(Rhydian)

I’ve been looking at the map for three hours.

Not continuously — I eat, I check on the trainees, I do a perimeter walk with Brennan that takes forty minutes and covers things we’ve already covered twice but covering things twice is how you find what you missed the first time. But I keep coming back to it. The map on the war room table, the charcoal notations, the positions Brennan updates every time a scout comes in.

The supply line keeps pulling my attention.

It’s here — east of the logging track, running parallel to the gorge at maybe a quarter mile. Long route, slow terrain, the kind of path you use when you’re moving volume rather than speed. Varek’s camp needs food, weapons, the particular logistics of a hundred and four wolves who’ve been camping in border territory for three days. That line is what keeps them functioning.

Cut it and you don’t stop the attack.

But you change what it costs them to execute it.

Hungry wolves fight sloppily. Cold wolves miscommunicate. A unit that’s been waiting three days for resupply that doesn’t arrive starts making individual decisions, and individual decisions in a coordinated assault are where things break down. You’re not defeating them — you’re introducing noise into their system, and noise at the wrong moment is sometimes enough.

Five wolves. Maybe six. Moving fast, moving quiet, hitting the supply wagons at the gorge crossing where the terrain narrows and the return route is clear.

Get in, damage what you can, get out before Shadowpine’s flanking scouts know anything has happened.

It’s not a suicide mission.

I’ve been telling myself that for three hours and the truth is I don’t fully know. I know the terrain — I’ve run that gorge approach twice, once during a patrol and once on my own, just because it’s what I do, because knowing land is the only insurance that has ever reliably kept me alive. I know where the narrow point is, I know how long the crossing takes, I know the three places where you can disappear into the tree coverage fast enough that a Shadowpine scout on the standard rotation wouldn’t catch the movement.

What I don’t know is Varek’s counter-positioning. Whether he’s put guards on the supply line specifically, how many, whether Marcus told him about the gorge approach.

Marcus probably told him about the gorge approach.

I’m still looking at the map when Elena comes in.

She reads the room immediately — she always reads rooms immediately, it’s one of the things I’ve stopped finding unnerving and started finding useful. She clocks the map, clocks where my attention is, clocks the two wolves behind me who’ve been watching me think for the last hour.

"Show me," she says.

I point.

She leans over the table. Her hair falls forward and she pushes it back with one hand, automatic, and looks at the supply line route. Her finger traces it slowly.

"Here," I say, putting my finger on the gorge crossing. "The terrain narrows to maybe thirty feet. One wagon at a time. If they’re moving volume they’re making four, five crossings minimum."

"Before dawn."

"Has to be. After dawn Shadowpine will have the whole eastern approach covered for the main push."

She’s quiet. Looking at the map.

"Brennan’s tracking pairs confirmed the supply movement yesterday evening," I say. "Same route, same timing. It’s consistent."

"You’ve been watching this for three hours."

"Yes."

"And you want to go yourself."

I look at her. Not trying to soften it or reframe it. "Yes."

The room is very still.

Petra, who is now doing light duty and has apparently decided that light duty means standing in the war room being useful, shifts her weight near the door. The two wolves behind me are doing the specific non-movement of people trying not to be noticed.

Elena straightens.

She turns from the table and puts her back to it, arms not quite crossed — one hand gripping the opposite wrist, which is a thing she does when she’s working through something she’s already half decided. I know this gesture. I’ve been collecting her gestures for two months without meaning to.

"How many," she says.

"Five. Maybe six. People who know the gorge approach and can move fast." I pause. "Cade."

She looks at me.

"He’s ready," I say. "You know he is."

She looks at the ceiling briefly. Looks back at me.

"Brennan—"

"Brennan is your best border commander and you need him here when the main engagement hits." I hold her gaze. "I know the gorge. I ran it twice. I know where the cover is and where it isn’t and what the crossing looks like at night." I pause. "Elena."

She makes a sound that isn’t quite a word.

"I know what you’re going to say," I say.

"Do you."

"You’re going to say it’s high risk. That the intelligence on Shadowpine’s counter-positioning is incomplete. That Marcus probably briefed Varek on the gorge approach which means they may have guards on the crossing that aren’t in our current tracking data." I pause. "You’re going to say I’m not expendable."

She looks at me for a long moment.

"Are you done," she says.

"Almost." I hold her gaze. "I’m going to say that you know this changes the math on the main engagement. You’ve been doing the math for three days and you know every variable that moves in our favor matters. And this one—" I touch the map without looking away from her. "This one we can actually reach."

The fire in the corner has burned down. Someone hasn’t tended it. The room smells like cold stone and old charcoal and the specific tension of a place where hard decisions are made and remade until there’s nothing left to decide.

Elena looks at the map.

Then she looks at me.

Her jaw is doing the thing. Not the deciding thing — past that. The thing after deciding, where she’s living inside the decision and checking whether she can hold it.

She can hold it. I can see that she can hold it. It costs her, I can see that too, which is its own kind of thing to carry.

She pushes off from the table.

Crosses to me.

She’s close. Not touching, just close, in the private radius that belongs to us and not to the room, and she tilts her chin up slightly to hold my gaze because I have three inches on her and she has never once in my experience compensated for this by doing anything other than just looking up and expecting you to look back.

I look back.

"You come back," she says.

Not a request. Not exactly a condition. Something with more weight than either.

"I know—"

"That’s the only term," she says. "The only one that matters." Her voice is completely even. "You can take Cade and whoever else you need, you can hit the supply line, you can do whatever the gorge approach requires. But you come back."

I search her face.

She means it the way she means everything — completely, without reservation, in the specific way of someone who doesn’t say things unless they’ve already paid the price of meaning them.

"Okay," I say.

"I need to hear—"

"I’ll come back." I hold her gaze. "I’m coming back."

She breathes.

One controlled breath that I feel more than see.

Her hand comes up. Presses flat against my chest — right over where she always puts it, over the heartbeat she’s been checking since the first lesson in the bedroom, the first night she was teaching me that touch doesn’t have to mean damage. I put my hand over hers.

"I know you know the gorge," she says, quieter. "I know you’re the right call for this." A pause. "I also know that knowing those things doesn’t make standing here agreeing to it—" She stops.

"I know," I say.

"Don’t be a hero," she says. "Do the job and come home."

Home.

She says it like it’s the most ordinary word in any sentence. Like it’s just a coordinate, a direction, a thing you return to after being away.

She doesn’t know what that word does to me.

Maybe she does. I think maybe she does.

"I’ll be back before dawn," I say.

She steps back. The hand drops. Alpha mode reassembling itself, the posture straightening, the specific gravity she carries when a room is watching and she needs to be what the room needs her to be.

"Petra," she says. "Find Cade."

"Yes, Alpha."

"And someone tend that fire," she says. "It’s freezing."

She goes back to the table. Back to the maps. Her finger finds the eastern border position and she starts talking to the two wolves behind me about patrol timing.

I stand there for one more second.

Just one.

Then I go find Cade.