“They’re pulling back,” I say.
Archer’s eyes narrow slightly. “Not retreating.”
Conrad hears it too. “Testing complete?”
Archer nods once. “We denied them escalation.”
A final ripple moves through the treeline—like a signal passing through something unseen. And then?—
Nothing.
No pursuit. No escalation.No second wave. Just absence. The forest goes still. Minutes pass. No one moves from position. No one assumes safety. Then a scout from the outer ridge returns at a run, skidding into the square.
“They’re gone,” he says, breathless. “All of them. They’re withdrawing fully.”
A second scout follows immediately after. “No reformation. No regrouping. Whatever their structure was—it’s breaking apart.”
Conrad exhales sharply. “So that’s it.”
Archer doesn’t lower his guard immediately. He watches the treeline for a long moment longer than anyone else. Then, finally, he says it.
“Yes.”
The single word releases something in the entire town. Not celebration yet. But release.
I feel it too—something unclenching inside my chest that I didn’t realize had been held so tightly. The threat doesn’t return. Not in minutes. Not in an hour. It simply… stops.
Archer steps back slightly, finally letting his shoulders drop a fraction. The pack around him does the same in waves, like they’re all realizing at once that the system has gone quiet.
Conrad looks toward him. “Wait. That felt too easy. You think they’ll come back?”
Archer shakes his head once. “Not like that. Now that I've seen them, I know what that was.”
We all turn toward him with raised brows, waiting for the big reveal.
“It was a war pack. A war pack is usually made up of elite rogues that use lesser rogues for their dirty work such as scouting and skirmishing. Then, when they have the information they want, they move on. But, once they move in, if there is a greater measure of security in place than expected, they move on. They don’t want to get their hands dirty. They just want to move in and take over with barely a whimper.”
I sigh. “That’s dirty. And lazy. ‘War pack’ is a misleading name.”
Archer chuckles, and that? That’s enough to relieve the remaining tension from my body. It meansthis fight is over. I stand beside him, the weight of it settling into place slowly.
Redwood Crossing is still standing. Still intact. Still ours. Archer turns slightly toward me then. The tension in his expression isn’t sharpened for battle. It’s just… present.
“We held it,” I say quietly.
“Yes,” he answers.
A pause.
Then, softer: “We did.”
And in that moment, with the forest finally still and the town finally breathing again?—
there is nothing left coming for us in the dark.
40
ARCHER
