“Who?” I demand.
She steps closer. “Jessica and Mark—the hikers—are in medical. Confused, traumatized, but alive. Jensen’s got a broken arm from the extraction. Kira and Tomas are stable, just exhausted from weeks in suspension. Mateo has a broken arm. Callum took a hit to the shoulder. Kari’s got a deep gash inher leg—she’s limping but refusing to stay down. The others are bruised, exhausted.” She pauses. “Marcus didn’t make it.”
Marcus. Fuck.
I try to push myself up. Pain explodes through my torso. My vision blacks out momentarily, but I keep going.
“Stop.” Nova’s hand presses against my shoulder. Not hard, but firm. “You’re not ready to move.”
I brush her hand away. Six hours is too long. The pack needs to see me standing, not laid out like a corpse. I swing my legs over the edge of the bed. Every nerve ending screams. My muscles tremble with the effort.
“Dane.” Her voice sharpens. “You can barely sit up. You got struck with something that packs the same punch as a lightning strike.”
“What happened after I went down?” I ask.
Her jaw tightens. “I dismantled his circuit. Inverted his own power against him.” She meets my eyes. “Forced him back through the breach and sealed it behind him.”
I look at her then—really look at her. Behind the exhaustion, there’s steel.
“He’s gone?”
“For now.” Her expression darkens. “He said he’d be back. Said he’s already watching others—Harper, Lyanna, people we don’t even know about yet.” She exhales slowly. “We won this battle. Not the war.”
“Then we’ll fight the next one too.” I hold her gaze. “Thank you.”
She nods once.
I push to my feet. The room tilts dangerously. My knees buckle, but I catch myself on the edge of the bed. Nova moves to support me, but I shake my head.
“I need to do this alone.”
Her jaw tightens. “You’re being stupid.”
“I’m being Alpha,” I correct her.
She doesn’t argue. Doesn’t try to stop me again. She just watches as I force my body to straighten, to steady. Each breath is torture, but I control my expression. Hide the weakness.
I take one step. Another. My legs hold. Barely.
I reach the door, grip the frame to keep myself upright. The hallway stretches before me, impossibly long.
“I need to see them for myself,” I tell her, my voice stronger now. The Alpha tone returning.
Nova doesn’t answer, but I feel her at my back. I force myself to walk steadily, my right hand pressing against my side when no one’s looking. Each breath feels like glass shards scraping inside my chest. I don’t let it show.
The compound is quiet. Too quiet for a victory. The air smells wrong—like leftover magic and fresh grief.
Rafe sits on an overturned log by the training grounds, methodically running a whetstone along his blade. His face reveals nothing. His eyes track the metal’s edge like it’s the most important thing in the world. He knows I’m here. He doesn’t look up.
Across the yard, Kari moves with visible pain, her left leg dragging slightly. A deep gash runs from her thigh to her knee, hastily stitched. She heads toward the eastern perimeter, passing within twenty feet of Rafe. Her spine stiffens. She doesn’t glance his way—same hostile avoidance as always.
Near the fallen oak, Callum and Lyanna circle each other. His movements are sharp, controlled fury. She counters with equal intensity, her body language challenging him. They’re working something out between them that has nothing to do with combat drills.
I scan the treeline. Ben stands motionless at the northern edge, back straight, face turned away from the compound. He’s on patrol, but his stillness tells me he’s deep in his head.
At the eastern edge of the clearing, Harper moves quietly among a cluster of younger wolves. Her movements are measured, purposeful—checking on Mateo, touching Sera’s shoulder briefly, offering quiet words I can’t hear from this distance. There’s something almost maternal in the way she positions herself between them and the rest of the pack’s grief.
But her eyes keep drifting toward Ben’s position at the northern perimeter. She wants to approach him. She won’t.
