“You want us to rely on witchcraft to hold the thing that’s being driven by witchcraft,” Alex said. “How is that not insanity?”
A murmur of agreement from his corner. Even some of Nordan shifted, uneasy. Arthur felt their eyes on him, on his witch’s bite on his neck.
Dani stayed quiet. He forced himself not to look at her.
“It’s notmyfirst choice,” Dominic said bluntly. “I’d rather put a bullet in every hybrid skull on sight. But if these things can walk into normal camps and smile at witches without tripping a ward, we’re blind. If we keep swinging in the dark, we’ll kill more of our own than them.”
The vampire tilted his head. “For once, I agree with the wolves who think,” he said. “My prince will want information. Anatomy. Behavior. Whatever spell-work is woven into them. Live prisoners tell much better stories than dead ones.”
The way he spoke made Arthur’s skin crawl.
He dragged his focus back to the argument because if he didn’t, it would go the way every argument like this always went.
Nowhere.
He still couldn’t stop his gaze from flicking back to Dani.
She stood with her arms folded, jaw tight, watching their leaders snarling at one another. When Lavinia nodded at Dominic’s words, Dani did too, small but clear.
Of course, she sided with capture. With understanding. She was a witch. They liked taking things apart. Learning from them.
His gut twisted. Affection and unease tangled together.
He’d expected, stupidly, that mating her would settle something in him. That Lunarion’s blessing would hit, and suddenly he’d know what to do with all this, the old hate, the new want, the sheer terror of how much he had to lose now.
Instead, nothing. Not even his gift.
No sudden surge of strength. No vision. No whisper of a god in his ear. Just his same stubborn wolf, his same instincts, stretched between two truths he hated: they needed magic more than ever…and magic still scared the hell out of him.
The power had taken Dominic a while. It had been weeks before it awakened. Maybe that was it.
Or maybe he just wasn’t meant to have one.
“Arthur.” Dominic’s voice snapped him back.
Every eye swung to him. Great.
He cleared his throat. “We’re not bringing a hybrid into the middle of the valley,” he said. “Not near the compound. Not near the human town. If we capture one, it gets caged at the edge. Old mine, maybe. Layer it with every ward the covens can spare, and every gun we own pointed at its head. One slip, we kill it.”
“You’re assuming we can take one alive,” Leonid said, “you’ve clearly never fought one of the new batch.”
“We have,” Rory said quietly. “It almost took my arm off. We still bound it. Held it for an hour.”
“And then?” Arthur asked.
Kiara’s expression flickered. “And then it ripped its own throat out rather than be questioned,” she said, “so next time, we go in with contingencies.”
Lovely.
The debate went on. Alex arguing for violence. Witches insisting on containment. Leonid mocking every sign of caution. Nomads and vampires trying to carve out a neutral middlemeant they’d commit as little as possible until they saw which way the wind blew.
Arthur heard his own voice offering compromises, patrol patterns, ward lines, and trap locations. He even made it through a whole exchange with Dani, where she answered a question about sigil ranges without looking at him, and he pretended that it didn’t land like a blade.
He could do this. Juggle this. Juggleher.
He could not, apparently, control the rest of the world.
The cry came from above.
