Chapter 7
Nox Byrne
Watching Tamsin sleep was a strange kind of torture.
Even unconscious, even healing, even wrapped in blankets and with the bite marks from five wolves, she still looked like she might spring up and stab the first bastard who tried to tell her what to do.
She lay on the med bay cot with her hair spilled across the pillow, dark strands curling at her temples where sweat had dried. The harsh lights in here softened her a little. Her breathing was more even now, no longer the ragged, fighting-for-it gasps that had put all of us on edge.
And now, she was mine.
The thought was stupid. Possessive. Instinctive.
It was also true.
I leaned my shoulder against the doorframe and watched her chest rise and fall while my mind did what it always did when the world went quiet.
It wandered back to the first time I’d met her.
At the time, I’d been bleeding.
Blood soaked through my jacket, warm and slick, sticking the fabric to my skin as I moved.
I’d taken the long way into London, slipping through gaps in perimeter fencing where the metal had rusted thin, dropping down beneath the docks where the river stank of oil and rot, scaling the backs of half-collapsed buildings whose upper floors the city pretended no longer existed.
I knew London like the back of my hand. I’d grown up moving from place to place, never staying long enough to belong, never letting anyone look at me long enough to ask questions.
My parents had been drifters before the Collapse, smugglers before the word became fashionable.
When they died, I’d learned quickly that survival didn’t come from ideals.
It came from always being on the move.
I’d smuggled wolves just like me out of London more times than I could count. Smuggled them in too, when the price was right. Medicine. Food. Weapons. Information. Sometimes people. Sometimes children.
And I’d gotten cocky.
That was my first mistake.
I thought I had known every patrol pattern, every blind spot, every bored soldier who’d rather look the other way than chase shadows through sewer tunnels. I’d thought London’s underbelly belonged to me, that I could slip through it like water through cracks in stone.
Then one British soldier—just one—had done his job properly.
The round hit my shoulder as I was dragging a half-starved shifter kid toward a sewer grate, the impact detonating white-hot pain down my arm. My breath went thin, the world narrowing to a constant ringing in my ears and the wet warmth spreading far too quickly beneath my jacket.
I shoved the kid into a drain and slammed the grate down just as voices rose and boots thundered behind me. Then a shout. Another shot split the air, close enough that I felt the pressure ripple across my ribs.
I ran.
By the time I stumbled into the alley, my vision was blurring at the edges. I leaned hard against a brick wall, breath rasping, hand clamped to my shoulder as if I could hold myself together by sheer force of will alone.
That was when I realized I wasn’t alone.
A woman was crouched near a broken crate, hood up, like she’d been searching for something among the rubbish, knife already in her hand before I’d even made a sound.
No panic flickered across her face while she assessed me, giving me the kind of look predators give when deciding whether someone is dangerous, useful, or already dead.
I’d been in front of guns and ferals and things far worse, and that look still made the hair on the back of my neck rise.
I tried to charm my way out of it. Old habits die hard.
“Evening,” I rasped, forcing a crooked grin through clenched teeth. “I’m not here to rob you, love.”
She didn’t smile.
Didn’t flinch either.
Just lifted her chin a fraction and replied, flat as stone, “You’re dripping on my boots.”
I blinked, surprised despite myself, and glanced down. Blood pooled at my feet, dark against the wet stone.
“So I am,” I said.
Her eyes never left mine.
“You’re a wolf,” she said.
It wasn’t a question.
I bared my teeth in what might have been a grin if I hadn’t been half-dead. “Depends on who’s asking.”
Her knife shifted, barely a movement, but enough to angle toward my throat.
“I’m asking,” she said.
Every instinct I’d ever learned screamed at me to bolt and vanish into the maze of London’s backstreets and leave this strange, dangerous girl behind.
Instead, I did the one thing I told everyone else not to do.
I told the truth.
“I’m trying to get someone out,” I said. “A kid.”
Her gaze flicked over me again.
Then she surprised the hell out of me.
She stepped closer, boots splashing softly in the blood-tainted water, and said very quietly, “Show me.”
I led her down into the sewer without another word, every step a small agony.
The tunnels were narrow and slick, echoing with the distant shouts and gunfire above us.
She moved behind me like she’d done it a hundred times, efficient, ruthless, eyes always scanning the dark, knife always at the ready.
When the kid started to cry, panic breaking through the haze of hunger and fear, she didn’t coddle him.
She crouched in front of him, met his gaze, and said calmly, “Breathe. You can cry later.”
And the kid listened.
That was the moment I knew she wasn’t just another smuggler or rebel playing at heroics. She had authority without raising her voice. Control without cruelty.
After we got the kid clear, my legs finally gave out. I slid down against the wall, vision tunneling hard as the pain caught up with me. Blood soaked my sleeve, my fingers numb and clumsy.
She crouched in front of me without hesitation and pressed her hand to my wound, unbothered by the blood coating her skin.
“You do this often?” she asked.
“Get shot?” I rasped.
She shook her head slightly. “Risk your neck for other wolves.”
I stared at her, genuinely confused. “Why do you care?”
For half a second, something shifted behind her eyes. A shadow. A memory. Like she was looking past me at a faraway fire in a very different place.
Then she said, “Because if we don’t care, London wins.”
