All Chapters of DENY ME IF YOU CAN: Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

150 Chapters

What Mira Asked

Mira asked her first real question at three years old.Not the questions before that — those had been the questions of a child learning the names of things, the constant accumulating vocabulary of a person building their first map of the world. Those had been: what is that, and why does Fenn sit there, and where does Dorin go when he goes, and what is the forest for.The first real question came on a Tuesday in the spring of the seventh year.She was at the permanent desk in the Ironfang command tent when Mira came in, which she did freely because she had been coming in freely since she could walk, with the comfort of a child who understood a room as her own because the people in it were hers. She came in and stood at the desk and looked at the maps spread across it and said: "Why are they different colours?"Zara looked at the maps.The eastern border assessment used three colours — blue for Ironfang patrol routes, red for Silverblood, green for the joint sections."Because they belo

What Carr Watched

Carr did not ask questions the way Mira asked questions.He gathered information differently — by watching, by being present in a room without announcing himself, by sitting in the configuration Kade used at the central fire, the slightly back-from-it position that was not absence but the specific kind of presence that observed more than it participated.She had noticed this at two. By three it was established. By four it was the thing she thought about most when she thought about who he was.He was, she had concluded, the most observant person she had encountered since Dorin.The difference from Dorin was that Carr was four years old and had not yet learned to use the observation for anything except its own sake — the pure accumulation of it, the building of a picture that was not yet being applied to anything.He would know when to apply it.She was patient about this.On a Tuesday in the spring of the seventh year — the same week Mira had asked about the colours — Carr came to the

Kit at Seventeen

Kit turned seventeen in the spring of the seventh year.He celebrated this, characteristically, by completing the most comprehensive spring eastern survey in the record — sixteen pages, the geological feature fully mapped, three secondary indicators identified that no previous survey had captured, and a recommendations section that Hadrik described in the monthly summary as the clearest infrastructure prioritisation framework he had seen outside of Lena's administrative documentation.She had read the survey three times.She had gone to find him after the third reading.He was at the eastern facility — he spent two days a week there now, the administrative internship Lena had formalised for him in his sixteenth year, which had produced results consistent with what she had predicted when Lena first suggested Wynn and which had produced additional results neither of them had anticipated, specifically that Kit had identified three administrative inefficiencies in the observer programme sc

Vera's Last Review

Vera conducted her seventh annual review in the autumn of the seventh year.She was seventy-seven years old. She had been on the Silverblood pack council for forty-seven of them. She had conducted seven joint structure reviews, each one building on the previous, each one asking the harder version of the question from the year before.The seventh review took four hours.It covered the joint Alpha standing's structural integrity under seven years of operation, the succession framework's current status, the input mechanism's function across both packs and the three associate member packs, the exchange programme's cumulative outcomes, and the question Vera had been building toward for three years.She asked it at the end."The primary allegiance question," she said. "Seven years. The third conflict you named in the first review — the structural question about what happens if the joint structure requires one of you to reduce individual pack commitment. Has it become a concrete question?"Z

Lena's Garden

In the eighth year Lena planted a garden.Not a large one — a small enclosed space behind the joint healer facility's eastern wall, where the afternoon light was good and the stone kept the frost off for three weeks longer than the surrounding ground. She planted it in the spring and tended it through the summer and by autumn it was producing herbs for the corps dispensary in quantities that reduced the supply chain requirement from the eastern depot by eight percent.She brought Zara the efficiency calculation without being asked.Zara read it."Eight percent," she said."At full yield," Lena said. "The first year is establishment. Full yield from the second year. By the fifth year, with the expansion I'm planning, the reduction could reach fourteen percent."She looked at Lena."The planning permission for the expansion is in the joint council's facilities queue," she said."I know," Lena said. "I submitted it last week. It should come through in the third month.""I'll expedite it,

What Fenn Said

Fenn retired from the input mechanism role in the autumn of the eighth year.Not from the camp — he made this clear from the beginning and with the pre-emptive flatness of someone who had anticipated the misunderstanding and was not willing to spend time on it. He retired from the formal role. He remained at the fire. He remained in his position. He remained the wolf who handed cups and who stood up for one second to acknowledge things worth acknowledging and who had opinions about Mira that he expressed to no one and demonstrated through consistent presence.He simply retired from the formal input mechanism role and endorsed Wynn as his successor, which he did by the mechanism of saying to Kade, in the way he said things — directly and without surrounding language: "Wynn. He's ready."Kade had brought this to her that evening.She had said: "Yes."Kade had said: "I already told Wynn."She had said: "What did Wynn say?"Kade had said: "He said he'd been preparing since the third year.

The Question Mira Asked at Seven

Mira asked the second real question at seven years old.She came to the command tent on a Thursday evening — she came to the command tent freely and often, more than Carr, who spent more time at the perimeter and the patrol briefings and the administrative rooms, building his map of how things connected. Mira came to the command tent because the desk was there and the maps were there and the work was there.She sat across from Zara with the focused attention she always brought."Tell me about the war," she said.Zara set down her pen.She had been waiting for this question. She had been building her answer for four years, since the three-year-old had asked about the colours on the map, because she had known then that the colour question was the beginning and the war question was where it led.She had promised herself she would tell them everything.She told her everything.Not all of it — not in one evening, Mira was seven and the story was long. But the shape of it, honestly, at the

The Morning of the Tenth Year

The tenth year arrived the way significant years arrived in a life that had learned to be ordinary — without announcement, the calendar simply turning to it, the camp on the first morning of it looking exactly as it had looked on the last morning of the year before.She woke before dawn, as she always did.She dressed in the dark.She went to the eastern perimeter.The camp in the pre-dawn of the tenth year of the joint alliance was — she stood at the marker and looked at it and read it the way she had always read things, in layers.The surface: twelve wolves on the night rotation, two at the creek position, standard winter coverage, the bridge holding in its third winter, the northern marker posts adjusted after Kit's geological assessment, the gap analysis integrated into the standard form.The layer beneath: forty-three wolves in both camps with exchange rotation experience, carrying that experience into everything they did without being asked. Three associate member packs whose ob

The Last Western Coast

They went to Endmere in the autumn of the tenth year.Not alone this time. They had discussed it — whether to go alone as they always had, the five days that were theirs specifically, the fixed point — and had concluded that this time the fixed point could hold more.Mira and Carr came. Kit came, because he was seventeen and the working group analysis was submitted and he had not stopped working for six months and Sera had told him directly that he needed five days that were not the working group. Dorin came, which was non-negotiable because Dorin went where she went and she had stopped pretending otherwise eight years ago.Lena came. She had not been to the western coast. She had been rebuilding for eight years and the garden was in its fifth year and she had, Zara thought, been ready for a fixed point of her own for longer than she had known how to take it.Sera came. Nobody had invited Sera. Sera had heard about the trip and had said: "I'm coming," and that had been the whole of th

Dinner at Six

Berta did not hold dinner.She had stated this clearly four times across the history of Zara and Kade's visits to Endmere and she did not deviate from it on this occasion. At five-fifty the smell from the kitchen indicated that the meal was ready and at six exactly Berta came to the door and said, with the particular authority of a woman who had been running this inn for forty years: "Dinner."They came.Not all at once — they came the way a group of wolves comes when nobody has organised them, in the organic sequence of people who trust that the destination is the same and that the timing will work out. Dorin came first because Dorin was always early. Kit came with Mira and Carr because they had been together on the cliff path until Berta's announcement and they moved in the configuration they had developed over the afternoon. Lena came from the room she had been given, which had a window with the sea view, and which she had been sitting in when Zara had checked an hour ago with the

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