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The room held still around that. Kahn’s expression didn’t soften, but it recalculated.

Kahn tapped the folder closed. “Anything else?”

“He’ll split the assault. Two fronts, maybe three. A loud strike to pull your strength in one direction, then the real push somewhere you’ve left open.” She glanced at Viktor’s map, at the gap along the eastern ridge marked in red, and pointed. “If I were him, I’d hit there first because it draws every patrol wolf on the compound. Then I’d come through here, where no one’s looking anymore, and I’d walk straight to the residential block.”

Viktor drew a second circle around the residential block without being told.

Kahn sat back. The chair creaked under him. He looked at her for a long moment, and this time the look carried none of the caution it had carried three days ago in this same room.

“Anything you remember,” he said. “From here on. I want it, no matter how small it seems to you.”

“You’ll have it.”

“Good, then.” He stood. The meeting shifted around his movement, chairs sliding back, Gideon gathering his folder, Caitlynn already murmuring a question to Viktor about the ward matrix. Kahn paused beside Sloane’s chair on his way out.

“Next time,” he said, “you won’t need to let yourself in.”

He left before she could answer. Gideon followed, slower, and stopped at the door long enough to look back at her, his face caught between apology and an older regret. Then he was gone too.

Caitlynn touched Sloane’s shoulder on her way past, briefly, and said nothing, which from Caitlynn, felt like its own kind of statement.

Viktor packed up his markers. Chris stayed across the table, watching her with an expression she didn’t have a name for yet.

Sloane looked down at the map. At the two red circles, one drawn from her father’s habits, one drawn because she’d said the words out loud and a room full of people had believed her enough to act on them.

She’d spent two decades being talked about in rooms she wasn’t allowed into, decisions made over her head by people who thought they knew better. This was the first time she’d walked into one of those rooms herself and made it impossible for anyone to leave her out of the next.

Chapter 21 - Chris

Chris waited until the room had cleared before he moved.

Sloane stayed in her chair a moment longer, staring at the map like she expected it to change under her eyes. He crossed the room and sat on the edge of the table, close enough that she had to tip her head to look at him. Her hands were folded in her lap. He’d never seen her sit that still before a meeting. He had seen it plenty after one, when whatever she’d spent got taken back out of her all at once.

“What you did in there,” he said. “That was skill, Sloane. You’re… you were right. We tend to underestimate you.”

“I know my father.”

“You know him better than anyone in that room, and you used it. Viktor didn’t need to ask you a single follow-up question. Kahn didn’t interrupt you once.” He shook his head. “That’s not just about your father. That’s skill nobody’s given you credit for.”

Her mouth curved, not quite a smile, more the shape a smile made before it decided whether to arrive. “Careful. If you keep saying nice things, I’ll start expecting them.”

“Would that be so terrible?”

“Terrible isn’t the word I’d use.” She stood, smoothing her shirt with both palms. “I don’t know what word I’d use.”

He let it sit. Pushing her past the edge of what she was willing to say had never gotten him anywhere useful. He’d learned that the slow way, through weeks of doors closing in his face, both the literal kind and the kind he felt through the bond, low and sudden, like a hand pulling a curtain.

“Patrol tonight,” he said instead. “Northern loop. You in?”

“I’m always in.”

Her smile almost matched his. Almost.

He didn’t wait for her before leaving. He gave her the space that he knew she needed and waited for dusk to arrive.

The compound settled into its evening rhythm around them: lights dimming in the barracks, the smell of woodsmoke rising from the dining hall chimney, a pair of pups chasing each other across the yard before their mother called them in. By the time Chris and Sloane reached the northern gate, the sky had gone the color of a deep bruise, stars pushing through in scattered clusters.

They walked the fence line without speaking for the first stretch. Sloane kept her eyes moving, scanning the tree line the way she always did, cataloging shadows out of habit rather than fear. Chris had noticed that about her weeks ago. She didn’t flinch at the dark. She read it.