Chapter 626

The pack responded.

The link lit up with the specific quality of a pack that had their wolves back and their mindlink active and Elite’s training in their bodies – not panic, the coordinated mobilization of people who’d been preparing for exactly this.

But Hale had prepared too.

They came from four directions simultaneously – not the two hundred wolves of the border battle, a smaller and more precise force. Thirty, maybe forty, with casting support that I could feel in the specific way that the moon child’s senses felt working magic. Four casters, positioned at the compass points of the approach.

The root was the distraction.

While the root held Kael’s attention and mine through the bond, the casters were working something else – a suppression field, attempting to push the pack’s restored wolves back under.

Not going to work.

I understood this with the specific certainty that Silver had been building toward for months. The suppression field required the mindlink to be broken for it to take hold. The mindlink was mine. I was holding it. And I was not letting go.

I pushed back.

The lunar power came up the way it had been coming up more easily since the restoration not the full blast, the sustained version, the specific focused output that the mindlink work had been training. I held the mindlink with one hand and pushed the suppression back with the other and the specific sensation of doing both simultaneously was significant.

Silver said: *We’ve got it.*

*Yes,* I said.

The pack was in the field.

–

Priya came from the east – I could feel her in the link, the specific quality of her wolf that Elite had described as moving without thinking. She hit the first caster’s position with three

–

wolves find her and the caster’s casting broke.

One down.

The root was still active.

Kael was fighting it.

“Go,” he said to me. “I’ve got this. Go.”

“You’re not-”

“I’ve been holding worse for three years,” he said. “Go.”

I went.

Finished

The field was not the border battle. Smaller, more precise, Hale’s network sending quality rather than quantity after the border battle’s lesson about what quantity produced. But quality meant each individual on their side was formidable in a way that the mass of two hundred hadn’t been.

Nina was at the northern position when I found her in the link.

Then she wasn’t in the link the way she’d been a hit, something wolfsbane-adjacent, the specific quality of a partial suppression of someone whose wolf had been restored for three days and hadn’t fully calibrated yet.

She was down but not out.

Jordan was somewhere in the eastern approach – I could feel his wolf, Jay, present and quick, the specific grey intelligence of it moving through the field in a way that was not combat in the traditional sense but was absolutely effective. Jordan had never been a front- line fighter. He didn’t need to be. He was the person who understood where everyone was and moved the pieces accordingly, and doing that in the link was significantly more powerful than doing it through walkie-talkies.

*Priya,* Jordan sent. *Second caster, your left.*

Priya was already moving.

Second caster down.

Killian was at the western approach with his wolf, Kain dark and fast and the specific quality of a wolf who’d been rogue long enough to have lost the pack habits and had developed something different in their place. He was not fighting like a pack wolf. He was fighting like something that had spent years alone and had learned to compensate.

Flousted

He was effective.

He took a hit from the third caster-something that was not wolfsbane, something that was designed for non-pack wolves, the rogue suppression compound that Ivory had documented in the intelligence files, He went down.

Got back up.

Went down again.

Nina, I sent. *Killian’s position, western approach.*

Nina, partial-suppressed and operating at reduced capacity, rnoved toward Killian’s position with the specific determined efficiency of someone who’d been compromised and was doing it anyway.

The fourth caster was the problem.

The fourth caster was positioned at the southern approach and what they were doing was not the suppression field – it was the root activation support, the specific supplementary casting that was holding the root activated against Kael’s resistance. Take out the fourth caster and the root activation lost its supplementary power and Kael’s integration would be enough to push it back.

I found the fourth caster through the moon child’s specific sense – not visual, not link, something below both of those, the way the moon child awareness registered magical work being done nearby.

I hit them with the lunar scream.

The disorienting sound that had stopped Ivory for six seconds in the Ghost Hunt chamber. The fourth caster dropped their casting and staggered.

Three seconds.

I used them.

The lunar blast – not the full version, the directed version, the precision work that Silver and I had been practicing in the clearing before dawn for weeks. A specific directed output a the fourth caster’s position.

The casting broke.

The root activation lost its support.

kael broke free

What happened in the next ninety seconds was → comprehensive. Kael with the integration fully active, the wolf and the person one thing the specific quality of an Alpha who’d been held back by something for three years and was no longer held back, moving through the remaining attackers with the efficiency of something that had no hesitation and no ambiguity about what it was doing.

The pack swept.

Hale’s force had come with thirty-five wolves and four casters. Hale’s force retreated with considerably fewer functional participants and no casters.

Hale himself – I felt him in the specific awareness, present and then withdrawing, the quality of someone who’d sent the attack and had been watching from a position of calculated distance. He withdrew when it became clear the sweep was happening.

He was gone before anyone could reach him.

We made it to the clinic.

The specific quality of *made it* – not effortlessly, not cleanly, in the way of people who’d been in something and were carrying the costs of it. Kael was injured in a way that I could see without being a healer, the specific sustained cost of holding the root activation back while also moving through forty-odd attackers with three casters’ worth of residual magic in the field. His left side had taken a hit that was going to be significant. Nina was compromised from the wolfsbane-adjacent compound. Killian had been hit twice with the rogue suppression and was moving with the careful quality of someone whose body was staging a

protest.

Jordan was the most intact, which was consistent with Jordan being the person who’d spent the battle doing the most effective thing from the least directly dangerous position.

We came through the clinic door.

Ivory was in the secondary treatment room.

She was in the chair by the window. She had a blanket. She had a bowl of something that smelled like the snacks she kept in the cabinet for extended lab sessions. She had volume seven of the BL novel series open in her hands.

She looked up when we came in.

She looked at us at Kael’s left side, at Nina’s compromised state, at Killian’s careful

movement She did the inventory with the clinical efficiency that was her baseline.

Then she said: “I told you so.”

The clinic was silent.

EVERYTIME, Nina said.

Ivory turned a page.

765786

“I sad the optimal window was three days ago,” she said. “I said the atmospheric conditions would not recur. I said Hale would use the window.” She looked at the page. “I said all of those things.”

“You did,” Jordan said.

“I was correct about all of those things,” she said.

“You were,” Jordan said.

“I often am,” she said.

She turned another page.

“Ivory,” Kael said.

“Mm,” she said.

“I need treatment,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

“The left side-”

“I can see the left side,” she said.

“It needs-”

“It does,” she said.

She turned another page.

“Are you going to treat it,” he said.

“Eventually,” she said.

Chouter t t

Ivory, he said.

Fluisted

“You know,” she said, looking at the book, you can wait three days. After all, it was your idea to wait.”

The room absorbed this.

Nina looked at the ceiling.

Jordan looked at the window.

Killian looked at the floor!

I looked at Ivory with the specific feeling of someone who’d been dreading this exact moment and had arrived at it and found it exactly as she’d expected.

“Ivory,” Kael said, and his voice had arrived at the specific quality it got when he was injured and tired and had arrived at the end of the available patience.

“Three days,” she said pleasantly. “It’s very reasonable. You said so yourself.”

A/n: this is pure me, i always do this, when someone who knows better chose someone opinion over mine, I become very petty so insert me, and yeah you are free to hate ivory.