Kaelen’s POV

I took the long way to the study.

Three extra corridors. Two unnecessary staircases. A detour through the eastern gallery that added exactly three minutes to my commute, time I didn’t have to spare. All because Sylvia’s desk sat just off the main corridor, and I’d rather walk through fire than pass her this morning.

Good, Alex growled inside my skull. She deserved worse than silence.

I didn’t answer him. My jaw was locked so tight my molars ached.

Last night’s argument still clung to me like smoke. Her voice. Shrill and righteous. The words she’d used about Elara—words I’d let hang in the air for a heavy moment before the room had gone very, very quiet.

She called our mate—

"I know what she called her," I muttered under my breath.

Then why is she still breathing?

"Because I’m the Emperor. And emperors don’t rip out throats over insults."

Debatable.

I rounded the final corner and pushed through the study doors. The room swallowed me. High ceilings. Dark wood. Maps pinned across every available surface, their edges curling with age. The scent of old leather and iron ink—familiar. Grounding.

I shut the door and leaned against it. Closed my eyes.

The anger was still there. Not the hot, explosive kind from last night. This was the other version. The slow one. The kind that settled into your bones and calcified. Became architecture.

Three damn years of it.

I crossed to the desk and braced my hands against its edge. The wood groaned under my grip. I stared at the map spread across its surface—the eastern territories, marked with red pins where our patrols had gone silent recently.

A knock. Sharp. Precise. Military.

"Enter."

Cassian stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He moved the way he always did—efficient, contained, like every gesture had been rehearsed for maximum economy. His expression was set in that particular mask he wore when the news was bad enough to require sitting down.

He didn’t sit.

"Kaelen."

"What do you have?"

No pleasantries. We’d stopped bothering with those years ago.

Cassian placed a folded parchment on the desk between us. His fingers were steady. His voice was not quite.

"Our scouts picked up activity near the eastern border. The boundary between imperial territory and the mortal lands."

I didn’t move. "What kind of activity?"

"Recruitment. Malak and Isolde. They’re pulling rogues from deep inside mortal territory. Building numbers."

The names landed like blades.

Malak.

Isolde.

Alex surged forward so hard my vision blurred. Red crept in at the edges. My claws punched through the skin of my fingertips without permission, scoring deep grooves into the surface of the desk.

Cassian watched the wood splinter. He didn’t flinch. He’d seen worse.

"How solid is this?" My voice didn’t sound like mine.

"Solid enough. One of our scouts caught Isolde’s scent near a rendezvous point. Fresh. Two days ago, to be exact."

Isolde.

The name alone was enough to make my blood turn to acid. My mind did what it always did—dragged me backward through time to the night they’d taken Elara. The underground chamber. The chains. The sounds she’d made when—

Kill her. Alex’s voice was barely coherent. Raw. Feral. Find her and kill her and scatter the pieces across every territory so the crows—

"Kaelen."

Cassian’s voice cut through like a blade through silk. Quiet. Firm.

I blinked. Looked down. My claws had gone through the desk entirely. Splinters of dark wood jutted upward like broken bones. The map was torn where my fingers had pierced it.

I pulled my hands free. Slowly. The claws retracted with a sound like knives sliding into sheaths. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

"I’m fine."

"You’re not, and we both know it. But I need you functional for this conversation."

I exhaled through my teeth. Forced my spine straight. Forced the red out of my vision one painful degree at a time.

"Talk."

Cassian unfolded the parchment. Inside was a rough sketch—a map within the map. Markings I didn’t recognize at first, then did. Scout notation. Movement patterns. Supply routes.

"They’re not just recruiting stragglers," Cassian said. "They’re organized. Isolde is running the logistics while Malak handles the muscle. From what we can piece together, they’ve established temporary camps in the mortal borderlands. Close enough to the boundary to pull in disillusioned wolves from our territories. Far enough to stay outside our patrol range."

"How many?"

