The mate bond pulls hard to the left.
My eyes find her before my brain processes the direction— Cassidy, moving along the lower tree line, returning from the cave route, still a hundred yards out. The braid down the left side of her face catches the ambient light from the convoy's remaining headlamps.
The hunter leader sees my eyes move. His follow.
He raises his rifle.
I'm already moving when the shot cracks, the sound splitting the dark, and I feel the air displacement before I hear the impact of the round hitting the tree six inches from where she's standing.
She drops into a crouch instantly, but the second shot is already being chambered and my body makes the decision without consulting me.
I cover the ten feet in two strides and drive my shoulder into his chest.
The rifle goes wide. We go down together, and I get his gun hand against the ground with my knee and his collar in my fist, and the part of me that is Alpha and the mate in me and thewolf who spent the last six hours watching an injured pack fight a funded convoy all arrive at the same place at the same time.
I hit him once. He goes still.
The urge to hit him again is significant, and I manage it, barely, because unconscious is enough and because there are witnesses and because Cassidy is moving toward me through the clearing and I need to be standing when she gets here.
"Ciaran." I stand and key the radio. "Detonate the smoke charges."
Without verbal confirmation, the charges detonate along the northern and eastern tree lines—thick gray-white clouds billow across the access road, cutting visibility to six feet and filling the air with a chemical smell, harmless to those who understand it, but sounds, to untrained ears in a dark forest during disorienting fight, like something about to get significantly worse.
The remaining hunters don't wait for instructions. They move for the vehicles that still run, and then they run.
"Pursue them to the boundary line only," I say into the radio. "Nobody crosses. Let them go."
The radio crackles confirmations from different teams.
Someone from Rafe's crew has zip-tied the unconscious hunter leader before I've fully processed that the fight is over. I look at the man on the ground and feel the particular frustration of an outcome I can't change—he's secured, he'll be handed to Graves in the morning. Graves will do what law enforcement does, and the conversation I wanted to finish with him is finished.
He fired at Cassidy.
I file that under ‘later’ and turn toward the access road.
Cassidy is close, field vest, the braid intact, assessing the clearing with her inquisitive, scientific curiosity. She looks at theunconscious hunter, then at me, then at my shoulder, then back at my face.
"You popped the stitches again," she says.
"Probably," I say.
She exhales through her nose. "Are all the hunters out?"
I nod. "No casualties, either, pack or hunter."
She holds my gaze for a moment, and what's in her expression is something I've come to recognize as her version of relief.
"The elders and kids are safe," she says. "That cave system is solid. I left Marek's second in command at the entrance."
"Good."
Ciaran materializes from the tree line to my right. "The convoy is off Blackmoore land. Three were vehicles abandoned, two left under their own power. All secured hunters are accounted for." He looks at the unconscious man on the ground. "Who is this?"
"The leader. Put him with the others," I say.
He nods. "I'll post a guard on him."
The smoke thins, the convoy noise fades to nothing down the mountain road, and the forest is filling back in with its own sounds. My pack is moving back through the trees toward the compound in small groups, wolves shifting to human form as they clear the engagement zone, voices low and checking in.
