Chapter Fifty One

CoralThe red wolves had gathered beneath the oak tree near the edge of the compound.Raina sat with her back against the trunk while Vivian leaned beside her beneath a blanket. Talia had stretched her legs across the grass and rested her head against Cammie’s shoulder, looking too tired to care that Cammie occasionally shifted and nearly knocked her off. Elizabeth and Stephanie sat close enough that their knees touched. Grace and Ariel had their hands clasped loosely between them, while Sophie watched the compound with the same quiet attentiveness she had carried through the connection during the battle.They looked exhausted.Raina’s gaze moved over me first as Duncan and I approached.“You look terrible.” She said, stating the obvious.“Thank you.”“You’re welcome.”Cammie gave a weak laugh. “At least she’s honest.”Duncan’s hand settled against my back. “She needs to sit.”“So do you,” Vivian replied.He looked toward her.Vivian lifted one shoulder beneath the blanket. “I can sti

Chapter Fifty Two

CoralDuncan found me again when the others beneath the oak had started to drift away. He stopped beside the tree and looked down at me. “Walk with me.”Raina glanced toward his shoulder. “Victor said—”“I am allowed to walk.” He repliedDuncan offered me his hand.I took it.We walked slowly toward the edge of the compound, following the line where the boundary moved through the trees. The damage grew worse as we approached the western markers. Broken branches covered the ground, and the scent of blood remained strongest where the fighting had been most concentrated.Several wolves worked nearby, but they gave us space as we passed.The boundary felt different. I sensed it before I deliberately reached for it.Its presence was quieter than it had been during the battle, no longer straining beneath the force of the anchor or surging through me in a desperate warning. It moved beneath the earth and through the trees with a steady awareness that felt almost peaceful.Duncan noticed the

Chapter Fifty Three

DuncanBy late afternoon, the compound no longer looked like a battlefield from a distance.The worst of the blood had been washed from the central clearing. Broken fencing had been collected into organized piles, damaged doors had been removed from their hinges, and temporary posts now marked the sections of the boundary where the original stones had cracked beneath the force of the attack. Wolves moved steadily between the buildings with tools, food, medicine, and messages from the patrols. From the tree line, someone approaching for the first time might have believed the pack had already recovered.They would have been wrong. Damage was easier to hide when everyone remained busy. Grief was not.It appeared in the pauses between tasks, in the way a guardian stopped outside the old meeting hall before entering to help prepare Marcus and Daniel for burial. It lived in the lowered voices of wolves who had survived the southern line and in the empty place near the training grounds where

Chapter Fifty Four

DuncanThe room remained quiet after I spoke.Not because no one had anything to say, but because every wolf sitting around the table understood that the conversation had reached a turning point. We had spent years preparing for another attack from the vampires. Every patrol, every guardian rotation, every contingency plan had been built around one central belief—that eventually they would come for the red wolves again.They had.And despite everything they had prepared, despite the years they had spent studying us, they had still failed.That failure changed more than they realized. It changed us.Callan leaned forward, resting both forearms on the table as he studied the map spread between us. His injured leg remained stretched beneath the chair, though I noticed he had forgotten about it again. That usually happened when his mind was working through a problem."So we don't pursue them," Callan said. "I understand your reasoning, Duncan. We're injured, they're retreating into territ

Chapter Fifty Five

CoralThe meeting slowly dissolved into smaller conversations, though no one seemed particularly eager to leave. The battle was over, but there was a strange feeling settling over all of us, as though we had crossed an invisible line and were only beginning to understand what waited on the other side. Lately, nearly every decision had been made in response to the vampires. We had adjusted patrols because they were watching, strengthened protections because they were testing us, and prepared for battle because we knew they would eventually come.For the first time since I had returned after being taken, we were no longer simply reacting to their plans.We were beginning to shape our own future.I remained seated for several moments after most of the others had stood, my fingers tracing absent circles across the worn wooden tabletop. Duncan stood beside me with one hand resting lightly against the small of my back while he spoke quietly with Callan and Anders. The three of them were alr

Chapter Fifty Six

CoralThe anchor remained in place for another day, although everyone knew leaving it there was not a permanent option. After everything that had happened, none of us were interested in making another decision based on assumptions simply because we wanted the problem gone. We had already spent too much time misunderstanding the boundary, what the anchor was doing to it, and what my connection to both of them meant. Those misunderstandings had nearly convinced us to exhaust ourselves trying to keep the vampires outside when the real threat had already crossed into the compound.Now that the fighting was over, I could finally see how dangerous that mistake had been.The boundary had warned us. The anchor had interfered with that warning.Everything else, the fighting, the protection, the survival, had been us.When we returned to the eastern section the following morning, I did not approach the stone first. Instead, I stopped several feet away and looked around at the people who had com