"Trent doesn't want her returned to the North just to fix his bruised ego," Hayes concluded, the last shred of his diplomaticcomposure finally gone. The polished political heir was gone. The alpha standing over the ruined table was a focused, violent weapon ready to detonate. "He wants to drag a biological magical battery back to the Northern borders. He wants to sell a functionally immortal combat line to the highest military bidder."
"He'll never get near her," Tristan snarled, pivoting away from the table, pacing the room with explosive kinetic energy. The ozone was so thick it crackled against the stone walls. "I'll kill him tonight. I'll take Marcus, bypass the tribunal, and personally bury that Northern prick under the campus quad before sunrise."
"You assassinate a seated council envoy on neutral territory without authorization," I said sharply, "and the combined high council marches an army on Aldridge tomorrow. And in the resulting chaos, they seize Wren under the guise of protective custody. You hand her to them."
"Then what the hell do we do?" Tristan shouted, losing control for the first time I could remember. "She's terrified of us. We can't let the artifact lock if she's fighting the connection, but if the temporary tether drops over the next few weeks the artifact fails, she dies of withdrawal, and Trent gets what he wants without lifting a finger?—"
A piercing electronic shriek shattered the silence.
Not a growl. Not a warning. A mechanical alarm.
The three of us spun toward the command console near the reinforced entrance. The primary surveillance monitor — which normally displayed the calm, overlapping layout of the blood wards protecting the perimeter — was flashing violent, blinding crimson.
An alarm wailed, echoing off the thick stone walls.
"The wards are engaging," Hayes said. A terrifying calm washed over him.
"It's not a localized magical breakage," I said, hands flying across the runic translation keys. The red alert wasn't blinking sporadically — it was sweeping across the entire exterior perimeter in a coordinated wave of overwhelming pressure. "They aren't trying to sneak in. They're trying to crush the entire perimeter under sheer magical density."
Tristan grabbed his communications earpiece from the table and jammed it in his ear.
A second later he ripped it out, swearing. "Total static. The entire local network is jammed. They're using high-grade Northern blackout runes. Nobody on the main campus knows this house is under attack."
"It's Trent's men," Hayes growled, moving toward the hallway to Wren's bedroom. "He didn't wait for the tribunal summons. He hired the extraction team the second we left the gala."
The massive front doors — solid oak reinforced with three inches of tactical steel — groaned as a concussive kinetic force impacted the exterior wards. Fine stone dust rained from the ceiling rafters.
"How did they find this location?" I demanded, rapidly reviewing the untraceable route I'd taken to scrub our scent trail leaving the ballroom.
"They didn't track the perimeter!" Tristan shouted over the blaring alarm, running toward the weapons cache behind a false wall panel. "They tracked the adrenaline spike. When she panicked in the car — when the artifact tried to lock — the magical signature pulsed. It acted as a tracking beacon. Trent's mages followed the flare straight to our front door."
I cursed in three archaic languages.
I'd been right about the danger of the artifact attempting a permanent connection tonight, and catastrophically wrong about the consequences. We hadn't just terrified her. We'dinadvertently lit a flare over our own heads and broadcast her geographic location to the predator hunting her.
"Tristan," Hayes called from the hallway, his voice cutting through the alarm with the authority of the alpha he was born to be. He didn't look back at us. He was staring down the dark corridor toward the bedroom where Wren was scrambling out of bed. "Secure the front entrance. Buy me five minutes. Chris — initialize the emergency transport runes in the basement."
"They can track a transport," I said, already moving toward the basement hatch.
"We're done playing defense in neutral territory," Hayes said. The feral gold in his eyes burned so brightly it cast a faint glow in the dark hallway. "We aren't hiding the perimeter anymore. We're bringing her to the only place Trent Hawthorne can't reach."
"Hayes." Tristan paused, throwing a loaded combat shotgun into his own arms, recognizing what the Heir was proposing. "If you take her to the Aldridge ancestral stronghold, you're declaring open war on the entire North. Your father?—"
Another deafening concussion slammed into the exterior wards. The outer protective ring of runes shattered with a sound like breaking crystal. The heavy oak doors began to bulge inward.
"Let him try to stop me," Hayes said quietly.
The siege had begun.
21
WREN
The perimeter alarm ripped me from exhausted, dreamless sleep.
I bolted upright in the dark, heart hammering against my ribs. The stabilization artifact on my chest flared — a freezing surge of magic mirroring the adrenaline flooding my system.
"What's happening?" I gasped, throwing the duvet off and scrambling toward the bedroom door.
