“You said two to three.”
“Wyatt’s persuasive.”
Solomon’s gaze moved to Wyatt. The two men assessed each other with the mutual recognition of soldiers from opposing armies meeting on neutral ground. Neither extended a hand.
“The man who trains with my mate,” Solomon said.
“The lycan who throws rocks with love notes,” Wyatt replied.
Percy drifted to my side with a casualness that wasn’t casual at all, his shoulder brushing mine, positioning himself between Wyatt. Behind us, Lucian stepped out of the command area with his arms crossed, storm-gray eyes sweeping the new arrivals with an authority that made all four hunters straighten involuntarily.
His gaze found Wyatt and one eyebrow rose slowly, disapproving of the man who’d been standing arm’s reach from his pregnant mate for weeks.
The response rippled outward.
Giselle materialized from the eastern perimeter, her gaze cataloging the hunters with professional precision. Farmon looked up from his medicine station, silver eyes steady, his ruined hands going still. And then Annora stepped out of her tent. Her gaze found the hunters and the calculation was instant.
The clearing divided itself without anyone deciding to.
Lycans on one side.
Three alphas, an elder with ruined hands, a soldier with a decade of loyalty, and an aristocrat with a political agenda. Hunters on the other. Four converts carrying the wreckage of everything they’d believed.
The two groups faced each other across fifteen feet of forest floor, and fifteen feet might as well have been fifteen centuries given the history filling the space between us.
Wyatt’s hand rested on his holstered weapon. Instinct, not aggression, but Solomon’s eyes tracked the movement andLucian’s jaw tightened. Reese stepped closer to Damon. Kaia’s eyes swept every wolf in the clearing with the focus of a woman who’d spent years training to kill them.
Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. The wound was too old and the distrust too earned for anyone to pretend goodwill into existence.
My feet carried me to the center of the gap. Alone. Standing between the two halves of a war that had been running for centuries.
The Long Watch was coming. Thiago was watching.
And the only way any of us survived the next fourteen days was if the two sides of this clearing learned to stop being two sides.
“Well,” I said to no one and everyone. “Here goes our alliance.”
Starting here right now.
Starting with us.
58
— • —
Percival
The fire divided the clearing into two and Mira sat on the wrong side of it.
Hunters to the north. Lycans to the south. My mate on a log beside the man who’d been training her for weeks, their shoulders close enough that I could count the inches from across the flames.
Mira clapped her hands once.
“Introductions. You’re going to need names or this will be a long night.” She pointed at the three unfamiliar faces. “Reese.” The freckled one lifted a hand. “Damon.” Broad, wary, arms still crossed. “Kaia.” Dark-haired, already calculating exits, didn’t acknowledge the introduction at all.
“And Wyatt, you already know,” Mira added.
Unfortunately.
