Chapter 57 Mira #2
“You want us to walk into a wolf camp,” Damon said. “Voluntarily.”
“I want you to meet the people fighting the same enemy you just discovered you have.”
“And if they kill us?”
“They won’t. I’m carrying their children. They’ll behave.”
Reese stared at my stomach. Damon blinked three times. Kaia looked at Wyatt, who gave a single nod that said yes, she’s serious, don’t ask follow-up questions.
“For the record,” Damon said, standing slowly, “this is insane.”
“Noted. You coming?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m coming.”
Kaia was already at the door.
“If a wolf eats me,” Reese muttered, “I’m haunting you.”
The drainage tunnels felt longer with five people moving through them.
I led because I knew the route, and Wyatt brought up the rear because his instinct defaulted to protecting the group’s blind spot.
Reese scraped her shoulder on a pipe junction and swallowed the yelp.
Damon’s breathing was too loud for the confined space and Kaia kept a hand on his back, steadying him without a word.
We emerged into the forest and I set the pace toward the new camp.
Eight miles south. Farmon’s warning about distance and deterioration circled in my head, but the bond was warm tonight. Three frequencies pulsing steady through the muted wall, responding to my proximity even from the new location.
The relocated base materialized through the trees just before dawn. Solomon’s organizational discipline was stamped across every detail. Supply stations at measured intervals, sight lines cleared, a fire pit positioned to minimize smoke visibility from the north.
Percy was the first to spot us.
He emerged from the tree line at a sprint, covering the distance in seconds, and his expression cycled from alert to relieved to darkly amused when he registered the four humans flanking me.
“You brought friends.”
“Converts. Be nice.”
“I’m always nice.” The grin spread across his face, dimples deploying, and behind me Reese made a sound that wasn’t subtle.
Percy’s attention snagged on it for half a second before returning to me.
“Solomon’s been pacing for three hours. Lucian’s pretending he hasn’t been watching the tree line since midnight. ”
“Sounds accurate.”
Solomon appeared beside Percy without a sound and Wyatt flinched. The full-body, combat-trained flinch of a man whose reflexes identified a predator before his brain caught up. Solomon registered the reaction with a clinical interest that wasn’t exactly welcoming.
“Four,” Solomon said, scanning the group.
“Four,” I confirmed.
“You said two to three.”
“Wyatt’s persuasive.”
Solomon’s gaze moved to Wyatt. The two men assessed each other with the mutual recognition of soldiers from opposing armies meeting on neutral ground. Neither extended a hand.
“The man who trains with my mate,” Solomon said.
“The lycan who throws rocks with love notes,” Wyatt replied.
Percy drifted to my side with a casualness that wasn’t casual at all, his shoulder brushing mine, positioning himself between Wyatt.
Behind us, Lucian stepped out of the command area with his arms crossed, storm-gray eyes sweeping the new arrivals with an authority that made all four hunters straighten involuntarily.
His gaze found Wyatt and one eyebrow rose slowly, disapproving of the man who’d been standing arm’s reach from his pregnant mate for weeks.
The response rippled outward.
Giselle materialized from the eastern perimeter, her gaze cataloging the hunters with professional precision.
Farmon looked up from his medicine station, silver eyes steady, his ruined hands going still.
And then Annora stepped out of her tent.
Her gaze found the hunters and the calculation was instant.
The clearing divided itself without anyone deciding to.
Lycans on one side.
Three alphas, an elder with ruined hands, a soldier with a decade of loyalty, and an aristocrat with a political agenda. Hunters on the other. Four converts carrying the wreckage of everything they’d believed.
The two groups faced each other across fifteen feet of forest floor, and fifteen feet might as well have been fifteen centuries given the history filling the space between us.
Wyatt’s hand rested on his holstered weapon. Instinct, not aggression, but Solomon’s eyes tracked the movement and Lucian’s jaw tightened. Reese stepped closer to Damon. Kaia’s eyes swept every wolf in the clearing with the focus of a woman who’d spent years training to kill them.
Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. The wound was too old and the distrust too earned for anyone to pretend goodwill into existence.
My feet carried me to the center of the gap. Alone. Standing between the two halves of a war that had been running for centuries.
The Long Watch was coming. Thiago was watching.
And the only way any of us survived the next fourteen days was if the two sides of this clearing learned to stop being two sides.
“Well,” I said to no one and everyone. “Here goes our alliance.”
Starting here right now.
Starting with us.