But they made one critical miscalculation. They’re attacking a house with four Irontree orcs inside.
I engage the first hostile at the side entrance before he’s fully through the door. Training takes over, the same muscle memory from all those years as a hunter for my commune, from mt time in Colombia. I’m not feral, not even close. I’m controlled, focused and precise. This is the version of myself that pulled Sloane out of a jungle.
There’s gunfire from the front of the house. Garlen is something else entirely in combat. In reality, he’s the biggest of all of us. The gentle, composed professor who flips pancakes and reads textbooks with one eye on his family is completely gone. What’s left is a wall of green fury who moves through mercenaries like they’re furniture in his way. This is the orc who broke steel chains and tore through a reinforced cage door. In a normal fight, without the chemical amplification of a scent bomb, he’s even more controlled and lethal.
Aldar fights with cold, technical efficiency. He calls out positions from camera feeds while simultaneously engaginganyone who gets past the front line. His tech knowledge translates seamlessly into tactical awareness — he knows where every hostile is before they know where he is.
Dane is the oldest and the slowest, but every strike he lands is decisive. His experience shows in economy of movement. There’s a reason he was sent as the patriarch when the Irontrees moved to Truckee.
The kitchen table where we ate breakfast together twenty minutes ago splinters under gunfire. Zoe’s coloring book — the one with the drawing of me and Sloane and Loki — slides across the floor through broken glass. Garlen’s mixing bowl tips and pancake batter splatters everywhere. The platter of pastries Laurie brought from the bakery this morning is on its side, crushed under a mercenary’s boot.
Bullets fly. Furniture explodes. I take down two more hostiles. Garlen handles three more. Aldar and Dane each manage one.
“We’ve got the last of them,” Aldar shouts.
The remaining hostile turns and runs for the shattered front door, retreating.
I scan the wreckage of the first floor. Broken glass is everywhere. Bullet holes stitch across the living room walls. The couch where Sloane sat this morning has a hole through the back cushion.
My shoulder took a graze but I’m barely bleeding. I notice that Garlen has a cut above his eye, Aldar is untouched and Dane is rubbing his shoulder but standing strong.
“Clear?” I call out.
Aldar checks his monitors. “All hostiles down or retreating. Perimeter is?—”
He stops.
“What?”
“One more.” His eyes are locked on the tablet. “Interior camera, front entrance. He’s not retreating. He’s coming in.”
I spin toward the ruined front of the house ready to take out this last enemy.
A figure steps through the shattered doorway, calm and deliberate, picking his way through the debris like he’s got all the time in the world. He’s not carrying a rifle like the others.
He’s carrying something small and cylindrical.
Time slows to a crawl.
I’ve read Kelt’s briefings about what happened to Keric and I’ve heard Garlen describe in great detail the scent bomb that was attached to Loki’s harness and detonated in the basement — a timed device that combined Ellie’s scent with synthesized distress pheromones. I’ve heard Keric describe the canister thrown directly at his face at the commune, the mist that turned his world red and made him grab Anna and run for the mountains.
A scent bomb.
The third one. The same weapon that someone keeps manufacturing and someone keeps getting into the hands of humans who want to use them specifially against Irontrees.
I try to reverse course. “NO?—”
The mercenary’s arm is already in motion. The throw is accurate and aimed directly at my face. The same delivery method they used on Keric. It’s already flying through the air.
The canister hits and explodes on impact.
Fine chemical mist sprays into my nose, my mouth, my eyes. It burns as it enters my lungs, my bloodstream, my brain. For one second, nothing happens and I think maybe it didn’t work, maybe the formula was wrong, maybe?—
Then Sloane’s scent hits me.
But it’s wrong. Twisted. Corrupted.
My female’s natural warm sweetness, the scent I breathe in every night, is laced with something acrid and artificial. Synthesized terror pheromones that speak directly to the most primitive parts of my brain.
