“And leave Mira here? With Thiago watching us and a compound full of hunters half a mile away? We also can’t risk internal conflict with our own soldiers. We need them against the Order.”
“You need what now?”
Mira was standing at the edge of the clearing with tunnel dirt on her boots and dried fruit in her hand, which meant she’d passed Farmon on the way in and he’d fed her before she’d even reached us. The old man’s priorities were consistent.
“The council put you on a kill list,” Percy said, because Percy had never once understood the concept of easing into bad news.
She chewed the dried fruit. Swallowed. “Okay. What else?”
We all stared at her. She stared back with the patience of a woman who’d been surviving worse than political death warrants for months.
“We need to relocate,” Solomon said, already at the map table. “Away from the mountains. Establish a base where the envoy can land and where we control the narrative before their commander reads that list.”
“How far?”
“Eight miles south. It doubles your travel time to the compound. Six hours round trip instead of three.”
Mira’s hand went to her stomach. A brief touch, unconscious, then gone. “The bond separation. Farmon said extended distance accelerates the deterioration.”
“It does.” Farmon appeared behind us with his mortar and pestle. “Move too far, and the days you spend inside that compound become dangerous for all four of you.”
“Then I adjust. Or we can meet half-way when there are less patrols.”
“Mira...” Percy started.
“I’ve been managing this pregnancy through drainage tunnels and combat training for weeks. A few extra miles of forest won’t be what breaks me.” Her voice carried no room for debate. “Move the camp.”
Percy looked at me. I looked at Solomon. Solomon looked at the map because Solomon always looked at the map when the emotional variables exceeded his preference for clean data.
“We build the schedule together,” I said. “No unilateral decisions about how long you stay inside.”
“Deal.” She crossed to the fire and sat beside Farmon. “Now what’s the actual battle plan? Because if the Long Watch is coming in fourteen days with my name on a list, standing around arguing about my commute isn’t going to fix it.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“You said it yourself last night,” I told the group. “You’re going to dismantle the Order from the inside. We’ll give you the tools and the army to back your plan.”
Mira laid out her part first. “I continue infiltration under field deployment. Hunter converts back me up. When it’s time, I take down the security grid, lock the Purifier so Thiago can’t use it mid-assault, and secure the sublevels so the feral wolves stay contained.”
“That’s three objectives before anyone else moves,” Percy said.
“That’s the point. The compound has to be blind and defanged before you storm it, or Thiago turns it into a kill box.”
Solomon nodded. The tactical approval on his face was as close to a compliment as Solomon gave. “And the signal?”
“A flare,” Mira said. “Since the Order will know right away once security is down, no need to hide it. What’s important is to lock the Purifier. That’s your green light.”
“A flare,” Solomon repeated, testing it. “The moment that light hits the sky, we move.”
Farmon had been listening from his seat by the cold fire pit, grinding his medicine with a mortar and pestle that looked older than most human civilizations. His ruined hands worked with the practiced efficiency.
“I have a question.” Mira turned to Farmon, who’d been grinding his medicine through the entire conversation. “I heard you mentioned Percy’s mother was a researcher. That she was studying lycan physiology when the first expedition crossed into the human world.”
Farmon’s hands paused on the mortar. “She was. One of the finest minds in Veyndral’s academic circles.”
“And her research notes? From the expedition?”
“Some survived.” Farmon’s voice was careful. “I kept them.”
