ログインHarwick caught the man’s wrist and pulled him through.The hidden door swung inward with him. A guard forced it shut while another dropped the latch and braced his shoulder against the iron.The man collapsed onto both knees.His hood fell back.Harwick’s grip shifted.“Northern patrol.”Mud streaked the man’s face. One eye had swollen nearly closed, and the skin around both wrists was torn where rope had rubbed through it. His Black Moon scent remained beneath sweat, stone dust and pine pitch.Darius crouched in front of him.“Can you breathe?”The patrol wolf nodded.“Are you carrying a weapon?”“No.”“Message?”His gaze moved to Vivian.“I carried hers.”Vivian’s attention sharpened. “You collected my reply.”“Yes.”Harwick searched him anyway. He found a route token, an empty water flask and a folded instruction written in the same plain block letters as the order carried by the maintenance wolf.ENTER. OPEN INNER ACCESS. WAIT.Vivian read it without touching the paper.“Where did
Black Moon Ridge had another door.Harwick did not touch it.He moved the remaining crates away while two guards checked the stone on either side. The narrow iron panel was barely wide enough for one person to pass through. Its edges had been fitted so closely into the wall that I could understand how generations of wolves had walked past without seeing it.Vivian crouched near the latch.“Can it be opened from this side?” Darius asked.“Yes.”“Do not.”Harwick glanced at him.“We may lose whoever is using it.”“We may also open an unknown route into the infirmary corridor,” Darius said. “Two guards here. Two at the crossing. Nobody enters until we know what is waiting beyond it.”The pack link opened before Harwick could answer.West boundary. Six wolves in the trees. No challenge issued.Darius focused immediately.Inside our territory?Two crossed. They stepped back when we held the line.Ezra’s voice followed from the eastern defence.They’re testing the response.Darius looked to
The crossing was secure.That did not make the people trapped around it innocent.Or guilty.Which was the problem.Six wolves had been caught inside the movement created by the transfer rule.Two guards.A healer.A records clerk.One kitchen worker carrying supplies towards the old family shelter.And a young maintenance wolf who had been found beside the inner grille with the locking pin already removed.Darius wanted the corridor sealed.Ezra agreed.From a military position, they were right.I could hear the wounded still moving towards us through the pack link.One stretcher.Then another.A frightened child somewhere near the central shelter asking why his mother had not come back yet.If we shut everything, we protected the centre of Black Moon Ridge.We also trapped people who had done nothing except follow the rules.Ezra’s voice reached me privately through the link.I can send another pair inside.I looked towards the eastern windows even though he was nowhere near them.N
Harwick’s next report gave us nothing.Runner still moving west. No confirmed second contact.Darius answered through the link.Keep watching. Do not close distance.Victor had Vivian’s answer.We still did not know what he intended to do with it.I had barely finished thinking that when another voice cut through the pack link.Alpha. Lower court transfer just activated.Darius looked up from the map.“Who ordered it?”A pause.Nobody.Vivian was already moving.“That is impossible.”The guard answered.Four interior guards have left second hall for infirmary escort. Two reserves are moving from the central shelter to cover the old family shelter.Vivian reached the duty slate before anyone else.“Those are automatic transfers.”Ezra pushed himself upright from the chair.“Why?”“Medical overflow and shelter release.”She scanned the page.“If the infirmary requests additional escort while one of the protected shelters reports stable capacity, the nearest available internal guards red
“He gave me an order.”Nobody answered immediately.Vivian looked back at the page.Then she carried it to the smaller table where Harwick had left the old emergency books.“I’m answering him.”Maren moved beside her.“You do not owe him an answer.”“No.”Vivian opened the first book.“But he expects one.”Darius came around the table.“You think we can use that.”“I know we can use part of it.”She turned Victor’s letter over and pointed to the small code beneath his seal.“The meeting instruction is for me. This is for the relay.”Harwick leaned over the page.“The return route?”“The first stage of it.”Vivian pulled another book from the stack and opened it near the middle.“These codes were used when an emergency message passed through more than one collection point. The recipient replied through the same system, but the first return location was fixed.”Ezra frowned.“So whoever collects her answer gives us another point in his network.”“Possibly another person,” Vivian said. “
“Victor contacted her directly.”That got me dressed faster than any alarm had.I pulled my shirt over my head and found my boots while Ezra reached for his. He moved more carefully than he had before Harwick knocked. The bandage around his ribs had survived our attempt at forgetting the war for half an hour, but only just.Harwick waited in the corridor.“How?” Ezra asked.“Written message. It came through one of the old emergency relays.”My hands stopped on the laces.“Inside the pack house?”“Inside Black Moon territory,” Harwick said. “That is all we know yet.”Of course it was.Victor had lost his magic.He had not lost every door he had spent years building.We followed Harwick to the small operations room off the main hall.Darius stood over a map covered in stones and marked strips of paper. Maren was beside him. Vivian stood at the other end of the table with a folded page in front of her.She looked composed.Too composed.I knew that version of her. It was the one that app







