The three wolves shifted back.
Percy first, naked and streaked with blood, reaching for me before he’d fully returned to human form. Solomon second, clinical even in transformation, already assessing the creature on the floor. Lucian last, the king resuming his skin.
The smoke had cleared.
The sublevel stretched before us, cells lining both walls, and inside them the waking began.
Wolves becoming people. Feral eyes becoming aware. Hands that had clawed at glass for months pressing flat against it now with intention, with recognition, with the quiet desperation of prisoners who’d just realized they might survive.
A new dawn for them.
The old world dying right here on this concrete floor.
I looked down at the creature that had been my father.
At the ruin of a man who’d built an empire on grief and jealousy and the conviction that love was weakness. Who’d murdered the woman he claimed to cherish and raised her daughter on lies and spent years manufacturing the monsters he needed to justify his existence.
But with this… he met his fate.
The Order of Silver Dawn goes down with Thiago.
74
— • —
Percival
The sublevel smelled of smoke and freedom and blood that wasn’t entirely ours.
Voss’s soldiers had reached us twelve minutes after the smoke cleared. Moving through the compound corridors with practiced rhythm. The converted hunters fell in with them seamlessly, Kaia directing teams to choke points while Damon and Reese handled the armory lockdown.
Weeks of distrust between lycan troops and human converts evaporated in the space of a single morning because nothing bonds people faster than a shared enemy.
The hunters who’d stayed loyal to Thiago were on their knees in the main corridor. Disarmed. Zip-tied with the same restraints they’d used on Mira. The irony wasn’t lost on anyone.
Mira stood at the sublevel entrance and watched the cells open.
One by one. Voss’s soldiers working the locks while converted hunters stood on the other side, ready to catch whoever stumbled out. And they did stumble. Wolves who’d been caged for months, some longer, blinking against the fluorescent light with eyes that were still adjusting to having thoughts again.
A woman came out of the third cell. Couldn’t have been older than thirty, her body wasted to angles and bruises, but her eyes were clear.
She looked at the soldiers, at the open door, at the corridor that led to a stairwell that led to the surface that led to air and sky and a world she’d probably stopped believing in.
She took one step. Her legs buckled and Kaia caught her.
“You’re safe,” Kaia said. “It’s over.”
The woman didn’t speak. Just pressed her face into Kaia’s shoulder and shook.
I had to look away.
The larger containment units took longer.
The feral wolves, the ones who’d been purified furthest, needed more time for the cure to rebuild what had been stripped. Some were sitting up, confused, testing their own hands. Others were still in wolf form, but their eyes had changed. Aware. Frightened. Present.
Voss’s soldiers bowed as the freed lycans passed. Not a formal gesture or a rehearsed protocol. Just men lowering their headsas broken people walked by, acknowledging what had been done to them with the only language that didn’t require words.
Solomon was overseeing the Thiago situation.
