The clearing tipped toward violence. Voss’s soldiers shifted formation. Converted hunters tightened ranks. The alliance that had been built through weeks of tension and incremental trust cracked along the exact fault line everyone had been pretending didn’t exist.
“Enough.”
Farmon’s voice. Quiet. Carrying an authority without needing volume, just raising the ruined hands where everyone could see them.
“I prepared that tea myself.” He stepped between the two groups. “My herbs. My blend. My hands, broken by the Order you claim to despise,Voss.”
His gaze found him. “The hunters didn’t do this. I know the scent of every compound in my supplies, and what’s in that cup contains an agent that doesn’t exist in the human world.”
The clearing went still.
“The poison is lycan,” Farmon said. “Botanical. Sourced from Veyndral.”
Voss’s jaw clenched. Behind him, his soldiers exchanged glances that carried a different weight now.
“This was done by one of our own,” Farmon continued. “And I suggest we focus on finding them before my grandchildren pay the price for your pride.”
The word grandchildren did what authority couldn’t. After all, Farmon was the former Beta and was supposedly Voss’s higher-up back when they were both under my father. Voss stepped back.
The hunters relaxed their stance. Farmon returned to the tent where Percy was holding Mira’s hand and speaking to her in a voice I couldn’t hear, cracked and repeating her name.
Inside, Farmon knelt beside her. His damaged fingers found her wrist, her forehead, her belly. The examination was thorough, clinical despite the tremor in his hands.
“The compound is designed to terminate a lycan pregnancy,” he said. Flat. Professional. Separating himself from the grandfather. “It targets the bond-dependent connection between mother and children. Without intervention, the heartbeats will fail within the hour.”
“What intervention?” Percy’s voice was barely holding.
“Counteragent. I have the base components in my supplies but the preparation takes time. Thirty minutes. Maybe forty.”
“Then start.”
Farmon stood and moved to his station with a speed that contradicted his age.
Percival hadn’t released Mira’s hand. Solomon stood at the tent entrance, vibrating with a barely controlled fury. My hand rested on Mira’s stomach, feeling the heartbeats flutter beneath my palm, weaker with every passing minute.
Our children.Fading because someone in this camp wanted them dead.
Percival’s head lifted. His eyes moved to the spilled tea. Then to the tent entrance. His gaze tracked to outside.
“Where are Annora and Giselle?”
The tent went silent.
Fucking hell.
I looked at Solomon. Solomon looked at me. The same conclusion arriving simultaneously through our centuries of shared calculation.
“Find them,” I said.
Solomon moved and two soldiers followed. The search took six minutes and produced the answer I already knew.
“Gone,” Solomon reported from the perimeter. “Trails of rushed leaving.”
And then it hit me.
The portal.
They were running for the portal.
