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He wasn't shouting. That somehow made everything worse.

"I'm not telling you not to help them," he said. "I'm telling you that rushing toward every injured thing you can feel is going to get you hurt. Or someone following you. Or the thing you're trying to save."

"I know."

"Then use what you know."

The words stung.

I looked away.

Corian let the silence sit between us for a moment before turning back toward the trap field.

"We're getting them out. But we're doing it properly."

I nodded.

He waited.

I realized he was waiting for an actual answer.

"Fine."

His eyebrow lifted.

I almost told him not to start.

Instead I forced my arms down from where I'd folded them defensively across my chest. "Understood."

That satisfied him.

The rescue took longer than I wanted.

Once I forced myself to stop feeling only the pain, the scene became increasingly ugly. There were three separate restraint points arranged around a narrow animal trail, all fed by thin conductive wires buried beneath mud and wet leaves. Whoever had built them understood both the terrain and the animals using it.

Dannian crouched beside one of the tracks without touching anything. "These aren't old."

"No," Corian said.

The edge of a boot print remained sharp beside a root.

One of Dannian's researchers found a cut length of binding strap hidden beneath a fern, while Nykos uncovered a narrow marker carved into the underside of a branch.

Illegal.

The Rift was Crown-controlled, and collecting live Rift creatures without sanction carried penalties severe enough that most people didn't try.

Most. There were always poachers, and battalions dealt with them often.

Nykos crouched over the cut binding strap the researcher had found, turning it slowly between two fingers.

"They planned this before they ever set foot on the island," he said, low enough that it took me a second to place the anger underneath it. "Brought binding straps. Built restraint frames instead of snares. Rigged a power source that could kill something standing too close to it." He set the strap down like it had personally offended him. "This isn't someone desperate enough to poach for food. This is someone who priced out exactly what a live Kelvarin pup is worth and decided three of them screaming in the mud overnight was an acceptable cost."

"Nykos," Corian said, not sharply, just enough to note it.

"I know." He stood, brushing mud from his knees with more force than the task required. "I'm not going to do anything about it right now. I'm allowed to hate it."

Dannian glanced at him with something like approval. "Hate it quietly while we finish clearing this."