Page 27

“It could.”

Chris closed his eyes. “That’s a problem.”

Viktor was silent for a while, then nodded. “That’s a bigger problem than one man.”

“I’m aware of that, too.”

Viktor started walking again. Chris fell into step beside him, matching the pace. They moved along the ridge in silence, passing three more anchor points. Viktor checked each one. Same result. The wards were holding. The wards were strong. The wards had failed to detect a hostile wolf twice in the span of a week.

At anchor point seven, Viktor stopped. He stood with his arms crossed, looking down at the stake driven into the muddy ground.

“Caitlynn recalibrated this one six weeks ago,” he said. “She adjusted the resonance frequency for the new matrix. The effective radius shortened by twelve feet.”

“Olivia caught that gap during the Marcus investigation.”

“Olivia caught a lot of things during the Marcus investigation.” Viktor’s mouth moved, not quite a smile. “The point is, the gap was identified. It was patched. The patrol timing was adjusted to compensate.”

“So the gap isn’t the gap.”

“No. It would seem like it, but it’s not.”

Chris crouched beside the stake. The iron was cold under his fingers, humming with a frequency he couldn’t hear but could feel, a vibration running up through his wrist into the bones of his forearm. He pulled his hand back.

“He’s not stumbling through holes in the fence,” Chris said. “He’s walking through the front door.”

“Which means he has a way to suppress his signature indeed, or the wards have a blind spot we haven’t identified, or both.”

“I don’t like either option.”

Viktor sighed. “Yes. Neither do I. Both… leave us vulnerable. Not just to him. To anyone.”

“How many exiles are there that we could end up worrying about?”

Viktor sighed, then looked away. “The pack has always done… what ought to be done.”

Chris stood and wiped the mud from his hands onto his jeans. Through the trees, he could see the compound, smoke rising from the kitchen chimney. The morning patrol was changing over, two wolves crossing the south courtyard in human form, their voices carrying in the still air.

“I want to bring Caitlynn out here,” he said. “Have her walk every anchor point between four and nine. She built the matrix. If there’s a frequency the wards aren’t reading, she’ll feel it.”

“Agreed. I’ll speak to Kahn.”

Chris scoffed at the notion. “I’ll talk to Caitlynn directly.”

Viktor looked at him. The look held for a beat, carrying the quiet assessment that Viktor brought to everything, the careful weighing of what was being said against what was being meant.

“Fine,” Viktor said. “But I want the results before you act on them.”

“You’ll have them.”

They turned back along the ridge, retracing their path toward the compound. The sun had burned through the morning fog, warming the pine needles underfoot. Chris could smell the bread from the kitchen, the wet earth, the iron tang of the ward stakes fading behind them.

Viktor walked beside him. Though it was silent between them, it was not uncomfortable. Chris had always found Viktor easy to be around, which was a thing most people would have found absurd. Viktor was rigid, precise, controlled to a degree that made most wolves nervous. But Chris had grown up in foster homes where the quiet people were often the safest people, the ones who didn’t fill silence with noise just to prove they could. Viktor’s silence had never bothered him.

They reached the tree line at the edge of the compound. The training yard was empty. Beyond it, the Alpha house sat in the morning light, its stone walls catching the sun.

Viktor stopped.

“Are you alright?”