized withdrawal.”
Sage’s hand tightened in his. Her eyes were sharp, the investigator in her already working the problem. “That’s coordinated. Not a retreat. They let us through.”
“The waypoint.” Declan went silent. “They funneled us. The compound escape was too clean. The breach alarm came too late. They wanted us running south.”
“Toward the neutral ground.” Nolan’s breathing was controlled. Steady. “Where they’ve had twelve hours to set an ambush?”
The forest was silent around them. The wrong kind of silent. No birds. No wind through branches. The held-breath quiet of wolves waiting.
“How far?” Sage asked.
“Quarter mile.” Declan scanned the trees. “We’re already in it.”
The waypoint materialized through the trees like something waiting to close. Ancient stones marking neutral ground, half-hidden by undergrowth.
Declan saw them before Sage did. Wolves positioned behind the ancient stones, using the natural amphitheater as cover. Twelve. Fifteen. More appearing from the tree line in pairs, cutting off the approaches they’d need for retreat.
Thornwood’s alpha hadn’t just set a trap at the waypoint. He’d built a net.
“Nolan.” Barely audible. “Count.”
“Twenty-two visible. Probably more in the trees.” Nolan’s jaw was tight. “They’ve been here since before dawn. This was always the plan. The compound was just the first push.”
Sage’s hand found Declan’s arm. Not clutching. Grounding.
“He told me last night. The terms, the exchange, all of it was theater. He wanted you running south toward the waypoint. Wanted to break you in front of your pack.”
“Then they miscalculated,” Sage said. Every predator instinct locked on sharp, lending clarity instead of chaos. “Because you’re not bound. You’re not bait. And we know the layout.”
“The eastern sector.”
She gave a sharp nod. “Blind spot between the maintenance sheds and the eastern fence. They prioritized the main approach and the alpha’s building. The east was their calculated concession. If it’s the same logic at the waypoint—”
“They packed the center and the west.” Nolan was already scanning. “East flank is thinner. Three wolves, not five.”
“She’s right.”
Nolan gathered the team with hand signals. Brady materialized from the east, blood already drying on his knuckles from the compound escape. Two more wolves fell in from the southern flank. Six against twenty-two. Bad odds by any measure.
But Declan had fought worse odds with less at stake.
Nolan pitched it low enough that only the team caught it. “We can’t go back north. They’ve closed the corridor behind us. Compound wolves repositioned south. Only way out is through the waypoint and past the border.”
“Then we go through.” Thornwood had spread their wolves in a crescent, heaviest on the flanks. The center was thinner. Deliberate. An invitation to charge the middle and get enveloped.
“They want us to push center. We hit the east pocket, their thin vector, create a gap, and run the southern tree line.”
Nolan gave a tight nod. “Diversionary assault. Draw them east, punch through south.”
“Stay behind me until the formation breaks. Then run south. The border is half a mile past the waypoint.”
“No.” Her chin lifted, the word landing hard. “I’m not hiding while your people fight for me.”
“Sage—”
“I disrupted a compound full of armed wolves for three days.” She looked at him without flinching. “I can handle this. Let me help.”
Her determination hit him like electricity. No fear. No hesitation. Just the fierce resolve of someone who’d refused to stop fighting now.
Declan looked at her. Really looked. Saw the woman who’d crossed into wolf territory alone. Who’d faced down Garrett without flinching. Who’d gathered intelligence while captive because she couldn’t accept being passive.
His partner. His equal.
“Stay on my flank.” He squeezed her hand once. “If it goes sideways, you run. That’s not negotiable.”
“Understood.” She didn’t promise to obey. He didn’t expect her to.
Nolan split the team. Brady and two wolves would hit the eastern position, drawing Thornwood’s attention. Nolan would punch through the southern gap with the remaining wolf. Declan and Sage would run the corridor between.
“On my signal,” Nolan breathed.
The forest held its breath.
Then Nolan’s team hit the eastern flank like a breaking wave.
The effect was immediate. Thornwood’s wolves surged to meet the attack, their careful positioning fragmenting as instinct overrode discipline. Snarls erupted through the clearing. Bodies collided in the undergrowth. The organized ambush dissolved into a dozen individual fights.
Declan brought Sage into motion. They ran through the gap Nolan had predicted, threading between positions as Thornwood’s formation collapsed toward the diversionary assault. For thirty seconds, the corridor was clear.
Then a wolf stepped into their path.
Valen. Shifted and massive, teeth bared, blocking the southern exit with calculated precision. Not caught off guard. Waiting for exactly this.
Declan shifted mid-stride. Bone and muscle rearranged in one savage pull and he exploded forward, hitting Valen with enough force to drive them both into the underbrush. They rolled, jaws snapping, claws raking through fur and muscle.
Sage kept running.
Three strides past the collision before her brain caught up. Declan. Valen. Both shifted, both dangerous, both gone from her peripheral vision in the undergrowth.
She stopped. Spun back.
She felt Declan’s absolute focus. Not panic. The controlled intensity of someone fully committed to a single objective. He was handling it.
But handling it took two of them off the extraction path.
Sage ran back to the tree line, grabbed a branch from the ground, and moved toward the sound of the fight. Not to help Declan fight Valen. To buy him those extra seconds.
She hit Valen’s flank with the branch while he had Declan pinned. It wasn’t a wolf’s blow, and she knew it. But the distraction was enough. The animal surge of Declan’s wolf threw Valen off, and Sage was already running again before either of them fully registered what happened.
Declan shifted back at full sprint, catching her wrist, running south with her.
“I told you—”
“You said stay on your flank.” She matched his pace. “I stayed on your flank.”
He made a sound that might have been exasperated or might have been a laugh. It disappeared into the sound of the forest around them.
The border appeared through the trees. Nolan’s team was already through, holding position on the Blackridge side. Thornwood’s wolves had stopped at the edge of their territory, not crossing. Whether by choice or order, the pursuit ended at the line.
Declan ran Sage past it. His hand didn’t release hers.
They ran another quarter mile into Blackridge territory before he slowed. Before he faced her with an expression that was three different things at once.
For a moment neither of them spoke. Sage bent with her hands on her knees and dragged in air that scraped going down, each breath fogging white and tearing loose almost before it formed.
Her legs had gone loose and unreliable beneath her.
Somewhere in the run she’d lost the feeling in her fingers; it came back now all at once, a hot ache where the branch had torn the skin from her palm.
She hadn’t felt it happen. She hadn’t felt any of it.
The forest reassembled around her in pieces.
Snowmelt ticking off a bough. The copper of her own blood mixing with crushed pine.
Declan’s breathing beside her, ragged in a way she’d never heard from him.
The adrenaline that had carried her over the border drained out through the soles of her boots and left her shaking, and she let herself shake, because for the first time in an hour there was nothing left to outrun.
“You hit a shifted wolf with a branch.”
“I did,” she confirmed.
“You could have—”
“But I didn’t.” She met his eyes. “And you’re not pinned under Valen anymore.”
The exasperation won. He drew her close and held her with the grip of someone who’d been afraid for three days and was just now starting to believe it was over.
She held on back.
“Don’t ever.” His mouth pressed against her hair.
“I know.” She tightened her arms around him. “I know.”
They both understood she wasn’t promising.