A few days later when I woke up stitched and bandaged in an abandoned flat, the pain dulled to a manageable throb, she was sitting in a chair across from me with her knife still in her hands.
Recognition bloomed, sudden and absolute, slamming into me without warning.
Mine.
It wasn’t possession, not hunger either, but a much deeper, older thing. The kind of knowing that doesn’t ask permission or wait for logic to catch up.
She was my mate.
I didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just lay there, staring at the woman who had rescued me, knowing with terrifying certainty that whatever came next, I wasn’t walking away from her.
Ever.
She turned the blade once, testing the balance, then held it out hilt first.
I took it, the weight settling into my palm.
She didn’t lecture me. Didn’t thank me. Didn’t make promises.
She just said, “You can keep running alone, or you can run with us.”
I didn’t find out until later that she was talking about the Accord.
I laughed then, because the idea of belonging anywhere felt like a bad joke, a weakness I’d learned to carve out of myself years ago.
Then I looked into her eyes and saw that she wasn’t joking at all.
She meant it.
So I stopped laughing.
And for the first time in my life, I chose to stop running.
I watched her sleep for some time. I don’t know how long I sat there for, but the others joined me a short while later.
“She still out?” Griff asked as he walked into the med bay.
“Yeah,” I said. “She’s still sleeping pretty hard.”
Relief crossed his face before he could stop it, a crack in the stone armor he wore so well.
Eamon exhaled behind him, the sound barely audible but unmistakable. “Good.”
Bishop stepped in just enough to glance at her face, then at me.
“We should talk,” he said quietly.
Elias didn’t waste time with ceremony. He nodded once. “Agreed.”
We left the med bay, the door closing softly behind us. The planning room down the hall smelled faintly of smoke and gun oil. There were five chairs, a scarred table, and a chalkboard on one of walls.
Griff sat first, elbows on his knees, hands clasped, jaw tight enough to crack teeth.
Eamon stayed standing near the wall. Bishop folded himself into a chair with the controlled grace of someone who never forgot his manners, even at the end of the world.
Elias took the head of the table without asking.
I leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching them all.
Elias spoke first. “The Watch is crumbling.”
“No shit,” Griff muttered.
Eamon’s voice was calm. “How many have left so far?”
“Among those that survived the battle, there’s at least six confirmed,” Bishop said. “Then there’s Dane, Mira, and Callan. There may be others who slipped out separately. Halden’s people are still counting the dead.”
I pushed off the wall, a humorless smile tugging at my mouth. “You’re all thinking it. Just say it.”
Elias met my gaze, steady and sharp. “You disappear better than the rest of us. Why don’t you try to find Dane and see what he’s up to.”
I nodded once. “I’ll find them.”
Griff started to stand. “I’m coming—”
“No,” Elias said, his voice forceful.
Griff froze, eyes flashing.
Elias didn’t back down. “You stay with Tamsin at all times.”
Griff sat back down and didn’t argue.
I shrugged. “Fine. I’ll go. As long as Griff babysits.”
That earned me a dark look from Griff and a faintly amused one from Bishop. Eamon’s gaze dropped to the floor, already running scenarios in his head.
Elias’s voice was quiet but full of authority. “Find them.”
“I will,” I said.
Then I was gone.
Outside, the night pressed in close and cold. The air smelled of wet earth and pine.
I didn’t waste any time.
I shifted beyond the perimeter lights, the change rolling through me smooth as breath. Fur replaced skin. Bones rearranged. My senses flared like a door kicked wide open.
Then I ran.
Dane’s trail was obvious. There were boot prints crushed into damp soil. I could scent the pungent stink of adrenaline and self-righteous fury hanging in the air. He had moved fast, but he wasn’t careful, which made him easy to track.
I followed the trail through pines and rocky gullies, staying downwind, keeping my body low, staying silent. My paws made no sound. Then I heard the faint echo of voices ahead.
Human voices.
I slowed, slipping into the brush.
Dane stood in a small clearing with Mira and Callan. A portable radio sat on a crate, its antenna extended, the speaker crackling with static, barely holding itself together.
Dane’s voice cut through the night, harsh and urgent. “I’m telling you, sir, The Watch is compromised. Completely.”
The voice that answered was smooth.
“Compromised,” the voice repeated. “Explain, Commander.”
Dane swallowed. “Elias Kade is in control. The unit is fractured. Some of them are siding with wolves. Scratch that, most of them.”
Mira leaned close to Dane. “Tell him about the Accord.”
Dane nodded, eyes burning. “The Accord is involved too.”
“The Accord?” the voice asked.
Even through static, I heard recognition. Interest.
Dane leaned into it, desperate. “It’s time to initiate Phase Gray. We can tear them apart if you send enough ferals.”
“Very good, Commander Dane. You’ve done your duty. You will be richly rewarded,” the voice on the radio replied.
Callan exhaled shakily. “Sir—what do we do now?”
The voice turned colder. “You wait. You follow orders. And you keep your mouth shut.”
“Yes, sir,” Dane said quickly.
A pause.
Then, almost pleasantly: “And Dane? If Kade is indeed compromised as you say… remove him.”
My hackles rose.
Dane swallowed. “Understood.”
The radio clicked off.
I backed into the trees without a sound, heart hammering. I needed to get back to the others.
They needed to know this too.
I turned and ran, cutting a straight line through the forest back toward the outpost.