But even as I say it, I feel it settle into place. People are already looking to me. Business owners leaning out of doorways. Civilians asking questions I’m answering without hesitation. Radio chatter routing through my phone. Delilah handling evacuation flow. Brooke handling physical direction.
And me—somehow—holding the entire communication structure together as if I’ve been doing it for years instead of days.
By the time we reach the bookstore again, I realize something. I’m not just reacting anymore. I’m the node everything passes through. The center point. The anchor. And somewhere in the forest beyond the town limits, something is testing exactly how stable that anchor really is.
I look down at my phone as another message comes in from a patrol unit. Multiple contacts confirmed along eastern ridge. Another from the south access road. Then west. I exhale slowly.
“Okay,” I say quietly to myself. “So that’s how this is going to go.”
I open the communication channel again and begin rerouting every available resource, my voice steady even as the town around me starts to shift into defense mode. Redwood Crossing is no longer just a town. It’s a network. And I’m holding it together.
I barely have time to process the scale of what’s happening before the next wave of updates starts coming in.
My phone vibrates continuously in my hand, each alert stacking over the last like a rising tide I can’t pause to breathe between. Patrol units check in from the north ridge, then the east access road, then two volunteer runners from Main Street who relay updates on foot because the radio network is already overloaded.
I move through it like muscle memory I didn’t know I had.
“North ridge team, hold position and do not engage unless visual confirmation of hostile movement,” I say into my phone, already typing another message with my free hand. “East access road, reroute civilians to the bookstore staging area. Repeat—do not send them toward the forest perimeter.”
Delilah steps closer, watching me. “You’re not even hesitating anymore.”
“I don’t have time to hesitate,” I reply.
A burst of static crackles through one of the patrol channels, followed by a panicked voice. “We’ve got movement again—multiple points, I can’t—there’s too many?—”
I immediately key in. “Stay calm. Identify direction markers. North, south, east, or west?”
A beat of silence.
“West,” the voice says finally.
I exhale sharply. That matches the earlier pattern.
“They’re tightening the circle,” I murmur under my breath.
Brooke looks at me. “Around what?”
I don’t answer immediately. Because the answer is becoming harder to ignore. Not the town. Not the roads. Me. I lift my voice again as I redirect another incoming report, my tone steady even as the pressure builds around me like unseen walls closing in.
“Then we tighten ours first,” I say.
32
ARCHER
Ifeel the shift in the air long before I reach the edge of Redwood Crossing.
The forest carries sound differently when something is wrong—subtle changes in rhythm, the absence of smaller creatures, the way the wind moves through branches without interruption. It isn’t silence.
It’s tension. And it’s everywhere.
I break through the last stretch of trees at a run, boots hitting the dirt road just outside town as my gaze snaps immediately to the perimeter.
Shifters are already mobilizing. Not scattered. Not reacting. Organizing. That alone tells me how serious this has become.
Conrad stands near the main junction, speaking sharply into a radio while two younger shifters wait for instructions. When he sees me, he doesn’t waste time.
“You’re back.”
