He nods. The relief on his face is raw; a boy’s relief, not a soldier’s. For all his training, all his composure, all his ability to read power structures and sort fear from conviction, he’s seventeen, and his mother was taken from him. Again.
He leans against my side. I put one arm around him and hold Brenna with the other. We sit in the clearing while the dawn breaks over the mountains in bands of gold and gray, and the helicopter disappears south over the ridge.
“Dad,” Cameron says again. Testing the word a second time. It sounds different now. Not the panicked reflex of a drugged teenager. More considered. A choice being made.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m here.”
He nods. Leans heavier. Closes his eyes.
I hold them both and wait and feel the first faint stirring of contact as the drug begins to lose its grip. A whisper. Then a murmur. Then Brenna’s presence… weak, confused, reaching for me through the chemical dark the way a drowning person reaches for the surface.
I reach back. Hold the connection open. Pour everything I have into it: warmth, safety, fury, love. The promise that I made in the bunkhouse and the bed and the kitchen and the truck. I’m here. I’m not leaving. I’m never leaving again.
She’s coming back.
Thank fuck!
Rook and Karl break through the trees five minutes later. They take in the scene: downed operatives, scattered weapons, the alpha on his knees in the grass holding his unconscious mate while their son rests against his shoulder with dying fire on his hands. And Rook doesn’t say a word. He starts securing the operatives. Zip ties. Weapons collected. The professionalism of a man who knows that the crisis isn’t over until the aftermath is handled.
Then Karl finds what we need.
On the lead operative—unconscious, zip-tied, face-down in the grass—a communication device. Encrypted, military-grade. Hardware you don’t buy at a surplus store. Karl turns it over in his hands, studying the casing, and I see the recognition in his eyes before he says it.
“Syndicate issue.” He nods grimly as he confirms what we already know.
Rook takes it. Works the interface; he’s got enough tech background to navigate the basics. The encryption is heavy, but the message log is cached locally, and the last received transmission is still on the screen.
Routing coordinates. A relay path that bounces through three nodes before reaching its origin point. But the final node—thesource of the order that launched this operation—traces back through a relay station in Darkwood territory.
Bern’s territory. Bern’s communications infrastructure. Bern’s network.
“Motherfucker,” I growl.
The line runs straight and undeniable from Nathan Bern’s seat of power to the team that just tried to steal my mate and my son from my own compound.
I look at the device in Rook’s hand. At the coordinates glowing on the small screen. At the evidence that’s been building since the day Bern walked onto Ravenclaw land with his aide and his tablet and his measured smile.
“We’ve got him,” Rook says.
Yeah. We’ve got him.
And when Brenna wakes up, we’re going to end this.
Chapter 30
Brenna
I come back in pieces. Sound first. Voices, low and urgent, somewhere beyond the room. The creak of a bed frame when someone shifts their weight. A heartbeat under my ear that isn’t mine. Too slow, too steady, the rhythm of a man who’s been awake for hours and is holding still because the woman on his chest needs rest more than he needs to move.
Then sensation. The sheets under me, different from the ones at Ravenclaw. The ache in my neck where the dart hit—a deep, chemical throb that radiates down my shoulder and into my arm. My fingers tingling as the nerve pathways come back online. And underneath it all, my magic, frayed and thin, trying to reignite in my blood. I can feel it reaching, searching for the connection that was severed. Finding frayed ends. Starting to knit them together, one thread at a time.
Then memory.
The compound. The explosions. White fire in my hands and then the cold sting in my neck. Cameron’s fire dying. The operatives carrying my son toward the trees. Merric’s howl through the dark.
I sit up so fast the room spins, and my stomach heaves.
“Easy.” Merric’s hands are on my shoulders. His face swims into focus; haggard, dark circles under his eyes, a cut on his cheekbone I don’t remember seeing before. He’s been sitting upright with me on his chest for hours, and the stiffness in his posture tells me he’s barely moved. “You’re safe. Cameron’s safe. You’re in our cabin at Frostbourne.”