"We don’t have hard numbers yet. But the scout estimated a growing force at the primary camp alone. And they’re growing."

A growing force. A growing force of rogues under Malak’s command with Isolde whispering strategy into his ear.

I pressed my tongue against the back of my teeth until the pressure became pain.

We’d been hunting them. Three damn years of it. Three years of false trails and cold camps and scouts who came back empty-handed or didn’t come back at all. Three years of Malak slipping through every net we cast like smoke through fingers.

And Isolde with him. Isolde, who had held a blade to my mate’s throat. Isolde, who had smiled while—

"When do we move?" The words came out flat. Mechanical.

Cassian didn’t answer immediately. That was how I knew he was about to disagree with me.

"Not yet."

"Wrong answer."

"It’s the right answer, and you know it." Cassian folded his arms across his chest. "We go in blind, we lose knights. Good knights. We can’t afford that. Not with our border patrols already stretched thin."

"I don’t care about—"

"Yes, you do. You’re Emperor. You have to care." His voice hardened. Not much. Just enough. "I want them dead too, Kaelen. But I want them dead smart. Not in a way that costs us half our strike force because you couldn’t wait."

He’s stalling, Alex snarled. Every day we wait, they grow stronger. Every day—

"What are you proposing?" I forced the question out past Alex’s fury.

"Surveillance. We embed a team near the camps. Map their movements. Count their numbers. Identify supply lines and leadership structure. Then we hit them when we know exactly where to cut."

"How long?"

"Two weeks minimum. Ideally closer to three."

Something cracked inside my chest. Not bone. Something older. Deeper.

"No."

"Kaelen—"

"Two weeks is too long. Three is out of the question." I turned to face him fully. "Every day we watch them, they dig deeper. Recruit more. Fortify."

"And every day we rush, we risk losing the only chance we’ll get." Cassian held my stare. Not many people could. "One clean strike, Kaelen. That’s all we need. But it has to be clean."

The silence stretched between us. Tight as wire.

"One week," I said finally. "Exactly one week of surveillance. Then we go in."

Cassian’s jaw worked. I could see the calculations running behind his eyes. The risk assessment. The probability matrices he kept filed in that methodical brain of his.

"One week is tight."

"One week is what you’re getting."

He held my gaze a moment longer. Then nodded. Short. Crisp. The matter settled.

He turned toward the door. Then stopped. His hand rested on the frame, and he looked back over his shoulder.

"There’s something else."

I waited.

"These rogues Malak is recruiting—they’re not soldiers. They’re brawlers. Street fighters. The kind who learned to kill in alleys and pits, not on battlefields." Cassian’s voice dropped a register. "Our knights are disciplined. Honorable. That’s their strength, but it’s also their weakness against opponents who don’t follow rules."

"Get to the point."

"The mortal lands have underground fighting pits and black markets. You know this." His expression was carefully neutral. "The wolves who survive those places—they fight dirty. No honor. No mercy. Just efficiency."

I saw where this was heading. "You want to recruit from the pits."

"I want to level the field. Our knights can hold a line. But in close-quarters chaos against rogues who bite and gouge and fight like cornered animals?" He shook his head. "We need our own wolves who know that language."

"Wolves with no loyalty to the Empire."

"Wolves with loyalty to coin. And survival. Which makes them predictable enough to use."

I stared at the ruined desk. At the claw marks gouged deep into ancient wood.

Using pit fighters as weapons. Expendable assets pointed at an enemy and released. It was effective. Brutal. The kind of tactic that blurred every line I’d sworn to hold.

The kind of tactic Malak would use.

"It’s a risk."

"Everything we’re doing is a risk. This one just smells worse."

Cassian waited. Patient. The way he always waited when he knew I needed time to chew on something bitter.

"I’ll think about it," I said.

"Consider it again." Cassian stepped toward the door. "I’ll look into it. See what’s out there. See if any of these pit fighters are worth recruiting."