20 Avaline #2
Sloane broke her stare from the empty chairs and looked across the table. “Maren ruined the coffee,” she said, a half smile on her mouth. “There’s still enough in the pot to wash the dust out of your mouth.”
“Thank you,” I said.
She nodded once and turned back to the papers.
“Finn,” Brann prompted.
The entire cabin closed in around the table, the circle tightening until shoulders brushed against shoulders.
In the middle of the scarred timber sat two objects that pulled the breath right out of my throat.
The first was an irregular chunk of dark obsidian crystal. Inside the core of the stone, a crimson luminescence churned beneath glass. My wolf slammed against the inside of my ribs with a low snarl, forcing me to plant both palms flat on the oak table to keep my balance.
Beside the crystal lay a roll of weathered parchment, yellowed and stiff with age.
“What are we looking at?” Brann asked, his voice cutting through the hum of the electronics with clear command authority.
“The ledger,” Finn said. He struck a key on a nearby laptop.
The crystal flared with sudden, blinding intensity, casting an angry red glow across the faces gathered around the table. A three-dimensional projection surged into the air above the timber, rendering the jagged topography of the Caldera Mountain fortress in sharp blue light.
Then the wound opened.
Hundreds of red pinpricks ignited across the mountain flanks, bleeding into the projection in dense clusters.
“The Blood-Glass Ledger,” Reed murmured at my side, his hand tightening on the edge of the wood until the oak groaned.
“Every signature that ever authorized an extraction. Every research grant. Every Conclave overseer who ever stamped a transfer slip on a dormant woman. Finn’s been able to extract the whole network from the crystal. ”
I stared into the churning red light. My wolf’s fury roared in my ears, hot and deafening, until my vision fringed in silver.
Levi stepped to the table and flattened the ancient parchment beside the glowing projection. He tapped the center of the vellum with a scarred knuckle and caught Santos’ eye.
Santos didn’t hesitate. He drew the edge of a field blade across the meat of his thumb, letting dark blood well along the cut, and pressed his palm flat against the center of the parchment.
The paper flared to life.
Brilliant gold veins erupted from his bloody print, spiderwebbing across the map in living rivers of light. I knew that gold. I had seen one thousand spirits massed on the far canyon wall in the Dreamscape, throwing their heads back in defiance.
Down the valley, twenty miles south of our position, a tight cluster of steady golden embers ignited over the pack’s safehouse.
“Row Three,” I whispered.
Sloane’s hand tightened around Finn’s. “The map is dead-on.”
My wolf pressed against my ribs, a low hum of relief vibrating in my marrow. My flock was safe in the valley.
Then the rest of the map woke up.
Across the continental grid, more than a thousand sparks flickered in the dark—a vast, shimmering constellation trapped beneath the heavy red lines of the Blood-Glass Ledger. At the Caldera summit, hundreds of red marks clustered like an open wound.
“They’re using the mountain’s ley lines,” Brann said, his voice dropping into the icy register of an executioner. “Channeling the bedrock to harvest every dormant on the continent. If that ward locks into place, the sleeping wolves will be consumed.”
Finn tapped the terminal, magnifying the Arbiter’s summit fortress. He leaned closer to the projection, his brow furrowing. “Wait. Look at this.”
A single, isolated gold ember flickered on the parchment. It burned directly in the center of the dense crimson cluster, sitting in the very room where the Arbiter and the Inner Circle had barricaded themselves.
“That doesn’t track,” Levi rumbled from the hearth, his heavy jaw setting hard. “All the other dormants are kept sublevel. Why is there a lone dormant signature sitting in the throne room with the Conclave’s High Council?”
“A personal shield?” Tommy asked, the brass casing rolling between his fingers.
I stared at the solitary golden pulse. Memory hit me—the Dreamscape’s silver canyon, the necrotic rot of the ancient parasite, and the unmistakable face of the woman trapped beneath it.
