For now.
Chapter 20 - Patrick
Caelan and I are eating in the small dining room attached to our quarters, sharing a meal of roasted chicken and vegetables that the kitchen staff prepared. She’s been lighter since her conversation with Sera yesterday, more open in the way she looks at me.
We’ve been talking about nothing in particular, trading stories about our childhoods that feel safe enough to share. She just finished telling me about the time she and Sera snuck into the Llewelyn archives after midnight to read forbidden texts about the packs beyond the mountains.
I’ve been savoring every moment of this thing we’ve built between us.
But the young Grayhide wolf who bursts through the door shatters all of that in an instant. The look on his face tells me everything I need to know before he opens his mouth.
“Thornridge hit a Llewelyn patrol,” he gasps, still trying to catch his breath. “Two are dead, and three have been captured. Oren wants everyone in the council meeting room now.”
Every speck of blood drains from Caelan’s face. “Which patrol?”
“The eastern border unit. I don’t have names yet.”
She’s on her feet before he finishes speaking, and I’m right behind her as we race through the corridors toward the meeting room. My mind is already working through possibilities. Thornridge doesn’t take prisoners unless they want something from them; information, leverage, or just the pleasure of making their enemies suffer.
I know exactly what Bastian is doing. This is retaliation for the supply cache raid. A message written in blood and pain that defection has consequences.
The meeting room is already crowded when we arrive. Oren stands at the head of the table with his hands braced on the surface and his blue eyes burning with fury. Dorian occupies the chair to his right, and Ash hovers near the door with her arms crossed. Sera and Reeyan are there too, along with Wyn, Aidan, and a handful of other wolves I’ve come to recognize over the past week.
“What do we know?” Oren demands as we enter.
A Llewelyn warrior I don’t recognize steps forward. Her face is streaked with dried blood, and she favors her left leg when she moves. A deep gash runs along her forearm; it’s been hastily bandaged but still seeping crimson through the cloth.
“We were running standard patrol along the eastern border when they ambushed us. At least fifteen Thornridge wolves, maybe more. They hit fast and hard, and they took out Mira and Callum before we could even call on our wolves. The rest of us tried to fight back, but they had suppressors.”
My stomach drops. Suppressors again. Bastian has been deploying them more frequently since my defection, using the technology to neutralize the allied wolves’ greatest advantage. Cut off from our wolves, we’re just humans with slightly better reflexes. Easy prey for a coordinated assault.
“Who did they take?” Caelan demands to know.
The warrior swallows hard. “Thea, Liman, and Fiona.”
Caelan grunts like someone punched her in the gut. I reach for her hand, and she snatches mine so tightly that the bones grind together.
“Thea trained with me,” she whispers. “We grew up together. She taught me how to throw a proper punch when we were fourteen. She’s only twenty-two.”
Sera rushes to her sister’s side and puts a hand on her shoulder. The gesture is small, but I see Caelan lean into the comfort it offers.
“We’re going to get them back,” Oren promises. His attention turns to me. “You know how Thornridge handles prisoners. What are we looking at?”
Every eye in the room lands on me, and I feel their expectations pressing down on my shoulders. They need me to be useful right now. They need me to prove that my intelligence is worth the risk of trusting a former enemy.
“Standard Thornridge protocol is forty-eight hours of isolation before interrogation begins,” I explain. “They’ll keep the prisoners separated, disoriented, and deprived of food and water. No contact with each other, and no sense of time passing. The goal is to break down their resistance before the real questioning starts.”
“And after the forty-eight hours?” Dorian asks.
“The interrogators move in. They start with questions. They’re going to be after basic intelligence that any captured wolf would be expected to know, regardless of where they stand on the hierarchy.” I pause, trying to figure out how to say the next part without making Caelan flinch. “If the prisoners don’t cooperate, things escalate.”
“Elaborate,” Oren presses.
“Thornridge interrogators are trained to cause maximum pain with minimum permanent damage. They want information, not corpses. At least not right away. Bastian hasa particular talent for knowing exactly how much a person can endure before they break. He’ll push them right to that edge, again and again, until they tell him everything he wants to know.”
The room goes quiet. Caelan’s grip on my hand is turning bruising, but I don’t pull away.
“There’s more,” I continue, because they need to understand the full scope of what we’re facing. “Bastian knows those prisoners are connected to Caelan, which means they’re connected to me. He won’t just interrogate them for intelligence. He’ll use them to send a message.”
