Chapter 56 Lucian
— · —
Lucian
The raven arrived at dawn.
It wasn’t the stupidly annoying usual surveillance birds. This one was larger, darker, and carried the seal of the Long Watch pressed into the wax of its scroll.
Fuck.
My blood ran cold before I’d even broken the seal.
Solomon noticed. He was beside me in two strides, his silence shifting from resting to operational.
I unrolled the scroll. Read it once and again. The words didn’t change.
“The council has authorized deployment of the Long Watch to the human realm,” I said.
My voice held steady despite the catastrophic information.
“Forty soldiers. Commander Voss leading. They’ve been given a fourteen-day window to assess and neutralize what the council is calling ‘the hunter threat.’“
“Neutralize,” Solomon repeated. The word sat between us with the weight it deserved.
“There’s a list.” I turned the scroll so he could read the section I wished didn’t exist. “Targets for elimination. Thiago Maxwell. His officers. Known hunter operatives.” A pause. “And any humans with confirmed ties to the Order’s bloodline.”
Solomon’s jaw tightened. He didn’t need me to spell it out.
Mira was Thiago’s daughter. Her bloodline was the Order’s bloodline.
The council’s carefully worded directive had placed my pregnant mate on an extermination list, and every soldier in the Long Watch would follow that directive without question because that was what the Long Watch did.
They didn’t interpret but executed. Especially as they are created for all threats connected to the Burning Years.
Percy was awake now, drawn from his bedroll by the kind of tension that wolves feel before a storm. “What happened?”
“The council is sending soldiers.” I kept my voice low. Annora’s tent was thirty feet away and the woman had ears tuned to political opportunity. “The Long Watch. Fourteen days.”
Percy’s expression shifted from sleepy to lethal in the space of a breath. “Mira’s on the list.”
“The council doesn’t know she’s pregnant.
They don’t know about the bond restoration.
Or her intelligence operations that have given us more information on the Order in weeks than Veyndral’s gathered in centuries.
” The frustration leaked through my composure.
“They know she’s a hunter’s daughter. That’s enough. ”
“Then we intercept the envoy before they cross the portal.”
“We can’t stop a deployment authorized by the full council. Not without being in Veyndral to challenge it personally.”
“So go.”
“And leave Mira here? With Thiago watching us and a compound full of hunters half a mile away? We also can’t risk internal conflict with our own soldiers. We need them against the Order.”
“You need what now?”
Mira was standing at the edge of the clearing with tunnel dirt on her boots and dried fruit in her hand, which meant she’d passed Farmon on the way in and he’d fed her before she’d even reached us. The old man’s priorities were consistent.
“The council put you on a kill list,” Percy said, because Percy had never once understood the concept of easing into bad news.
She chewed the dried fruit. Swallowed. “Okay. What else?”
We all stared at her. She stared back with the patience of a woman who’d been surviving worse than political death warrants for months.
“We need to relocate,” Solomon said, already at the map table. “Away from the mountains. Establish a base where the envoy can land and where we control the narrative before their commander reads that list.”
“How far?”
“Eight miles south. It doubles your travel time to the compound. Six hours round trip instead of three.”
Mira’s hand went to her stomach. A brief touch, unconscious, then gone. “The bond separation. Farmon said extended distance accelerates the deterioration.”
“It does.” Farmon appeared behind us with his mortar and pestle. “Move too far, and the days you spend inside that compound become dangerous for all four of you.”
“Then I adjust. Or we can meet half-way when there are less patrols.”
“Mira...” Percy started.
“I’ve been managing this pregnancy through drainage tunnels and combat training for weeks. A few extra miles of forest won’t be what breaks me.” Her voice carried no room for debate. “Move the camp.”
Percy looked at me. I looked at Solomon. Solomon looked at the map because Solomon always looked at the map when the emotional variables exceeded his preference for clean data.
“We build the schedule together,” I said. “No unilateral decisions about how long you stay inside.”
“Deal.” She crossed to the fire and sat beside Farmon. “Now what’s the actual battle plan? Because if the Long Watch is coming in fourteen days with my name on a list, standing around arguing about my commute isn’t going to fix it.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“You said it yourself last night,” I told the group. “You’re going to dismantle the Order from the inside. We’ll give you the tools and the army to back your plan.”
