The full, reckless sprint of three lycans covering ground in a forest, weaving between trees at a speed that turned the undergrowth into a blur of black and green.
Lucian set the pace, his black wolf bleeding through in the gold of his eyes, every stride calculated despite the urgency. Giselle flanked my left, silent, reading the terrain at full speed.
The portal had deposited us four miles southeast of the compound.
Lucian stopped. I stopped. The momentum carried me forward half a step before my boots dug into the soil, and Giselle was already crouching, her fingers hovering over a thinwire stretched ankle-height between two trees. Infrared beam, connected to a sensor mounted on the trunk.
One more stride and every guard in that compound would have had our position.
The hand came from the branches above.
It closed around Lucian’s collar and wrenched him sideways. My claws extended before my brain finished processing the movement, my body rotating toward the threat, and I had the attacker slammed against a trunk with my forearm across his throat before the scent registered.
Brown sugar and pine needles. Faded. Weeks old on his skin. But unmistakable.
Percival.
“Easy.” His voice was a rasp under my forearm. “Friendly.”
I released him, stepping back. My wolf took another two seconds to reclassify him as pack before the claws retracted.
Percy braced against the tree and rubbed his throat, but the grin was already surfacing. Thinner than it should have been on a face that had lost weight, but there.
“Took you long enough,” he said. “I’ve been tracking your scent since you came through the portal.”
“You could smell us from four miles out?” Lucian asked.
“Wind was in my favor. And I know what your scent.” The grin softened into honesty. “I knew you’d come.”
Lucian gripped the back of Percy’s neck, holding it. A gesture that carried more weight between them than an embrace would have. Percy tapped his shoulder before straightening, and the moment passed.
Then Lucian’s gaze moved over him slowly, cataloging the damage with the practiced assessment of a king who’d sent soldiers to war and learned to read the cost on their bodies.
“You’ve lost weight,” Lucian said.
“Intermittent fasting. It’s the new trend around here.”
“Your clothes are held together with bark and thread.”
“I have a new aesthetic.”
“Percival.” Lucian’s voice carried no amusement. “How long since you’ve eaten properly?”
The grin didn’t falter but the deflection died. Percy straightened again, shoulders back, spine aligned, the humor filing itself away behind a professionalism that most people never got to see.
“I’m functional,” he said. “Underfed, under-rested, and in need of a shower that doesn’t involve a creek, but functional. I’ve been rotating through six positions. Never the same one twice. Their search pattern is predictable if you watch it long enough.”
He turned and gestured for us to follow. “There’s a ridge overlook half a mile north. Best vantage point for the compound. I’ll brief you on the way.”
Giselle fell into step beside me. “I’ll make rounds on the sensor grid. Mark what I can, flag the blind spots.” She glanced at thethree of us with a perceptive look that saw more than she’d comment on. “I’ll give you privacy.”
She disappeared into the trees before anyone could respond.
We moved. Percy led, navigating the terrain with a certainty that came from weeks of repetition, every root and stone memorized. He talked while we walked, voice low, delivery precise.
“Four structures. Main building houses command, Thiago’s quarters on the second floor. Barracks to the west, and a newer facility. Guard rotation is six on, six off. Thirty-two active personnel, all armed, all trained.”
“The sublevels,” I said.
