I considered it. Seven ferals, coordinating an assault. Their degradation made them clumsy, but it also made them reckless. They wouldn't retreat when they should. Wouldn't calculate risk versus reward. They'd throw themselves at the Keep until they broke through or died trying.
"Maybe," I said. "If the traps thin their numbers first."
"We need more traps."
"We don't have time for more traps."
She looked at me. Her eyes were sharp, calculating, fierce. The eyes of someone who refused to accept defeat.
"Then we need a different approach," she said. "Not just traps. A system. A way to use the Keep's structure against them."
She was already sketching before I could respond. Lines in bone dust. Collapse points. A design that would turn twenty cycles of my work into a killing ground.
I would die before I let the ferals take her. But watching her now, I wasn't sure I'd have to.
KERRIS
Iwas bait.
I understood it while studying the Keep's defensive layout, tracing the lines of approach the ferals might use. My scent had drawn them here. My pregnancy had intensified that draw. Every feral massing at Bruk's boundary was here because of me.
"This is my fault," I said.
Bruk looked up from the reinforcement he was carving. "No."
"My scent..."
"Your scent is a consequence of biology. Of the tonic. Of choices neither of us made." He set down his tools and crossed to me. "The ferals are here because they're broken. Because they never learned to build, to wait, to offer something worth staying for. That's not your fault."
"But if I weren't here..."
"Then they'd still be ferals. They'd still be hunting females. They'd still be too damaged to do anything but take." His hand cupped my face. "You being here doesn't create the threat. It exposes what was already true."
I leaned into his touch. Let myself believe him for a moment.
Then I went back to work.
The Keep'sstructure was both weapon and weakness.
Bruk had built it for permanence, not defense. The walls were thick, the foundations deep, but there were multiple entry points. The main entrance. The secondary entrance where we'd installed the pit trap. The ventilation channels I'd helped redesign. A dozen small gaps and crevices that a determined attacker might exploit.
I spent two days mapping every vulnerability. Every potential breach point. Every angle of approach.
Then I started designing the system.
"Not traps," I explained to Bruk, sketching in the bone dust. "A network. Each defensive measure connects to the others. The ferals don't just face individual obstacles. They face a system designed to funnel them into killing grounds."
I drew the approach paths. The chokepoints. The places where attacking ferals would naturally cluster.
"Here." I pointed to the main entrance. "This is where they'll concentrate their assault. It's the most obvious entry point, the widest approach. They'll expect it to be defended, but they'll try it anyway because ferals don't plan ahead."
"What do you propose?"
"We let them in."
He went still. "Explain."
"The main entrance opens into the first chamber, the one you use for storage. It's a dead end. One way in, same way out." I traced the layout. "We make the entrance look weak. Inviting. They pour in, expecting to overwhelm us."