Mira laid out her part first. “I continue infiltration under field deployment. Hunter converts back me up. When it’s time, I take down the security grid, lock the Purifier so Thiago can’t use it mid-assault, and secure the sublevels so the feral wolves stay contained.”
“That’s three objectives before anyone else moves,” Percy said.
“That’s the point. The compound has to be blind and defanged before you storm it, or Thiago turns it into a kill box.”
Solomon nodded. The tactical approval on his face was as close to a compliment as Solomon gave. “And the signal?”
“A flare,” Mira said. “Since the Order will know right away once security is down, no need to hide it. What’s important is to lock the Purifier. That’s your green light.”
“A flare,” Solomon repeated, testing it. “The moment that light hits the sky, we move.”
Farmon had been listening from his seat by the cold fire pit, grinding his medicine with a mortar and pestle that looked older than most human civilizations. His ruined hands worked with the practiced efficiency.
“I have a question.” Mira turned to Farmon, who’d been grinding his medicine through the entire conversation. “I heard you mentioned Percy’s mother was a researcher. That she was studying lycan physiology when the first expedition crossed into the human world.”
Farmon’s hands paused on the mortar. “She was. One of the finest minds in Veyndral’s academic circles.”
“And her research notes? From the expedition?”
“Some survived.” Farmon’s voice was careful. “I kept them.”
“Can I see them?”
Farmon paused and then glanced at Percy. “It’s for Percival to decide. They’re his parents’ after all.”
Everyone turned to Percy. His jaw worked for a moment, the locket resting against his chest catching the firelight.
“Yeah.” His voice was rough. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, of course. Whatever you need, love.”
Mira’s expression softened. “Thank you, Percy.”
“Just...” He ran a hand through his curls. “Tell me what you find?”
“You’ll be the first.”
Farmon set down his mortar and rose to retrieve the journal. Solomon and I exchanged a glance. His said, she’s planning, which was redundant because Mira was always planning.
Farmon set down his mortar. “Diera’s journal is with our supplies. I’ll retrieve it for you.”
Mira watched him go, then turned to me. “You’re staring.”
“I’m considering.”
“Considering what?”
A woman who’d survived abuse, abandonment, rejection, a hunter compound, a pregnancy that depended on the proximity of three men who’d hurt her, and the revelation that her father was a genocidal zealot, and her response to all of it was to end it with her own hands.
“Whether the kingdom I’m asking you to rule deserves you,” I said.
Her expression softened for exactly one second before the armor clicked back into place. “Don’t get sentimental on me, Your Majesty. It doesn’t suit you.”
The camp dispersed into organized activity. Solomon mapping. Percy scouting. Farmon retrieving. Mira reviewing the notes she’d smuggled from the compound.
Annora found me an hour later.
She appeared at the edge of the clearing where I was reviewing supply inventories, her coat traded for a simpler jacket but her posture still radiating aristocratic arrogance.
“We need to speak privately,” she said.
“We really don’t.”
“The Long Watch is coming, Lucian.” She stepped closer, her voice dropping. “Commander Voss will arrive, he will read his list, and he will execute his orders. You need allies on the council. Real allies. Not a human girl with a dagger and a grudge.”
“Get to the point, Annora.”
“My family controls three of the seven council seats. My father’s influence extends to the Long Watch command structure.
One word from me and Mira’s name disappears from that list.” She held my gaze.
“An alliance between our houses would give you the council in the palm of your hand. No more vetoes. No more Long Watch deployments you can’t stop. ”
“An alliance between our houses,” I repeated. “You mean a marriage.”
“I mean a partnership that benefits both of us. The terms are flexible.”
“The terms involve you on my throne.”
“The terms involve me beside you, where I’ve been trying to stand for longer than your human has been alive.” Her composure cracked, just a fraction, and underneath it I caught what she’d been burying beneath politics for years.
Obsession. The belief that if she was patient enough, persistent enough, polished enough, the king would eventually see what was right in front of him.
“I can soften this for you, Lucian. I can make the council love you again. All I need is for you to let me.”
“Soften me.” The words tasted wrong. “You’ve been trying to soften me for decades, Annora. It hasn’t worked.”
“Because you never gave me the chance.”
“Because I never wanted to.”