Chapter 25 #2
“You said the facility has internal shielding,” he goes on. “Magical dampening, the kind the Syndicate uses to suppress captive wolves. If her abilities are disrupted inside—”
“I’m leading the breach,” I say. “My thread-sense is the only thing that can navigate the interior in real time. We’ve been over this.”
“I know. But if the dampening affects your—”
“I said I’m leading the breach.”
The look I give him ends the conversation.
He holds it for a beat, and I feel the turmoil in him.
This isn’t just the enforcer assessing risk; it’s a man wanting to protect a woman he has feelings for.
The depth leaves me reeling for a second, but yet again, I push it away.
I keep my gaze steady and cold. He nods once and says nothing more.
Briar, watching from the corner, almost smiles. Almost.
Late afternoon. Brenna pulls me outside. We walk the motel parking lot, navigating cracked asphalt and weeds.
“Tell me what’s been happening,” she says.
“With Conner?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “With you. Something’s different.”
I stare down at my hands, then raise them. “I have… magic. Not just the wards or the threads. Real magic. And my other powers are stronger.”
“Show me.”
I show her. The involuntary wards. The heat shimmer. The thread-sense reaching in directions I don’t set.
“Also, I have power spikes when my wolf is agitated. It settles when—” I stop. Don’t finish the sentence. I don’t want her thinking this has anything to do with Conner. I don’t want to think it myself. But I can’t deny that the minute he arrived, I felt more balanced.
“This is good.” She nods.
“Good?” I stare at her. “How can it be good? I can’t control it.”
“I can show you.” She smiles and reaches out to squeeze my shoulder. “Trust me. I’ve dealt with things like this before.”
Of course she has. My cousin’s power is unthinkable, and my aunt has been helping him manage it.
“I trust you,” I say. Because what choice do I have?
Brenna watches me work through a series of exercises she designs on the spot.
Focusing the energy. Shaping it. Directing the raw power into forms I can control: a shield that holds for ten seconds, then twenty, then a full minute.
A ward that I throw deliberately instead of in my sleep.
A pulse of contact aimed at the facility, reaching the captive wolves and reading their positions with a clarity that makes my head pound.
“Now try a directed push,” she says. “Not a ward; a strike. Concentrate the energy into your palm and release it at that dumpster.”
I frown at her. “I don’t have magic like that.”
She smiles. “Trust me. Just try it.”
I do. The power comes too fast, blows the dumpster lid off its hinges, and sends it clanging across the parking lot. I leap back in alarm, holding my hands in front of me as if they belong to someone else.
Brenna doesn’t flinch. “Again,” she says. “Smaller. You’re not trying to destroy things. You’re trying to move them.”
I try again. Smaller. The lid shifts six inches. Better.
“Good. Now the shield again, but move while you hold it. Walk toward me. Don’t let it drop.”
I walk. The shield wobbles, thins at the edges, but holds. Ten steps. Twenty. By the time I reach her, my arms are shaking, and there’s a taste in my mouth like ozone, but the shield is intact.
“You’re stronger than I was at your age,” Brenna says. “Don’t be afraid of it. The power is yours. It does what you tell it to, not the other way around.”
“It doesn’t feel like mine. It feels like something that’s been added.”
She looks at me. Her expression is carefully neutral, which, on Brenna, means she’s choosing not to say something.
“Just direct it,” she says. “The source doesn’t matter right now. The application does.”
She knows something. Or suspects something. But she’s not going to tell me, and I don’t have time to push.
We go back inside. Dane is in the corridor, filling the space the way he fills every space; massive, calm, the kind of wolf who dwarfs everything. He looks at me as I pass, then at Brenna.
“She ready?” he asks. Not hostile. Professional. The question of a wolf who’s about to go into a fight and wants to know who he can rely on.
“She’s ready,” Brenna says.
Dane nods. Goes back to his work. It’s not trust. But it’s the acknowledgment that I’ll be carrying my weight tonight, and that’s enough for a wolf like Dane.
The plan is set. The timeline is tight. Jericho’s communication intercepts show the facility’s security is tightening. Another twenty-four hours, and they’ll start moving captives. We go now, or we lose them.
Night falls. The team gears up. The atmosphere in the motel shifts from planning to execution, the quiet, intense energy of wolves preparing for combat.
Dane checks weapons. Sienna stretches with the fluid motions of an athlete warming up.
Rook reviews the assault plan one final time, his tone clipped and certain.
Conner is watching it all silently. I sense he’s contemplating what this all means. He’s preparing for a mission that his own pack would consider treason. He looks up as I pass.
“Willow.”
I stop. Don’t turn fully.
“Be careful in there.”
“Don’t tell me to be careful. You don’t get to worry about me.”
“I know I don’t. I’m doing it anyway.”
I walk away before my wolf can respond to the sound of his voice. That rough, honest voice that my body remembers in ways my mind refuses to acknowledge. The connection flickers toward him, reading his worry, his fear for me. I smother it.
There’s a facility forty minutes south with children inside it. That’s where my attention belongs.
I check my gear. Check the plan. Check the thread-sense one final time; the families are there, the bonds are humming, the signals dim but present.
We load the vehicles. Three trucks. The convoy pulls out of the motel lot and turns south.
The night is clear. Stars thick enough to cast shadows. The brush country dark and flat and waiting.
We’re coming.