Chapter 4

Zamir

"How bad is the victim?"

Jason drops into the chair across from my desk with the particular economy of movement he uses when the answer is going to take a while — one ankle crossing the opposite knee, forearms on the armrests.

"Stable," he says. "As of an hour ago. The surgical team at Ashveil General got to the haematoma before it herniated." He pauses. "Apparently the neurosurgeon on shift was exceptional. I'm told he should have a full recovery."

"Good." I turn from the window. "And the hunters?"

"Three confirmed in the vehicle that hit our delta. One didn't survive the impact." Jason's jaw tightens briefly. "The other two scattered on foot. We have trackers on both trails."

"And the infiltration point?"

"South perimeter. They came through the forestry access on Kellan Road — the section we flagged for reinforcement in March." His eyes meet mine. "The section that hasn't been reinforced yet."

"Who's responsible for that timeline?"

"Colt submitted the contractor schedule. There were delays."

Silence descends between us.

"The hunters are getting smarter," I say.

"They're getting better intelligence," Jason says, which is a different and more concerning thing, and we both know it. "Three months ago they were testing boundaries at random. The Dunmore attack was opportunistic — wrong place, wrong perimeter weakness, wrong night. This wasn't opportunistic." He leans forward slightly. "They knew Kellan Road. They knew Robert was on that route. They knew the reinforcement hadn't happened."

"Which means someone told them."

"Which means someone told them," he confirms.

I turn back to the window.

Ironhold's grounds stretch out below the study — the training yards, the eastern gardens, the cliff path that runs down to the water. The afternoon light is doing something particular to the sea today, turning it a shade between grey and green that I have no name for and have been looking at from this window for eleven years.

I become aware, distantly, that I am looking at my hands. It's almost as if I can feel the weight of her waist in them. My wolf has been restless ever since we crossed eyes with her green-gray ones.

"Zamir."

“Yeah?” I turn.

My red-haired beta is staring at me like he won the lottery. "Who would have thought," he says, with great composure, "that I'd live to see this day?"

"We were discussing the hunters," I say.

"We were," he agrees. "And then we stopped, and you started looking at your hands, which — in eleven years of knowing you — I have never once seen you do." He tilts his head. "So. Who would have thought?”

"Jason."

"I'm just observing."

"Observe the infiltration timeline."

"I will," he says. "Right after you tell me what's going on, because whatever it is, it's taken up more of your processing capacity in the last hour than a hunter infiltration, a hospitalised human victim, a delta in the healing bay, and a compromised perimeter combined, and that tells me something significant has happened in the parts of your day I wasn't present for."

I throw him a hard look.

He looks back with the patient expression of a man who has learned that waiting costs him nothing and produces better results than pushing.

"It's nothing," I say. "A woman. At the hospital this morning, when I went to check on Robert. A collision in the corridor — she wasn't watching where she was going. I stopped her from falling. That's all."

The pause that follows is three seconds long and contains a considerable amount of information.

"A woman," Jason says.

"A stranger."

"A stranger who you collided with briefly in a hospital corridor," he says, "and who has been occupying your thoughts for—" he checks his watch "—approximately four hours."

"I didn't say that."

"You were looking at your hands, Zamir. The hand that caught her, specifically." He says it without inflection, which is worse than if he'd said it with any. "In four years of watching you interact with women at pack functions, diplomatic events, and the three Council-arranged introductions you attended under protest, I have never once seen you look at your hands afterward."

I say nothing.

"Should I find her?" he asks.

I look at him. "What?"

"The woman. From the hospital." He says like it's obvious. "It was a pack hospital. There'll be a record of who was on shift, who was consulting, who was visiting. I can have a name in twenty minutes."

"No," I say.

"Why not?"

"Because it was a corridor collision and she thanked me and walked away, Jason. That's the entirety of it."

"That's the entirety of what happened," he says. "It's clearly not the entirety of what's been going on since."

"Wait, how did you—”

His expression shifts to barely concealed satisfaction. "I saw you. When I came out of the lift on Robert's floor. You were in the corridor — she was walking away, you were standing there watching her go." He pauses. "You were watching her walk away the way a man watches something he's already decided he likes.”

The problem with Jason is that he is very rarely wrong about things he has observed directly.

"It doesn't matter," I say. "The situation is what it is."

"The situation being?"

"The Council arrangement." I move back to the desk. "She arrives tomorrow morning. Whatever — that was in the hospital corridor is irrelevant."

Jason is quiet for a moment. "What does she look like? The Council girl."

"I don't know."

He blinks. It is the closest Jason comes to visible surprise — a single, brief interruption of his composure. "You don't know?!"

"I received documentation. Bloodline, pack standing, the relevant credentials." I sit down. "There was no photograph."

"You didn't request one."

"No."

He considers this. "Most people, when informed they're receiving a spouse by Council directive, would want to know what they look like."

"Most people find it relevant," I say.

"And you don't?"

I look at him steadily. "She'll be here or she won't. She'll last or she won't." I pick up the report on the desk — the infiltration timeline, the Kellan Road records, the three months of scheduled reinforcement that somehow never materialised. "The last one didn't."

The room goes quiet.

"She'll be gone or dead," I continue. "Sooner or later. The Council sends them and the situation takes them." I open the report. "I'd rather not have a face in my head for it."

"That's a bleak operational framework for a marriage," Jason says.

"It's an accurate one."

"Zamir—"

My phone rings.

The screen reads: Colt — Gamma.

I pick up. "Callaghan."

"Alpha." Colt's voice is even, clipped, the way it always is when he's delivering something he'd rather not. Colt Vane has been my gamma for eight years — steady, quiet, the kind of man whose reliability you stop noticing because it has never once failed. "There's been another attack. Pack settlement due west. Dunmore territory, near the Strathfield border."

I am already standing. "Casualties?"

"Four confirmed. Two critical, currently in transit to Ironhold General. The settlement's perimeter was breached at three points simultaneously — coordinated, not opportunistic."

"Same signature as this morning?"

"Similar. Possibly the same cell." A pause. "Alpha, they hit the communal hall. There were families inside."

Something goes cold and specific in my chest. I don't let it into my voice.

"How long ago?"

"Forty minutes. I have warriors on site. We've contained the breach but the hunters are gone — they moved fast, they had extraction planned."

"They're not running," I say. "They're rotating. Same cell, multiple targets, same window." I look at Jason, who has straightened in his chair and is already reaching for his own phone. "This isn't a test of our perimeters anymore. They're running an operational pattern."

"That's my read," Colt says.

"Get me the breach coordinates and the survivor accounts within the hour. I want the site documented before anything is moved." I pause. "And Colt — the Kellan Road reinforcement. Find out exactly where that delay originated. Every decision point, every signature."

A beat.

"Yes, Alpha," Colt says.

He hangs up.

I lower the phone.

Jason is looking at me with his operational face fully engaged now — the easy composure of a few minutes ago set aside, replaced by the sharp, forward-facing attention of a beta running calculations.

"Coordinated attacks," he says. "Two in one day, significant distance apart, both showing prior intelligence on pack infrastructure."

"They have a source," I say. "Inside the regional network. Not Ironhold specifically — the radius is too wide for a single-pack leak. Someone with cross-territory access."

"Council level?" Jason says. Carefully.

"Possibly." I pick up my jacket. "Or someone who has access to someone at Council level." I look at him. "Which means we trust nothing we haven't verified ourselves until we find it."

"Understood." He stands. "And the girl tomorrow?"

I pause at the door. "Get the breach report to my office by seven. We'll deal with tomorrow when it's tomorrow."