Celeste doesn’t move.
“You promised me,” Simone says. “Not as a plan. As my sister. You looked me in the eye and said 'I promise.'”
The corridor is silent. Through the glass behind Simone, a wolf is sitting beside a child’s bed. The child is asleep. The wolf is awake. The medical wing hums with the machinery of forty-seven people who were rescued from one facility while the others kept running.
“We didn’t have the assets,” Celeste says. “We didn’t have the coalition. We didn’t have the intelligence verified. If we’d hit all three with what we had, we would have lost people.”
“People are lost right now.” Simone’s voice cracks on the word. She pulls it back. “Right now, tonight, people are in cots in buildings we can’t find because we gave him time to move them. I told you that’s what he’d do. I told you because I watched him do it. They moved me between facilities, Celeste. I saw the logistics. I saw how fast they could break down a site and rebuild somewhere else. I told you and you hit one farm and you let the others breathe.”
I stand behind Celeste. I don’t speak. This is between sisters, and the strategic justification I could offer would be accurate and irrelevant and Simone would hear a lord explaining to a survivor why the math required her people to wait.
Celeste steps forward. Simone doesn’t step back.
“I’m going to find them,” Celeste says.
“You were going to find them before.”
“I’m going to find them and I’m going to hit every one of them at the same time. Every asset we have. Every ally. Every wolf. All of it, all at once, the way you told me to.”
Simone holds her sister’s gaze.
“Don’t promise me again,” Simone says. “Just do it.”
She walks back into the medical wing. I follow her.
Elena meets us inside the door. Her face tells me before her words do.
“The woman from the third room,” Elena says. “Her vitals have been dropping all night. Dalton’s done everything he can.”
Simone pushes past her.
The woman is in the bed nearest the back wall. Her face is gray against the pillow. The monitors above the cot show numbers that are barely holding. Dalton is beside her, checking the line. He looks up at Elena and shakes his head.
Simone sits on the edge of the bed. She takes the woman’s hand. The woman’s eyes open. Barely.
“Hey,” Simone says. Quiet. “I’m here.”
The woman’s fingers curl around Simone’s. The grip is weak.
Simone leans closer. Her voice drops.
“There’s a way,” Simone says. “To keep you here. It would mean becoming like us. Like me.” She swallows. “I need to know if that’s what you want. Or if you’re ready to go.”
The woman looks at Simone. Her eyes are clear. Clearer than they’ve been since she arrived.
“I’m tired,” she whispers. “I’d like to go in peace.”
Simone’s shoulders drop. Her head bows. She doesn’t let go.
“Okay,” Simone says. Her voice breaks on the word. “It’s your choice and I respect that.”
The monitors slow. The intervals stretch. Dalton reaches up and adjusts the line so the woman isn’t in pain.
The beeping stops.
Dalton turns the monitors off.
Simone stays beside the bed with her head bowed and her hand wrapped around fingers that aren’t holding back anymore.