The parasite, the wolf spat, her voice dropping into a lethal register. It wears the sister’s meat like a stolen pelt. We will rip it from her bones.
Mia is still trapped in there, I thought back, feeling the cold weight of the task. We save the girl if we can. But we break the entity no matter what.
“It’s not a shield,” I said. The words fell heavy and flat against the oak.
“It’s the First Saint.” I met Reed’s gaze across the table.
His golden eyes locked onto mine, his knuckles whitening against the timber.
“Mia’s dormant wolf is still burning inside the First Saint.
She survived—and the First Saint is still possessing her. ”
The cabin air turned to lead.
A silent frequency passed through the room—a sudden, synchronized tightening of the pack bond that excluded me completely.
The unspoken communication passing between Brann, Levi, Santos, Tommy, and Finn registered in the sudden rigidity of their spines, the microscopic tilt of Brann’s chin, the heavy question hanging between brothers.
If Mia is the wall, will you tear her down?
The unspoken pressure bore down until the timber beneath Reed’s palms began to smoke, charring black against the grain.
“Say it,” Reed snarled, his voice breaking through the quiet. He didn’t look at his brothers. His eyes stayed locked onto the glowing ember on the vellum. “You want to know if I’ll freeze when she steps into the draw. You want to know if I’ll risk one thousand lives to spare a corpse.”
Nobody answered.
“I’ve spent the last day terrified that my own aura incinerated her in the Dreamscape,” Reed said, the words tearing out of his throat, raw and jagged.
“But she’s alive. And if that monster is still wearing my sister to stand between this pack and the liberation of our people, I will put her in the dirt myself. I will do whatever needs to be done.”
The words were absolute, forged in fury.
Underneath the anger, his fingers trembled against the edge of the wood.
My wolf whined low in my chest, scenting the truth beneath his ash: the staggering, terrifying relief of an older brother realizing he hadn’t killed his sister after all, tangled with the agony of knowing she was still possessed and trapped in the dark.
He wanted to believe he could end her. He needed his brothers to believe it.
But I knew he wouldn’t be able to do it. When the moment came, when he looked into his sister’s dark eyes and saw the girl he had failed to save again, his hands would fail him.
He is tearing in two, the wolf murmured, pressing her spirit close against mine in deep, aching empathy. His pack failed her once. He cannot bear to strike his own blood.
I know, I thought back, resting my hand near his on the smoking timber. That’s why I’m here. If his hands fail him, mine won’t.
Tommy broke the silence, picking up his sidearm from the counter. “Let me get this straight. Every single Conclave official who ever signed a transfer order on a woman in this room is currently gathered in that bunker—and the monster wearing Reed’s sister is guarding the door.”
“Barricaded in,” Finn confirmed.
“No escape routes down the western face,” Santos said, a cold, vicious smile touching the corner of his lips.
Reed stepped forward. His shadow stretched across the red marks of the ledger, the lone burning ember in the throne room, and the glowing points of the continental grid. He didn’t look at the map.
He looked straight at the two empty chairs at the foot of the table.
He let the silence stretch for three heavy heartbeats.
“There are no negotiations,” Reed said. “No arrests. No tribunals.”
The pack leaned in, the air in the cabin crackling with static heat.
“We breach the fortress. We tear the holding pens open.” Reed turned his golden gaze to me, the scars along his forearms igniting with the slow, volcanic glow of Founding fire. “And we give my mate what she needs to finish what we started in the Dreamscape.”
My White Wolf rose inside my chest, vast, blinding, and lethal, claiming every inch of my body.
No mercy for monsters, I answered her, feeling the ancient power lock into my veins.
“We aren’t climbing that mountain to reclaim a seat at their table,” Reed said, his voice vibrating through the floorboards. “We are going to burn them down to the bedrock, and we are going to leave their ashes on the ridge.”
“No mercy,” Levi growled from the hearth.
“No mercy,” the room echoed, more than two dozen voices blending into a single, unbreakable oath that sank deep into the beams.